If you’re looking for truly unvarnished opinions on life’s issues go and visit an internet forum.
Recently I visited the financial section of one of Australia’s largest web forums. In the aftermath of the most recent scandal to rock the financial services industry it made for sobering reading. Again the industry was suffering a broad brush beating. Some truthful media reports about one section of the industry were fuelling some big misconceptions about the whole industry.
While it may seem highly unscientific to take much notice of anonymous people raging on the internet, the forum and its attitude towards financial planners was accurate in one way – it was a microcosm of misconceptions and misplaced criticisms we’d all recognise.
There was the one where we should be paid on active investment performance, moving individual client money around on a regular basis to beat the market.
There was the one where if we’re still financial planners in our 50’s we must not know what we’re doing because surely we should have retired by now.
There was the one where we’re regularly off on overseas junkets courtesy of the institutions we’re apparently pushing products on behalf of.
And there were plenty of respondents that knew little about investing, insurance, business structuring, estate planning or superannuation, but they certainly knew no one should ever pay a professional for help with those issues!
Several forum members, who identified themselves as financial planners, attempted to stem the tide. There were also other members who stepped in with attempts to delineate between institutional and non-aligned planners. Yet it was a case of detailed explanations needed to counter punchy and damning slogans.
Unfortunately, there were people who were asking for referrals within the same forum and they were being bombarded with similar “know nothing, but have opinion on everything” responses. One would hope if they required professional advice they weren’t discouraged by the broad brush, ill-informed criticism.
Now this is certainly no knock on the internet and its ability to air these discussions. They would still be occurring at BBQ’s and in work lunch rooms.
There will always be a know-all brother-in law or the co-worker who received an outrageous quote from an institution and subsequently wrote us all off.
In the negative, this illustrates the huge education gap we face when engaging prospective clients. Yet it also highlights a potential positive – we can see exactly where those education gaps are. This offers a better understanding of how to tailor our communications to address those misconceptions
The internet may be a wild west, but there are still pockets of opportunity for referral and understanding in some of the roughest saloons!
