The coronavirus outbreak has led to an increase in sequencing risk – when an investor experiences poor performance at “precisely the wrong time in (their) investment time frame”, leading to a massive impact on their ability to retire, according to AMP chief executive Francesco De Ferrari.
“At this point, if I am 60, I’m facing some pretty difficult individual options,” Mr De Ferrari told business and media.
“I either need to work for many more years to bridge the gap, or on average I need to consider a quality of life that’s 25 per cent lower than I had planned. When we plan for retirement, we need to take control of our investments and we need to make some tough, rational decisions. And it is precisely in these moments that we need to have access to professional advice.”
According to Mr De Ferrari, the advice gap is bad and getting worse. One in two adults – around 10 million people – have unmet advice needs, while last year only 12 per cent of Australians received financial advice. And the number of people seeking advice is increasing as the outbreak continues to wreak havoc in financial markets.
“Inquiries in our call centres and to our financial advisers are the highest they’ve ever been as clients in this difficult situation look for advice and direction,” Mr De Ferrari said.
Societies that want “to be fair and care for all people” must ensure that financial advice is available to everybody, he says.
“When we come through the worst, we must use this crisis as a catalyst to address the critical issues, such as the big advice gap we have in this country,” Mr De Ferrari said.
“It’s an issue we must get right for everybody, and not just for the wealthy.”
“One in two adults – around 10 million people – have unmet advice needs, while last year only 12 per cent of Australians received financial advice.” AND WHO’S FAULT IS THAT? Lets try FSC, politicians, corrupt institutions and their executives, union super funds, left wing media like the ABC, ASIC, Royal Commission, ambulance chasing lawyers and everyone else that slams and shifts all blame to the adviser for everything bad that happens in financial services. Why are you even surprised at those figures?
People’s expectations were too high; fund managers, advisers, and clients alike. They were either naive to the fact the market was grossly overvalued and is only at realistic levels now based on previous future earnings or simply didn’t care because they had growth targets to meet and charters to follow. Average returns over time; the gap was in expecting a quality of life that was 33% higher, not failing to plan for something that would be 25% lower.
None of my clients are facing sequencing risk, they all have properly managed, segmented portfolios and aren’t drawing on growth assets. Their investments are suited to their situation and prevailing conditions, because I have less than 120 clients, all bar some family and friends and referral sources pay ongoing fees and I pro-actively manage them all. Further, I have had literally just 1 call from someone concerned about markets, because of the extensive education deployed in the last decade around markets and in particular in the last few years about how its more important to think about and plan for bear markets when bull market is making new highs than at any other time.
When advisers have suitable numbers of clients who pay fair fees and therefore are looked after sufficiently well, there’s no issues, no matter what markets or legislation does. In fact, all we’re seeing now is opportunity. And no, I don’t look after elite clients, they range from $300k – $3m in FUM, overwhelmingly mum and dad retirees, we just run a quality business that provides quality advice and service and charges fair fees for doing so.
Sadly in our industry, this makes us the exception to the rule where so many have books of hundreds if not thousands of largely engaged clients, delivering commissions for nothing in return, getting no proactive advice.
Congrats to all those well run business out there, to all the rest, I look forward to meeting your clients when they look at their falling balances and wonder who you are or why they’ve not heard from you during these times.
I don’t think he is facing the same sort of issues that the AMP Advisers that relied on AMP honouring its contracts are feeling. They are facing issues not as a result of the caprice of markets or the randomness of a pandemic. They have to deal with the commerical decption and bullying of an organisation that they trusted for decades as a business partner. The advisers that sold their businesses under long term equity partner agreements, only to have AMP unilaterally decide, with no notice, that they weren’t going to honour the contract. A cancerous and corrupt culture still run by middle management who were there before, during and now after the RC.
I am hearing from the Advisers who have engaged clients that the clients are a bit stressed but not too bad, considering the Advisers have them in appropriate risk profiles, have educated them well, and prepared them for market downturns being a “normal” part of the investment process.
Does this mean that some (not all) AMP advisers have not been doing this? It must be hard to do this when you have thousands of “clients” on your books, who you have barely had contact with, and don’t have time to do now.
I think that AMP senior management need to go back to school learn about what financial advice is really about.
And complete FARSEA full education and Ethics courses plus pass FARSEA exam.
Good enough for Adviser should Fam well be good enough for the head honchos !!!
I don’t think you are facing too many issues at this point Mr. De Ferrari.
Based on the increase in your remuneration package as a reward from AMP for stabbing loyal and committed AMP advisers behind their back and ruining their businesses, I am surprised you even have the front to make a comment on anything at all.
Perhaps you should go back to helping the poor and build shelters for them as you did in your youth with Mother Teresa as this side of your humanity appears to be in the distant and invisible past.
The contradictions in this man’s statements are overwhelming compared to his comments only recently stating that he believed that anyone earning $80,000 or less did not have a need for advice.
What a complete fake.
AMP tried this bullshit years ago with a bloke called George Trumbull.
For those who can remember that fuck up, they will see straight through the web of lies and deception that is still being peddled now.