Market View From the Top
from Spicers CEO Gordon Noble-Campbell
Humility, honesty and altruism
16 September 2009
The most trusted profession listed in the 2009 Readers Digest survey is ambulance officers. It’s easy to understand why trust in this profession is rated so highly – after all if I’m ever likely to need the service provided by this profession, the person who comes to my aid is likely to provide medical relief at minimum, or at best, save my life.
It’s easy to comprehend that “my” interests come before “theirs”.
Similarly, ambulance officers provide a clearly identifiable social function, and those that choose this profession as a career have a clearly identifiable motivation to help people.
As the compilers of this survey note “… when times are tough, people everywhere look for security and certainty … [and] when it comes to trustworthy people, it's the "rocks of society" - the humble, honest and truly helpful - who we consistently turn to.”
Humility, honesty and altruism – in my view, these are some of the crucial bed-rock attributes of a professional financial advice relationship, regardless of the times and circumstances. These are attributes which are I consider to be fundamental to the Spicers business and our client relationships.
Reflecting on these qualities, I was interested to hear this week that Parliament's commerce select committee will hold an inquiry into New Zealand’s finance company failures. The committee chairwoman Lianne Dalziel is reported as saying that the committee will focus “on particular issues which may benefit from the scrutiny a select committee can bring to bear."
The issues identified for review are: ensuring investors are well-informed about investment proposals; ensuring investors understand the implications of a moratorium proposal before voting; ensuring advance actions can be taken to reduce the chances of failure; and ensuring adequate measures or redress exists when failure occurs.
The factors of information, understanding, monitoring and remediation which underpin these issues, are all functional tests of the quality of an advice relationship. They are also indicative of the honesty, humility and altruism I referred to earlier which must be present at all times for an advice relationship to be valued.
The advent of the new regulatory environment for financial advisers will go a long way to ensuring investors can continue to have confidence in seeking professional financial advice, and that the issues currently in need of parliamentary inquiry are permanently resolved.
As part of a network of professional financial advice businesses owned by AXA Asia-Pacific throughout Australia and Asia, Spicers will continue to demonstrate ‘advice best practice’ as part of this important regulatory change.
1 Australia’s Most Trusted Professions 2009 – Readers Digest
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