2012 Outlook of Marvin Germo

The Philippine market has been moving sideways for the past year and based on history the  longer a certain market is sideways the stronger the upward or downward push that would follow.  Amidst the doom and gloom that people are projecting in the financial markets of 2012, my outlook is quite optimistic brought about by:

-The move of the world economies to the emerging markets like the Philippines, as money have been flowing to these markets due to cheaper costs, bigger growth potential  and the murkiness of the European and American markets, have made a stronger case to build businesses in emerging economies.

-More government spending, cleaner transactions, higher approval ratings would certainly boost business confidence in the country which would translate into more jobs and bigger business ventures.

-Robust fundamentals in Philippine based companies which are in expanding industries such mining, energy, and construction will see continued growth this year and thus bring in more jobs and business.

To top all this things, I remain optimistic due to the fact that I know God’s Blessing is in the Philippine and because of that I know that the great days of this nation are still right ahead of us!

Marvin Germo is the General Manager of Ephesians Management Corporation and is a Financial Planner and Advisor who is one of the up and coming personal finance gurus that this generation has ever seen. His Passion and zeal to educate the Filipino people has translated into transformed lives, financially free families and has moved ordinary consumers into investors.

He is an Entrepreneur and Financial Resource Speaker who out of his eager desire to make an impact in this nation has spoken in different spheres of society – corporations, government agencies, churches, schools, clubs, organizations, and numerous public events. His ability to breakdown complicated investment concepts and translate it into something that is simple, basic and understandable has made him one of the most sought after money speakers in the land.

He completed the Registered Financial Planners Institute (RFPI) program, he is a Stock Market Trader & Investor more than four years experience in the Philippine financial industry. He also owns (www.marvingermo.com), a financial planning help site. He graduated from Mapua Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Electronics & Communications. He has just recently completed the Philippine Stock Exchange Certified Specialist Course in the Ateneo Center for Continuing Education.

It felt surreal to be part of such an illustrious list but I am nonetheless honored. Clearly, the hand of the Lord is at work for this accolade.

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The list includes:

1.   The Lawmaker: EDGARDO J. ANGARA (Philippine Senator)

2.   The Regulator: AMANDO TETANGCO (Central Bank Governor)

3.   The Treasurer: ROBERTO B. TAN (Treasurer of the Philippines)

4.   The Adviser: EFREN LL. CRUZ (Pwede Na! Author & Investments Guru)

5.   The Coach: RANDELL TIONGSON

6.   The Director: HENRY ONG (Head of the Registered Financial Planner & others)

7.   The Moderator: JAMES RYAN JONAS (Pinoy Money Talk)

8.   The Blogger: FITZ VILLAFUERTE (Ready to be Rich Blog)

9.   The Banker: AURELIO R. MONTINOLA (BPI)

10. The Enabler: JESUS P. TAMBUNTING (Planters Development Bank)

11. The Stock Broker: CONRADO F. BATE (Citiseconline)

12. The Insurer: RIZALINA G. MANTARING (Sun Life Financial)

Grab a copy of the July-August issue of Moneysense to read about why they think the 12 deserves to be part of the list.

What should we do? Well, we should continue to build more professional practitioners, teach them well and make them adhere to values like competence, integrity and commitment. At the same time, those who are in a position to create awareness should go double time. Write more books, have more seminars, build more websites, blog more frequently, publish more articles… the list goes on. Take awareness to more main stream avenues like the mass media but it can go beyond that. I am ecstatic whenever our church (Victory Green Hills) will tackle topics that will revolve around money and personal finance. The church needs to look after its flock, money issues are foremost in their concerns. Church related celebrities like Bo Sanchez and Chinkee Tan have been talking about money and personal finance from a biblical perspective and are convincing people that God truly wants them to live victorious lives. I was once interviewed by a Bishop for his TV talk show and the topic is personal finance. I asked the Bishop why he felt that there is a need; he told me that the church is really concerned about the welfare of the people, spiritually and physically (or financially). The Bible is full of verses that relates directly to money issues and when you read it, you can really feel that God wants us to be living great lives in all aspects. Bo, Chinkee and many more are making people realize that… great! I am encouraged to see more authors write about the topic and its great that their books have been selling well. My good friends Efren Cruz (Pwede Na! series), Chinkee Tan (Till Debt Do Us Part, For Richer & For Poorer) are great & practical books to help people. I also endorsed a new book by Ardy Roberto on biblical finance. The country’s leading motivational and inspirational guru, Francis Kong, has been encouraging people to take control of their financial lives through many of his seminars and talks. These are all great… and we need more, more, more! Sometimes I do wonder if I’m making any impact at all, even a miniscule one – I guess only time will tell. However, I will continue to do what I am doing for the next 20+ years and longer, I hope. I want to encourage people in the profession not to give up too easily when their job becomes too challenging. I would like to encourage my peers in the training profession to continue to teach. I would hope that people like Efren, Chinkee, Ardy & Francis will continue to write books and speak to as many Filipinos as they can. I pray that there will be many of us who will help our brothers’ plan for their future.

22+ years in the industry. The past was good and the future will be bright if we do the right things in the present. Looking forward to my next 20+ years! Let’s go and help people plan for the future!

Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. – Romans 12:13, NIV

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

For many years, I’ve been blessed to interact with countless people, not only do I get to share my knowledge and passion with them, I get to learn a great deal from them as well. Rolly Robles, a former boss of mine once shared me the concept of S.P.I.C.E. – S for Service, P for Personal and Professional Growth, I for Income, C for Challenge and E for Enjoyment. If I sum up my many years in this industry, I’d like to say that the concept is pretty much accurate.

So what do I really do? Many things. I’m an speaker, writer, trainer, consultant and a ‘trying hard’ entrepreneur. But to be more accurate, I mostly help people plan their financial future or teach people on how to help other people. For the past years, I’ve been doing more of the later, in my capacity as a teacher.

Is it easy? Sometimes it is, but most of the time it isn’t. Acquiring the necessary technical skills can be challenging but financial planning isn’t really rocket science. There are gazillion books, websites, and training programs on personal finance. There are many credible sites in the internet on financial planning and my favorite local program would be the Registered Financial Planner Institute, where I stand as one of its Directors. Acquisition of technical skills isn’t all too difficult — learning soft skills so you can apply the technical skill are the hard part.

Telling people that they need to take personal financial planning seriously is easier said than done. Majority of Filipinos are more interested in many things other than personal finance. Our savings rates are amongst the lowest in the world. Filipinos with insurance coverage are likewise just as low. Less than 1% of us invest in the stock market. Mutual Funds, UITF, Index Funds are not something your average Filipino will know, let alone understand. I’m really excited about the PERA Law but I wonder if our brothers and sisters will take advantage of it properly once it is enacted (anxiously awaiting the implementing guidelines). Average people are aware that they need to plan for retirement but still fail to do so. Common reasons you will hear is that they don’t have enough money to plan with. Agreed, that’s enough reason — but isn’t that enough reason to take planning seriously as well? If income is hardly enough today, isn’t it logical to concern ourselves with proper financial planning? If living expenses are not enough with our income, how will we survive when we don’t have the capacity to produce income anymore? …

… to be continued.

Blue Chip was my first salvo into teaching finance for the youth. My Pastor (Dennis Sy) and I were discussing on what we can do with the youth and how to prepare them for the future and the idea of Blue Chip was born. Allow me to share with you the blog of one of the participants of Blue Chip, Louis Moran:

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“What did those speakers teach me?”

A Better way to Save

Record your Money

Make a cash flow chart: Use excel or, for manual computers, a paper with a simple data table. A small table you can keep on your planner to record daily expenditures and another to record expenditures on a monthly basis. They should record each individual expense – item, date of transaction, money lost; something like that. And it should be brutally REAL. A monthly record should have a totals vs. monthly income/allowance table, plus, savings, on the bottom. Those savings can be how much you don’t actually spend, if any. And it shouldn’t be discarded immediately; review it, keep it for the next month or two, and then make another one. And remember to keep receipts.

Plan your Money

Whatever my priority is, knowing what I need to spend daily, I can plan my expenditures–  a certain amount for leisure, another for more important things like baon or jeepney fares, and a portion to save. I can save just for the hell of it – i’ll have money to spend for friend’s birthdays or special gigs – or tighten my budget for a certain goal (something you have to get within a certain time, like a test tube set for your school project due next month)

Store your Money

- Some say piggy bank but it also seems like a good idea to start using a savings account, or a bank. It isn’t just storing, it’s investing, though, with little growth (like microbial).

And that’s one thing I learned from the seminar. I knew I needed to save money, except I didn’t exactly have an efficient way which is how my money always disappeared. Bottom line of this lesson is keep track of your money not just by memory. From personal experience, high-school life is the best time to start using organizers – those little notebooks, applications on your mobile phone with a calendar icon, or even your personal computer (Applications like iCal or Entourage). A cash-flow chart is just one of those.

What did they teach me about using money?

Bottom line is the best idea is always an investment.

Invest on Business

‘Make your money work for you, not the other way around’ – quote on quote. Do something you love to do and you’re good at, or something that everybody really wants or needs, like a real opportunist! But in any of the three, something legal of course. The best example for me were the Fausto brothers who were stock traders and business investors at 13 to… how old? 18? They showed us how capable we, the teenagers at the adult’s talk, could do all that even at our age; as well as do business or be opportunists.

On Yourself

Study hard/learn skills. (Another thing I learned, but from other, older people’s experience: do this before the high-school fun ends and they all become serious, stressful studying, board exams, summer enrichment – well, that’s not so bad – and minoring and majoring)

Invest on others

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High School student Louis Moran seems to have learned much from his 2 day experience with us. Things like this encourage me further with my advocacy.

“for attaining wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of insight; for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair; for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young – let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance-“ Proverbs 1:2-5, NIV

During the lecture, I was telling the class that the 8 day program they are taking is a great thing because they will be equipped with the rudiments of financial planning and they will experience a great deal of improvement in their competencies. However, I also told them that before we can even apply what we learn in investment planning, time value money, financial planning process, tax planning, estate planning, insurance planning and all those we learn in RFP, we must get people to really want to achieve financial freedom. Before we can apply all the financial principles, we must espouse something first, discipline.

In reality, a person who does not know how to invest but is very disciplined financially will be in a better position than one who is very knowledgeable in the arena of investments and business but lacking in fiscal discipline.

In the last few weeks, I organized 2 events: All About Money (with Chinkee Tan, Cito Beltran and myself) and Blue Chip (Financial Literacy Program for the Youth).

All About Money was designed to reach to the broad market, those that are finding hope in the achievement of their goals. Chinkee tackled the issue on debt, Cito discussed on the issue of possibility and hope while I discussed the basic applications. There were nearly 500 people in that event and from the assessment forms we got back, they were really glad to have attended such a program like All About Money.

… to be continued.

Victory Greenhills in cooperation with the Registered Financial Planner Institute (Philippines) gives you BLUE CHIP: Financial Literacy Program for the Youth! A 2-Day Summer Program on May 13 & 14 at the Victory Center, Upper Level, Promenade, Greenhills – 9am to 5:30 pm. This is a program for 13 to 20 years old.

Featured speakers are:

Melvin Esteban, FLMI, ACS, CFC, RFP and Randell Tiongson, RFP – leading instructors of the Registered Financial Planner Institute and the Certified Financial Consultant Programs.

Chinkee Tan, lifestyle trainer and best-selling author of the books “Till Debt Do Us Part” and “For Richer and For Poorer”

David Bonifacio, successful young businessman and advocate of Corporate Social Responsibility

Jennifer Ignacio – Magalong – Financial Services Trainer

Martin, Enrique and Anton Fausto – 3 teen-aged brothers who are actually investing and creating their own investment portfolios!

.. plus more!

What will they learn?

-          Understanding Money and how cool it is to save and budget

-          Basics of Financial Planning

-          Time Value of Money

-          Understanding Investments and Investment Instruments

-          How to Invest for the future

-          How to be responsible

…. And many more!

2 days of real world learning in a fun and hip way!!! This will definitely prepare the youth for the future!!

Fee is only P 1,200.00 but if you register and pay before April 28, 2010, you can avail the P 800.00 Early Bird Rate. This is real value and a fantastic investment for the Youth!

For inquiries, please send email to jcignacio.magalong@gmail.com or text to 0939-1177856

2. Gathering client data, including goals.

The financial planner should ask for information about your financial situation. You and the planner should mutually define your personal and financial goals, understand your time frame for results and discuss, if relevant, how you feel about risk. The financial planner should gather all the necessary documents before giving you the advice you need.

3. Analyzing and evaluating your financial status.

The financial planner should analyze your information to assess your current situation and determine what you must do to meet your goals. Depending on what services you have asked for, this could include analyzing your assets, liabilities and cash flow, current insurance coverage, investments or tax strategies.

4. Developing and presenting financial planning recommendations and/or alternatives.

The financial planner should offer financial planning recommendations that address your goals, based on the information you provide. The planner should go over the recommendations with you to help you understand them so that you can make informed decisions. The planner should also listen to your concerns and revise the recommendations as appropriate.

5. Implementing the financial planning recommendations.

You and the planner should agree on how the recommendations will be carried out. The planner may carry out the recommendations or serve as your “coach,” coordinating the whole process with you and other professionals such as attorneys or stockbrokers.

6. Monitoring the financial planning recommendations.

You and the planner should agree on who will monitor your progress towards your goals. If the planner is in charge of the process, she should report to you periodically to review your situation and adjust the recommendations, if needed, as your life changes.

In the Philippines, the leading organization for Financial Planner certification is probably the Registered Financial Planner Institute, a local chapter from Ohio, U.S.A. There are about  400+ individuals who have taken the program since its inception in 2005 in the Philippines. The program boasts of several comprehensive programs on Financial Planning, Investment Planning, Insurance Planning, Estate Planning and more. The local chapter also boasts of several well respected and credentialed moderators who are University Professors, Columnists, Best-Selling Authors, Corporate Executives, etc.

It is always best to check out your financial planner. Is he credible? Does he have the credentials? Does he have the necessary experience? And more importantly, does he have the right character as trust is the most important foundation in a planner-client relationship.

Be careful in choosing a financial planner but don’t dilly-dally in getting one, it really is a wise decision to make.

“The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception.” – Proverbs 14:8, NIV

In 2005, I was approached to help established the Registered Financial Planner Institute in the Philippines. I immediately agreed to be a core part of this endeavor because I felt the financial-services industry needs independent institutions that will advocate for the financial-planning practice.

What is a financial planner? Wikipedia defines it thus: “A financial planner or personal financial planner is a practicing professional who helps people deal with various personal financial issues through proper planning, which includes but is not limited to these major areas: cash-flow management, education planning, retirement planning, investment planning, risk management and insurance planning, tax planning, estate planning and business-succession planning [for business owners]. The work engaged in by this professional is commonly known as personal financial planning. In carrying out the planning function, he is guided by the financial-planning process to create a financial plan, a detailed strategy tailored to a client’s specific situation, for meeting a client’s specific goals.”

The financial-planning practice is relatively new with origins that can be traced in the US in the late 1960s. Prior to this practice, most people got financial advice from people selling financial products. Therefore, there was always a conflict-of-interest issue.

While there is no clear regulation as to who can be called a financial planner, the need for some self-regulation and the demand that a financial planner is competent and trustworthy prompted the birth of organizations to certifications and some benchmarks. One of the earliest certification trademarks was introduced in the early 1970s and is now the most recognized financial-planning certification worldwide—the Certified Financial Planner, or CFP. The CFPs are governed by a board of standards in every country that carries the trademark and are usually self-governing. Unfortunately, the CFP trademark is not yet available in the Philippines. Another world-recognized financial-planning certification trademark is the Registered Financial Planner or RFP. The institute (RFPI) was formed in 1983 with its headquarters in Ohio, US. It is an independent self-regulatory professional organization for providing education and membership in the financial-planning field. It has first established the use of designations of “RFP Registered Financial Planner” and “SRFP Senior Registered Financial Planner” in the world. Another worldwide trademark designation that is now in the Philippines is the International Association of Registered Financial Consultants or the RFC. Like the RFP, the RFC also holds its headquarters in the Ohio.

So what does a financial planner really do? In essence, a financial planner can be compared to a physician—he diagnoses and recommends cures like a doctor does, but on financial concerns.

In the last decade, the term “financial planner” has been used, misused and abused by many in this country; from insurance agents, to bankers, stock brokers, multilevel marketing and even those perpetuating scams, posing a danger for the general public, unfortunately. In this country, anyone can claim to be a financial planner whether or not he has acquired the competence to be called one. Some companies have even started to certify their own personnel in the area of financial planning, which I think is peculiar and self-serving as certification should come only from an independent organization to avoid conflicts of interest.

Certified, registered or not, the acid test of a true financial planner is in the kind of work he can do for you. As the adage goes, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” An honest-to-goodness financial planner must take you to a generally accepted financial-planning process that can be summarized in what we commonly adhere to as the “six-step process” which I will discuss in Part 2 of this article.

Catch me in a series of seminars in the next few weeks. Finance Seminars: Would You Mind, Increase your Financial Intelligence—Bacolod, November 21 and 27. No Nonsense Finance Seminar for the SME—Greenhills, November 28. Personal Branding Seminar: Branding U—How to Stand Out among 90M Other Filipinos with Efren Ll. Cruz and Carlo Ople, December 4 at Crowne Plaza. For particulars, visit randelltiongson.com and brandinguevent.com.

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22, NIV).

J. Randell Tiongson is an advocate of life and personal finance. He is a director of the Registered Financial Planner Institute (Phils.) and has over 20 years’ experience in the financial-services industry. He is also the cofounder of income-tacts.com, the country’s premier personal-finance online community. For speaking engagements, financial planning, training and consultancy, send an e-mail to randell@randelltiongson.com. To read his personal-finance blogs, visitwww.randelltiongson.com. The opinion and views expressed herein are solely those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the Personal Finance Advisers Philippines Corp. or the Registered Financial Planner Institute. Join the 18th RFP Program (January16 to March 6, 2010). Visit www.rfp-philippines.com or inquire at info@rfp-philippines.com. Tel. No. 634-2204