The end of the year is usually a time to look back and examine how far we have come over the past 12 months and to do so this year is a fascinating exercise.
WhenMoney Managementprinted its last edition for 2000, one of the most pressing concerns was the fate of the Financial Services Reform (FSR) Bill, as it was known then.
Since then, the Bill has become an Act, and after further lobbying, the industry is preparing for its full implementation over the coming years.
At the same time, planners were contemplating their business through the spectrum of alienation of personal services income and its wide reaching effects on their income and business models.
This has also radically changed with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) agreeing to provide a look through provision for planners and advisers, which confirms the position the industry and its representative bodies took from day one.
The third part of this unholy trio, IPS 146, has also become a reality under the FSR Act and will also become a full part of planner’s lives over the next two years.
Add to this the wash out from the technology wreck and the ongoing implications of September 11, and it’s easy to find a few seminal (????) moments in the immediate past.
But what is the upshot of all this for planners and for their clients. A few things come to mind, including you cannot guess the future, change is probably one of the few constants and good planners will continue to survive.
If you think you can guess the future then you probably should not be involved with financial planning. Good speculative skills will make more money at the stock market or the racetrack, but even then, who would have guessed the way the FSR Act came into being, the ATO’s change of heart or the events of recent times.
Given that these things happen, and mainly beyond our full control, it would be foolish to face the next year with the same agenda that we finish this one on. This means the planning industry should re-examine the way it works and prepare for the new ground ahead. It will be the same but unfamiliar at the same time and will offer the same challenges, as well as those never tackled before.
While the analogy is not perfect, good planners will be like well-trained soldiers. They will assess a situation, make a plan and implement that plan for a successful outcome, despite many unfamiliar variables. They do it each day for clients and have been doing so for more than a decade, and every time a new idea is developed, the industry moves a step ahead.
The coming year will be as exciting as the last, if not more. The lobbying and horse trading of this year is over and the way ahead is for planners and dealers to find new and more ingenious ways to offer the best service to their clients.
Who remains standing at the end of this year is a testament to their resilience. Who remains standing at the end of next year will confirm that. Don’t be slow off the mark, the clock is already running down.
