In a statement, Count Financial said it had added Plan4wealth, an advice firm based in the southeast Melbourne suburb of Pakenham that was formerly licensed under AMP Financial Planning.
Plan4wealth founder Mary Benton said the move across to Count had been “like chalk and cheese” in comparison to her previous dealer group.
“I have been impressed from the start with their logical and professional approach, starting with the recruitment phase and then the onboarding process,” Ms Benton said.
“The whole team went out of their way to respond promptly to my queries and find solutions to every one of my questions.”
Ms Benton added that the feedback and support received from the dealer group’s in-house team had been instrumental in getting her through the onboarding process smoothly.
“I started having real conversations with the Professional Standards team who are former financial planners themselves. They made it their mission to help me craft more meaningful statements of advice that actually reflected the conversations I had with my clients,” she said.
“Their coaching and support to get me through the prevet process was so enlightening. There was no carrot and stick approach, just high-quality coaching that was clear, prompt, respectful and very, very welcomed.”
“Mary’s comments are great to hear because that’s exactly what we strive to achieve through the care, commitment and capability of our team,” Count chief advice officer Andrew Kennedy said.
“I could see her client focus from the first time we met so I’m delighted to have someone of her calibre with us at Count Financial.”
I loved the comment “I started having real conversations with the Professional Standards team who are former financial planners themselves. They made it their mission to help me craft more meaningful statements of advice that actually reflected the conversations I had with my clients,”
This statement does not reflect how AMP works — if I had a choice of head butting a brick wall for an hour or ringing the compliance area of AMP I would take the former option.
Good luck with what I am sure is a better licensee than the previous one.
“to have someone of her calibre with us” maybe because AMP ensured she was providing quality advice, easy for the new licensee to build on the hard work already done?
Sounds good. Will we have an update in 12 months as the comparison is with, ahem, AMP?
I wonder if Mary also benefitted from the first year fee free offer that Count have been using to win business. No different to banks offering lower interest rates to win new customers while banning existing customers (planning practices) from getting the lower rates…..
I also wonder if a condition of that offer was a glowing testimonial?
I wonder if you peeps know what your talking about because there are NO 1st year fee free deals EVER been cut – some of us live in the unconflicted world!!!