CEO Update

Elaine O’Hagan, Practice Partnership Manager, recently caught up with a new adviser to the Fitzpatricks family, Craig Benham, to ask him a little about himself.

You have just recently joined Helen Russo at Fitzpatricks Advisory Partners, could you tell me a little about your previous work and achievements?

For the past 15 years I worked as a Financial Adviser at a large regional chartered accounting and financial advisory firm. As a Partner of that firm I developed the advisory business and team along with my client work. Prior to this, I worked at Macquarie Wealth Management in Sydney. The focus of this role was national practice support and development, assisting Advisers and their practices to develop. This was a varied role and aside from the day to day support to Advisers included aspects such as sitting on the research committee for the licensees APL.

What is your role at Fitz Advisory Partners and how did you come to join Helen?

Helen and I are business partners at Fitz Advisory Partners. We have had a long association which dates back 20 years. We share similar values and vision and are able to trust each other implicitly which is highly important when contemplating being in business together. The option to grow a business together made sense for us as we serve a client base of successful individuals, rural and family businesses. There are unique challenges and complexities in dealing with these types of clients and having in each other a seasoned partner of equal standing with lengthy experience, knowledge and wisdom is beneficial. An added advantage for us is a female/male advisory team with complementary skill sets which helps bring a holistic perspective to our advice.

What is something that excites you about joining Fitzpatricks?

Being part of the FPW community is a nice change. Working with a like-minded Adviser who is focused on business growth for Fitz Advisory Partners is something I am excited about and the FPW best of breed team is something I am keen to tap into and make best use of.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Trying to keep fit is a bit of a focus. Tennis has been the go-to for last few years, so I try and fit that in a few times each week with coaching and cardio tennis. Weekends are usually a competition between getting to the local rugby games for a day out and keeping the garden at bay at home.

This is an early heads-up that Colin Lewis, Head of Technical Services, will be on leave from Thursday 25^th May to Friday 2^nd June.  Being out of the country, Colin will be unable to take any enquiries during this period.

The run up to the end of the financial year can be a busy time.  Please take some time to check how you are shaping up to meet these various responsibilities.  Contact Professional Standards if you have any questions or concerns on any of these matters.

The refreshed Xplan Client Portal was launched on the 31^st March 2023. Please click here to access the training guides and videos for yourself and your clients. Please contact Siva Mehta ([email protected]) if you have any further queries in relation to this.

If you use the Fitzpatricks IT network, you can help build our collective cyber resilience by reporting an email as spam or phishing directly to Mimecast (our email security solution).

Simply right-click on the email, expand the Report Spam menu, and select either Spam or Phishing.

Reporting these emails helps Mimecast update their scanning algorithms to better catch those emails which managed to get through their systems, thereby reducing the amount of unwanted emails that reach your inbox.

If you use your own email security provider, please contact your IT provider to see what options are available to you.

At a minimum, using the Junk option provides information back to Microsoft to improve their rules.

Spam

Spam emails, are unsolicited and irrelevant commercial emails, sent online to a bulk number of recipients. Oftentimes spam messages are from a company trying to sell you something. While these emails can be a nuisance, they are not considered malicious.

Phishing

Phishing is a malicious attempt to obtain sensitive information by disguising as a trustworthy website, person, or company. Requests for personal information such as a password, credit card, bank account number, Social Security Number, etc. are examples of information attackers in a phishing campaign might seek.

A new ‘Guidelines for Listed Securities Advice’ is now available on the adviser portal which advisers will find useful for clients with direct equities and hybrid securities. In line with FPW’s investment philosophy, outsourcing investment management to professionals is a common theme in this guideline.

The purpose of this guideline is to articulate Fitzpatricks Private Wealth (FPW) approach to listed securities advice. Listed securities, or direct shares / fixed interest advice, will often be sought by clients so advisers need to have a good understanding of investment principles associated with providing specific listed share / fixed interest advice. This guideline provides an overview of the investment principles and operational advice issues to consider when proving listed
securities advice. The guideline can be found at Adviser Portal>Advice Support>Professional Standards>Policies and Procedures>Investment Advice Policy>Implementation Tools or through this link.

On 5th April we held our Virtual Adviser & Support Technical Day. The presentation and recordings from these sessions can be found here.

The 2 FPW Policy Questionnaires relating to our Incidents & Breaches and Complaints policy are due by the end of the 28th April 2023. To access the sessions in Kaplan Ontrack click on “Learning Content”. Scroll down to the section titled “Corporate Mandatory Content” and select “Complaints Policy” and “Incidents and Breaches Policy”. CPD points will be awarded. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact [email protected].

Please register to our upcoming FPW webinars:

38.75% of advisers are on track in completing their total CPD hours. Fitzpatricks expects all Advisers to complete their CPD throughout the year and achieve a minimum of 10 CPD hours per quarter as such, it is ideal to have completed over 30 CPD points. It is important to note that it is the Adviser’s responsibility to monitor their progress to ensure they complete their required targets.

We have created an opportunity for you, as advisers, to highlight community activity that enriches the lives of clients.

Advisers across the group, on a day-to-day basis, are involved in activity that benefits clients, be it, business events such as client roundtables, industry events like Chamber of Commerce or philanthropic pursuits. These are all examples of the type of activities which clients value. By sharing this type of information, we are able to build brand awareness and create connection with the broader community on the value of our advice approach.

On a regular basis, we will be producing a “broadcast post” on our social media channels where content can be collated in one place as part of a community message. We know good news and community posts on social media are the most engaged with content and help drive awareness of our brand and its values. This initiative will also help advisers who are not active on social media, an opportunity to be visible online.

Please send any photos and details of your work or event that you would like us to include on the regular community news post to [email protected].

If you have any questions, please reach out to the marketing team.

We are looking forward to helping you gain more public visibility by spreading the Enriching Lives message.

A reminder that events planned for the year can be accessed through Your Marketing Partner section on the adviser portal. Please use this link to view the FPW events calendar.

Budget night is Tuesday 9^th May 2023. A reminder Colin Lewis will be presenting all the budget highlights on 10^th May at a 2.00pm webinar. To register, click the link here.

Following feedback from our adviser community that this communication is rich in resources with important information from across the business, we have now made an enhancement to the CEO Update webpage. Going forwards, we now have the capability to archive previous editions of the CEO Update and you will be able to view these editions here​​​​​​​.