Company Update
During the year we welcomed seven new shareholders into the firm. This ownership program establishes continuity of ownership across the generations as we enter our 20thAnniversary year.
As founders, we believe it is important to ensure our future as a firm is certain, so that families can rely on us being there for them in the future. As part of this change Charmaine Lamprecht has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer and Company Secretary, while Kathryn Creasy and John Ryan join the Capital Partners Board.
Royal Commission
The Hayne Royal Commission has been a remarkable spectacle, with the most senior of banking and wealth executives in Australia subject to intense scrutiny about their conduct and treatment of customers.
While the Commission findings are likely to be sweeping, we expect the key focus to be directed at institutions and their product-sale culture. Such was the intensity of the grilling, we expect the ‘majors’ will have responded to many of the criticisms even before the Commission hands down its report in February.
While we don’t expect the Commission’s findings to impact us greatly, we are acutely aware of the negative impact the hearings have had on financial and investment planning more broadly. For our part, we believe that we have a significant role to play in leading our industry through demonstrating best practice standards of advice. To that end, we are always interested in your feedback in any area you believe we need to improve.
Sustainable Investing
Increasingly we are asked about investments that are aware of environmental, social and governance concerns. Not surprisingly, people are demanding investments where climate change is taken seriously with a meaningful effort to manage fossil fuel emissions and potential emissions from fossil fuel reserves. Further considerations include social issues like land use and biodiversity, toxic spills and operational waste, water management, factory farming, child labour, cluster munitions, nuclear weapon control systems, tobacco, gambling, alcohol and adult entertainment.
We’re delighted to advise that after 12 months of research and collaboration, we will be launching a Sustainable Investing solution in the first quarter of 2019. Please let us know if you’d like more information on sustainable investing.
Team Update
It has been a busy year for our team with many significant academic and personal achievements. We were proud to be awarded Australian Boutique Adviser Firm in this year’s IFA Excellence awards, while Emma Zwaan was nominated as a Finalist in the FPA Para-planner of the year award, a remarkable achievement given Emma has been with Capital Partners for just over 12 months.
Professional excellence has always been a major focus for us and education standards underpin our professional advice. This year we were delighted to see Damon Sugden complete his Master of Financial Planning qualification, while Steven Boyce was admitted to the Certified Financial Planner designation, and Anna Vu completed her Diploma of Financial Planning.
As you can imagine, there are plenty of personal milestones celebrated among the team each year and this year we were delighted to see Sophorn marry her beau Ash in a beautiful Swan Valley ceremony, while John and Fiona welcomed Ella, and Luke and Molly welcomed Charlie into the world.
As the year comes to an end, we hope you all get to take time out with those you love, to relax, unwind and reflect on all the wonderful parts of your life. We look forward to seeing you in 2019!
