Damian and Chanthy were out of the office last week, attending a number of conferences across the country and even making presentations at a few of them!

Both Damian and Chanthy made the interstate trip to Sydney where Fortnum Private Wealth held their NextGen conference as well as their annual National Summit. Damian then rushed back for the Alumni Afternoon held by the Deakin Commerce Student Society (DCSS) on Thursday.

Fortnum NextGen – Financial advisor conference

Barwon Financial Planning is a part of the NextGen community run by Fortnum, which provides an opportunity for like-minded financial advisors to come together and learn from each other. The program is host to a great range of business and advisors who are growing rapidly and constantly improving and enhancing their work.

Damian’s presentation at the program focussed on financial planning marketing and how the social media experience looks and feels like. He explained how Barwon Financial Planning determined its marketing needs, and in conjunction with Passionfolk Marketing, built a process designed to inform and educate existing clients as well as new ones.

There were a few phones out doing some searching of Barwon Financial Planning’s social media sites (on Facebook and Instagram) after the presentation, keen to see what all the talk was about. Damian also fielded some questions from advisers looking to build their online presence.

The NextGen program is a great chance to meet with similar businesses and financial advisors to talk about how to keep improving and stay on top of the changing environment of financial planning.

Fortnum National Summit

This year’s National Summit was all about legislative changes in the finance industry as well as integrating new technologies into businesses to improves client experiences and interactions.

Neil Younger, Group CEO and Managing Director, opened proceedings and illustrated the opportunities advisors have after the Royal Commission to provide professional service as a non-bank aligned financial advisor alternative.

There are over 50 businesses in the Fortnum network all in varying sizes and business specialities. Many of these firms have been running for over 20 years, so it was a great to talk with a number of people about their experience and gain some useful knowledge and advice to continue our effort in providing exceptional service as financial advisors.

Pictured below is Damian with Simone Munro, Head of Professional Development at Fortnum. Simone does such an excellent job of getting everyone together and providing relevant and engaging content for the events.

DCSS Alumni Afternoon

To finish off a week of conferences, Damian attended DCSS’s Alumni Afternoon.

The afternoon is an opportunity for students to learn from Alumni members and Industry professionals (of which Damian is both) and see where a degree in Commerce can take them, as well as to ask any questions they may have.

“It was a great event, with a lot of enthusiastic questions from the students” said Damian.

The afternoon is a useful networking tool for students and professionals, and Damain was more than happy to meet some aspiring commerce students and help them with their enquiries.

Barwon Financial Planning continue their effort in giving back to the Deakin students and Geelong community in beneficial ways.