The Association of Financial Advisers has wrapped up its annual National Advisers Conference, held this year at the Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast, with a closing address from musician and humanitarian, Sir Bob Geldof.
In an address to a packed room that ran for around an hour, Sir Bob highlighted the uncertain nature of life and reminded delegates that relying on one or two individuals to fix the problems of the world, or even the financial services sector, rarely worked.
Instead he called for attendees to consider how they could work together, not using group think, but group thinking, to overcome the fear and concern people have about the present and the future.
His message came at the end of a conference themed around the idea of ‘Adaptive Change’ and was a bookend to opening speaker ad futurist, Chris Riddell who demonstrated the rapid social and demographic changes that are taking place alongside technological change.
Between Riddell and Geldof, the 700 delegates heard about the AFA’s efforts with industry stakeholders to create a framework around education competencies for advisers, a message of support from the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, Kelly O’Dwyer, and insights from their peers around running an advice business.
Advisers were also recognised with a range of awards, including the AFA’s highest honour for a member – the Michael Murphy Award,
The AFA also held its Annual General Meeting at which three board vacancies were filled with Dave Slovenic elected as Treasurer, Karen Veitch elected as SA/NT State Director and Matthew Hawkins re-elected as Tasmanian State Director.
AFA members also unanimously passed changes to the Association’s constitution which will enable it to become a code monitoring body under the new professional standards regime.
The conference also marked a milestone for the Association – 40 years since the first AFA conference, with five delegates present at both the initial conference in 1977 and at this year’s event, which will return to the Royal Pines in October 2018.
