From the 6th to 8th of August 2018, we held our semi-annual conference in Cairns at The Shangri-La Hotel.
Bob Fowler opened the conference, welcoming several first time conference attendees, some prospective advisers and a large number of existing FYG Planners conference faces. Attending for the first time were Mark Baldwin of Baldwin Financial Services and Mandy Mellor who recenltly joined BDO Private Wealth (Nth QLD). Bob also farewelled John Coppack and Mark Kerr who’ve recently retired from Barrier Reef Financial Solutions and Financial Linx respectively.
The first day of speakers was kicked off by Gary Bertwistle, who gave a presentation entitled ‘Getting Gritty’.
Matthew Smith, Corporate Relationship Director at Kaplan, then presented on Professional & Education Standards for Advisers, including on the proposed FASEA guidelines.
After lunch, the group then offered their ideas around the room to facilitate thinking and share things each adviser had been implementing in their own business.
The second session of the afternoon was taken by Tom Reddacliff, CEO of Encore Advisory Group. Tom spoke on winning the long game and where is financial planning headed.
The final session of the afternoon was with Mike Roach and Julie Scurfield from Vanguard, who presented on Global Factor Investing and also facilitated a panel discussion.
On Day 2, Belinda Allen, Senior Economist at Commonwealth Bank presented on Where Are We & Where Are We Headed, a informative session on the current macro-economic picture.
Up next was a session on Indexing & Smart Beta by Warwick Schneller, of Dimensional, facilitated by DFA Regional Director, James Trude.
After morning tea, FYG Directors Peter Mancell and Jason Fowler took a session on What’s New at FYG Planners.
In the afternoon Gavin Chapple of Ideal Life Advisers took the final FYG session, which was an overview of how he runs his business focusing on the what, how and why.
To round out the day, the Xplan forum began. Emily Chen, Xplan Product Manager and Amanda Davis, Product Owner Xplan CRM, took a session on Xplan Labs.
The FYG Planners and Xplan Teams on Day 3
The first sessions on Day 3 were taken by FYG directors Peter Mancell and Jason Fowler, along with FYG Head of IT, Melissa Coffey. These session covered Being Compliant Using Client Summary Reporting and Alerts Licences before having an open floor discussion.
From there Emily Chen took the group through an Xplan PRIME Demo.
Finally, the day and conference was finished off after lunch with another session taken by Peter Mancell, Jason Fowler and Melissa Coffey, this time on Xplan Process – Compliance & Threads/Cases.
FYG management were extremely pleased with the standard of content presented from all internal and external sources. Feedback from external presenters was strong. Finally, all attendees can thoroughly recommend the food at the Brazilian Bushfire Restaurant!
The next FYG Planners conference will be held in Hobart during March 2019.