A majorityof Queensland-based financial planners would prefer to listen to other planners and individuals with their own practices at industry conferences, according to the 2002 Financial Planning Association (FPA) Queensland Conference chair Leonie Henry.
“One of the things most popular [when devising the program] for this conference was that the best attendance is when a planner is the one speaking, so we’ve leaned heavily on that,” Henry says.
A third of the entire two day program focuses on individuals who will discuss specific aspects of the financial planning business, including Bill O’Sullivan from Trinity Financial Services who will talk about the growth of the group. Henry says this is an approach that has not been done before.
“Observations from past conferences and from the industry itself shows that the presentations where planners are talking seem to be the ones that get the most attendance,” she says.
And Henry believes this is a practice particularly focused on in Queensland, as the culture of this state’s planners encourages a sharing mentality.
“We all run our businesses differently, but something that I think is specific to Queensland is we share what we do, rather than be competitive about it. It’s part of the culture. I don’t think we’d get as many people wanting to share if this was a national conference,” she says.
“The financial planning industry in south-east Queensland is a very close-knit community. People do sit around the table and talk about things.”
The large number of regional planners in Queensland, and because the state is so large and regionally spread out, is an added driver of the sharing attitude, Henry adds.
A planning committee of 12 was involved with nutting out the issues to focus on in the FPA’s state conference, including regional representation, and more than 40 papers were received by the committee following its call for papers.
The conference runs from July 26 to 27 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
