Convincing people that they need insurance, long term savings and a healthy cash flow is not that easy. You will hear all sorts of excuses and you will see people uninterested. However, when you see a sale on flat tv’s, cameras, mobile phones, branded clothes, etc., you will see long queues. I visited a gadgets sale a few months ago and saw an extremely long line. Going through a madness sale in a mall is really, well, madness. It makes me wonder how many of them are taking financial planning seriously – not many I assume. The biggest hurdle of a ‘would be’ financial planner is not so much on the acquisition of technical skills. People will not be so interested in the time value of money or financial needs analysis until it’s too late. Creating awareness and motivating people to do something are the biggest difficulties.

The fact that many in this profession are more interested in making a sale than actually helping people only adds to the difficulties. Making a sale is not an issue, one need to earn from his profession and sale of financial instruments is a very honorable profession. However, when a practitioner starts to misrepresent and mislead clients, that’s a big problem. Many practitioners would make unfounded claims for their products, like a low risk and high yield product — yeah right! Unscrupulous practitioners should be behind bars or at least barred from practicing. These practices make it very difficult for legitimate practitioners from gaining the trust of prospective clients.

Trust — it is the key to helping plan their financial future. A financial planner needs to build his competency and exhibit utmost professionalism at all times so that he will be listened to. If one wants to experience success in the financial practitioner profession, he needs to really build himself well.

Unscrupulous practitioners notwithstanding, Filipinos really need to hear from professional practitioners and must have open minds and open hearts. Our average financial condition is really disturbing and causing us a lot of difficulties in life. Further, the economic impact of a nation of uninsured poor savers is really precarious.

… to be continued