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Even the highly capable need financial advice Financial Advice NZ CEO Katrina Shanks says getting her own financial adviser has transformed her life. Is that a story you're going to [share more publicly]?
Back in the studio we have Katrina Shanks, the chief executive of Financial Advice New Zealand. Welcome back, Katrina. Thank you for having me. Last time you were here, you were quite new in the job, but now you've seen a lot of the financial advice sector. And I read somewhere that you've actually got your own financial adviser now. How's that process been? I do have my own financial adviser who's totally transformed my life. Yeah? Yep, it's been a great experience. And once again, I hadn't had financial advice before I took this role and I thought it was really important that I understood what that looked like. So, why hadn't you done it beforehand? I don't know. I think like most people, I think I'm pretty competent. I'm a chartered accountant by trade. I understand business and I understand my own finances and I know how to read a contract. So, I thought I didn't need it, but actually now that I've had advice, I realise just how invaluable it is and how it gives you a different [way] of looking at things. It’s totally transformed my life. 12 | ASSET NOVEMBER 2020
A couple of weeks ago, it did go a little bit more public when we wrote about that journey. I wrote about it in an opinion piece in Stuff and had a lot of feedback from that I've got to say, but absolutely everywhere I go I talk about this journey of seeking financial advice and how it can change your life because I truly believe it does. And that's what we're here for at Financial Advice New Zealand and that's what financial advisers do every single day. They help people to increase their financial health, wealth and wellbeing. The other day you were saying to me, and good on you for [your honesty with this], that you've been surprised at how resilient the financial advice sector is because it's gone through so much change. Can you tell me a bit about what you've seen there? Well, huge change, not just through the legislation. Obviously, we had FSLAA come through, which has set the environment which FAPs are going to operate in in the future. That's getting your mind around what does the licence look like? What do my liabilities look like? Not only my company, but also myself, because you've got duties under both. That's been quite a journey. And then on the top of that, you've got the disclosure requirements, you've got full licensing coming in, and then also we've had environmental change with how the different dealer groups and aggregators have
looked to add value to the process as well, which they do. And then on top of that, we've had CoFI come in for conduct and culture for product providers and companies – and their reaction to what that looks like as well has changed the environment slightly. Just as you think that the environment has settled, there's another change that's come in. Do you think financial advisers have faced far more change than other professions? I think so. I was reflecting on this a few weeks ago and I can't think of any other sector which has gone through change so quickly over such a short period of time. And it's been significant change, but not just change from legislation, change from their commercial agreements and the environment they work in and the market as well. The only thing that's really constant is the good advice that they give every single day. Interesting isn’t it? Totally. And turning to some work being done by your organisation, Financial Advice New Zealand, the Trusted Adviser. That was something which got talked about right at the formation of the association. Why has it taken so long to get there and how difficult has it been to put together? When the three organisations came together they wanted to develop a quality mark and that's actually in our constitution that it was to be developed. And so, that was one of the briefs I had when I first came in. That's been two years in the making because the environment
