Financial planners wanting to scare their clients don't need to talk about underinsurance or the chances their retirement savings will run out. No, all they need to talk about is the multitude of property forecasters forewarning that within a decade the average major capital city house price across Australia will be $1 million plus.
Compared to that, and how on earth we or our kids are going to be able to afford somewhere to live in just 10 years, no one cares about superannuation and whatever the SG rate will be.
House prices jumping so ferociously bring into sharp focus the differences between what we as an industry might think is important versus what really worries the real people who are our customers.
In Sydney, there are 95 suburbs whose average price is already above this high water mark. This is up 50 per cent from just four years ago. In Melbourne and Perth, there are 26, in Brisbane there are 10 and there are eight in Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart.
Tell your clients to scrimp and save hard with complex superannuation strategies to build up $500,000 in super by the time they retire, then don't be surprised if they yawn themselves to sleep during the planning interview.
So what's the answer? To give up on the advisory staples of super, insurance, portfolio building? To push clients into high-yielding plays like leveraged alternatives?
Or to realise, like most of us already do, that occupational super is the fall back when everything else fails us. For everything else, there is wealth creation and thinking beyond super.
The power play here is it opens up the real world of planning. It's what we train for. Even better, it takes us outside the confines of the regulatory squabbles and turf wars that our industry leaders seem to too often drag us into, though we are the suckers who keep falling for the bait.
SG jumps from nine to 12 per cent. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Intra-fund advice. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Cooper's MySuper. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Opt-ins. Yeah, yeah, whatever.
If these reforms threaten us, then we've lost already and it's time to enlist and go to Afghanistan.
Advice is a premium and special service that only a small proportion of Australians exploit. Done well it changes our clients, puts them in control and transforms their lives. Done badly, it's a commodity priced transaction racing to the bottom.
There is a major dividing line among medical practioners and specialists between the bulk-billers working in the super clinics and the rest. To see the future of advice, study this dividing line well and choose on which side of it you wish to practice your advisory skills.
