Guardian Financial Planning is offering its advisers access to free risk Statements of Advice (SoAs) as part of a new para-planning service.
The service, which was piloted with 40 advisers in Queensland, provides Guardian representatives with access to a team of full-time para-planners, who can produce SoAs for standalone risk advice at no cost to the advisers’ business.
Executive Manager, Simon Harris, told riskinfo the service had always been available to Guardian advisers, but the group had decided to lead the market by offering it for free.
What our advisers told us was that they were FoFA-fatigued
“The idea came from a combination of our regular planning cycle, and a survey of our advisers. What they told us was that they were FoFA-fatigued. In other words, they were over talking about FoFA and were looking for something tangible to help them get on and write business,” he said.
“So we looked at the whole advice process, and identified that creating SoAs was a task that was costing advisers time and effort, and even dollars. If we could take that away from them, we felt it would free up our advisers to do what they do best, and make them more productive.”
Advisers complete a request form which is sent to Guardian’s team of eight full-time para-planners. The request is allocated to the first available para-planner, who completes the SoA within three days. Subsequently, in response to feedback received during the pilot, advisers can nominate for all their future requests to be matched to just one para-planner.
Earlier this year, Guardian announced it would be repositioning itself as a niche AFSL for life risk planners. Mr Harris says that this strategy is just one example of how Guardian is working to support risk advisers to grow their business their own way.
