It’s an interesting time in both the finance industry and the investment market at the moment. One of the biggest things to happen for the regular Australian is the fall of property – down 11.4% so far, and who knows how much further it will go.
We all know Australians love their property – bricks and mortar is part of our DNA. I’m sure that as a financial planner you have all spent a lot of time going over property strategies with people, and had to work a lot harder to open people’s eyes to other investment opportunities that are not so readily understood.
But with the winds of change, and a re-elected Coalition government with a majority this time, it may well be the time for you to reach out again to prospective and existing clients with the message of investing outside of property. When property prices were booming, people saw no reason to look elsewhere – but now that the tide is turning, perhaps a new message of investing in global equities, infrastructure, venture capital and bonds could be more readily received that it has been before.
But to do that you need the right message. The right amount of story and fact to engage people, help them learn and lead them to understand enough about what they are investing in to lose the total fear factor of the unknown. And this is no easy task – let’s face it, many of the asset classes and approaches we are talking about are complex.
Time and time again, I’ve seen communication be the failure of our industry. What those in the industry see as straightforward can almost be a foreign language to the outside world. Which is why it’s so important to collect a library and have an approach that breaks down these concepts and makes them accessible to all.
A lot of fund managers I know are now trying to produce materials that you can use for the end client. If I were a planner, I would be having someone in my office contact all the managers on the approved list and ask for updated materials. Videos, online articles and case studies. Then set aside half a day to review all the material and see what you can use.
I can guarantee that you won’t be able to use all of it – in fact if you use 50% of it that is good enough for your purposes then you are doing well. But you can start to assemble a new communications kit for a market where property is falling and people have confidence that the government isn’t going to pull the rug out from them with policies like franking credits.
Our new TV show and education resources will be out at the end of June. Feel free to use as much of that as you can with your clients and prospects to explain different asset classes and the mix of investments that make up a well-diversified portfolio.
For the Australian public need your skillset more than ever.
Until next time,
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