This year's event is being run fully virtually
Financial Advice New Zealand kicked off its annual conference yesterday, and advisers are gathering for a two-day event featuring 17 local and international speakers covering a wide range of subjects.
The title of this year’s conference is ‘Be Inspired, Be Energised’, and it’s being run fully virtually given the COVID-19 restrictions. CEO Katrina Shanks said that the organisation was hoping to run the 2021 conference in person given the cancellation of last year’s gathering, but that the virtual platform is “the next best thing to deliver an event that is pretty special.”
On the first day, attendees heard from Financial Advice New Zealand chair Sue Brown as she reflected on the organisation’s achievements over the past year. Brown highlighted the three key pillars that the organisation was founded on, and said that the achievements of the last year had been significant - particularly in the context of massive regulatory change, which has affected all advisers.
“Our three founding pillars are advocacy, promotion and standards, and those pillars have stood us in excellent stead over the last four years,” Brown said.
Read more: Organisation launches Money Week webinars to boost financial literacy
“Advocacy means a lot of things to lots of different people, but at its heart, we believe our role in advocacy is to ensure that collectively, advisers have a voice that’s heard and respected. A voice when regulatory and legislative changes are first developed, a voice at draft stage, implementation and on enforcement.”
“Advocacy can be formal, such as the eight submissions that were written last year, or informal and based on mutual respect, such as when Katrina picks up the phone and can get right through to the decision maker, at whatever level they are,” she said.
“I’m hugely proud of the impact our advocacy has made over the last year.”
Brown noted that one of Financial Advice New Zealand’s most significant goals this year has been to raise public awareness of the benefits of financial advice, and to make it easier for consumers to seek help from an adviser.
Among other initiatives, Financial Advice New Zealand delivered a series of free webinars hosted by financial advisers for Money Week, which took place earlier this year. These included sessions on financial, insurance, mortgage and retirement planning with well-known experts in those respective fields, and attendees were given the chance to ask questions and improve their financial literacy.
Brown said that the results of these initiatives have been tangible, as more customers have been actively searching for advisers and recognising the value that they bring.
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She said Financial Advice New Zealand has also invested significantly into the training and development of its members, and has delivered a huge number of professional development hours over the last year.
“To reach our goal of supporting New Zealanders to have choice in their financial matters, we need to get more of them in front of quality financial advisers,” Brown said.
“This year, we focused seven different campaigns around social media, and we’ve also enjoyed hosting public webinars in support of Money Week. We took over the Life Info website to help New Zealanders gain the knowledge they need to understand the value of personal insurances.”
“Our market budget was smaller this year than previous years due to the financial impact of COVID, but we’ve still achieved a lot, including a 30% increase in the number of Kiwis who visit the ‘Find an Adviser’ page on our website,” she said.
“We also believe quality financial advisers like to keep up to date, and we work hard to support that goal. In the last financial year, we delivered an incredible 125 hours of professional development, and we recently delivered our 91st Bring in the Experts webinar - that’s truly amazing.”
Commenting on the conference launch, Katrina Shanks said she hoped it would allow advisers to finish 2021 “on a high note.”
“We have a truly inspiring and energising line-up of speakers who will give delegates key insights and practical tools to end their year on a high note and set them up for a big 2022,” Shanks said.
“It’s also something of a new era in conferencing.”
