Helmich joins FPA board

AMP Financial Planning managing director Steve Helmich has been appointed to the Financial Planning Association’s (FPA) board to rep-resent the large dealer groups.

AMP Financial Planning managing director Steve Helmich has been appointed to the Financial Planning Association’s (FPA) board to rep-resent the large dealer groups.

He replaces Colin Scully, who recently resigned for personal and pro-fessional reasons. Scully is now managing director of Bridges Personal Investment Services, the company he founded.

Despite being the only applicant for the position, Helmich is believed to have the backing of the majority of larger dealer groups (those with 50 or more proper authority holders).

After attending his first strategy meeting, Helmich reports: “There is more of a degree of commonality in the FPA than there has ever been in the past.”

He adds: “My challenges will be similar to the rest (of the FPA’s board). We want to make sure that financial planning gets the posi-tioning in the market that it deserves, that it is a very strong profession in its own right with high educational standards that is recognised by the public as the first point of call when looking for financial advice.”

Another area of interest to Helmich is helping the FPA’s clearly for-mulate a strategy to take it forward.

“The strategy in the past may have been set with the best intentions, but may not have been implemented or communicated as well as it should have been,” he says.

“To me the execution is probably more important than the planning.”