Commonwealth Financial Planning ups its professionalism

Commonwealth Financial Planning (CFP) has implemented a change in the advice model offered to its network of planners with a view to providing a more specialised service for all of its customers.

Commonwealth Bank general manager, network financial planning and distribution services, Tim Gunning said: “We call it CFP Transformation. The changes are a recognition that financial planning is becoming more of a specialist profession and what we’re finding as a dealer group is that specialisation works, and we need to be organising ourselves around that.

“We’ve created a number of roles within our financial planning business to make sure we’re getting the right adviser in front of the right customer,” he explained.

Under the revised advice model, the new role of senior financial planner has been established to free more experienced financial planners from having to perform duties, such as training and building relationships with branches on a daily basis. This will allow them to devote more of their time to servicing their book of existing clients.

Branch planners will now be responsible for the day-to-day interactions with branches in order to generate new business, and will be required to refer clients with more complex financial needs to the senior financial planners.

Whether a client needs servicing from a senior financial planner will be determined by the level of sophistication associated with their financial needs as well as the amount of funds they have to invest, loosely benchmarked at $300,000.

Gunning said the changes had been formulated over the past six months in response to feedback received from CFP advisers. The bank began implementing CFP Transformation at the beginning of July this year.

While the change was driven by the planners themselves, it did not prevent an atmosphere of concern developing among some CFP planners when introduced, particularly over the proximity of their referral sources.

“Any change is met with some trepidation. You’ve got to remember that some of these senior planners have been based in branches for a long period of time, but even after six weeks it’s amazing how quickly they’ve adapted to it,” Gunning said.

He emphasised the dealer group never thought losing a large number of its planners as a result of the change was a possibility.

“A lot of these changes have been based on discussions and feedback we’ve had with different planners over the last couple of years. So we haven’t lost anyone yet. This is a career path and opportunity. If people want to stay in the branches that’s fine, but we want to give them an opportunity to move into a senior planning role where it’s appropriate,” he said.