It is a question Robert Kiddell gets asked on a regular basis — why did he make the move from being a litigation lawyer to financial planner?
Kiddell started his professional career as a lawyer but made the move into financial planning in 1992. Since then he has expanded his service offering from a single planner to a full service practice, as well as becoming involved in a push to return full banking services to the rural community in which he lives.
And it is this type of action which is the answer to the question of why Kiddell made the move from law to financial advice.
“It is a socially useful job and is genuinely helping people. It is possible to achieve a 100 per cent success rate if you educate your clients, benchmark your performance and do the client reviews,” he says.
Kiddell began his career as a lawyer in 1978 and practised as a solicitor for a number of small law firms in the area of general civil litigation, with an emphasis on family law, personal injuries litigation and motor traffic law.
In the late 80s and early 90s, the practice he was in, and his own work, moved further towards the areas of commercial litigation, debt recovery and the development of a new area of investment advice and financial planning.
It was due to this that Kiddell decided to study for the diploma of financial planning (DFP) from Deakin University, which he gained in 1990, and two years later he left the group taking the financial planning arm with him.
After setting up shop with another legal firm he continued to work as a planner with his own accounts and then in 1995 he created the Delburn Group, which now offers personal and corporate financial planning, including investment, superannuation and succession planning.
Kiddell is based in the LaTrobe Valley east of Melbourne, a region known for its primary industry and while his planning business, Delburn Garrisons, has offices in Mirboo North and Morwell, his practice services clients from Melbourne’s outer east through to Warragul, Traralgon and Sale.
At present the group services about 400 clients with managed fund investments and Kiddell is happy to say that many of these are well within the ‘mums and dads’ market, reflecting the demographic make up of the region.
“If I was in financial planning for the money, or if that was a high priority in my practice, it would make sense to go with high-net-worth clients, but I feel there are genuine concerns which means we have to deal outside of that client group,” Kiddell says.
“We have always had that approach since we started the group and have not chosen to purse just the top echelon of clients as others seem to be doing.
“In fact, our average funds under advice is about $200,000 per client but we also know these people who have friends and family like them who need financial planning assistance.”
The remainder of the group’s clients are made up of retirees and wealth accumulators, two areas Kiddell is happy to serve as part of his socially useful view of financial planning.
“We are happy to do the Centrelink stuff for our retiree clients because we know that for many it is a bewildering experience,” Kiddell says.
This service ties in with one of his niche markets — widows — but he also works with a number of dairy farmers and has even gone so far as to run dairy business courses to assist his clients to run their businesses better.
“This type of thing is consistent with the evolution of financial planning. When I started in 1989 it was a cottage industry and was very personal and friendly, and in 1998 when we looked at banking services for the local area, we once again concluded that we worked in a helping profession,” he says.
The banking services Kiddell refers to was the launch of a Bendigo Community Bank in Mirboo North, after the pull out of the last of the big four banks left the community without any banking services.
Kiddell, through the Delburn Group, created a subsidiary group, Ridgeway Financial Chambers, and in conjunction with the local community, formed a co-operative which in turned brought the Bendigo Bank to the town.
The bank now has about 10 per cent of the local community as customers and opens about 40 accounts per month.
He says this type of involvement in community affairs is almost impossible to avoid given the size of the community he lives and works in.
As such, Kiddell is heavily involved in work outside his business and as the first Certified Financial Planner (CFP) in the Gippsland area, it makes sense that Kiddell is also active for theFinancial Planning Association(FPA) in the region.
He was involved in setting up the local chapter in 1991 and served as its chair until 1993 and then again from 1994 to 1996, serving as a Victorian State Council member at the same time.
Kiddell is still involved with the FPA in the region as media spokesperson and as an organiser of the group’s continuing education days.
Beyond the FPA his other community work includes being a church councillor and elder of Mirboo North Uniting Church, a councillor with Mirboo North Secondary College, a fellow of Gippsland community leadership program, RAAF legal officer squadron leader and a board director for LaTrobe Country Credit Co-op.
He is also involved in the push for ethical investments and he was responsible for launching Victoria’s first ethical investment exposition last year, which was run in the region.
But despite all these efforts, even Kiddell admits the last year has not been easy.
However, he says his practice has spent much of the time deliberately doing the same things they have always done and preparing for reviews with clients.
“We have not changed course in our portfolios and have continued with a bias towards educating clients at the start of the advice process,” Kiddell says.
“There has only been a handful of calls regarding performance but much of the interest surrounding that issue has come from clients of our competitors.”
