Dr. Greg Nazvanov is known as one of the Australia’s 10 best financial advisers and specializes in Wealth Management, Technical Analysis, Financial Planning, Tax, Trusts, Asset Protection, Alternative Investments, Art and Real Estate. Greg Nazvanov has written several publications and Books which provide detailed information on Business Management, Financial Strategy, M&As, Art Investing, Estate & Succession Planning, Real Estate, Social Security and more. (Get links to this wealth of information here in this interview)
If you are looking for a career as a Financial Advisor then this is the place to get some pearls of wisdom from Dr. Nazvanov.
Greetings Greg, it is a pleasure to have you informing our readers who want to pursue a career in financial planning! Please tell us something about yourself and how you decided on a career as financial advisor?
Came from a family of academics, where the only assets they had were knowledge and creativity, yet mom and dad retired broke. I did not want to end up like them and am proud that can take care of them now in their old age.
About Greg Nazvanov:
Dr Greg Nazvanov MBA is a professional financial planner and wealth management consultant with a successful track record of commitment to his clients. Greg has built wealth management businesses for commercial banks and entrepreneurs by applying leading-edge expertise and collaboration to gain a foothold in several industries through professional networking.
Greg is a passionate philanthropist who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity and cultural organizations. He gives away art, and buys paintings from Aboriginal art groups then donates them to charities. (The Philanthropist: creativity fosters community spirit”, Planner -The Financial Planning Magazine, FPA (April 2008, pp.40-43)
Both activities bring huge benefits, by supporting the Aboriginal artists, and by the funds generated for the needy in Australia and overseas. Dr Nazvanov is a regular benefactor to the McDonald College and the McDonald Foundation Cultural Trust.
The McDonald Foundation Cultural Trust is a philanthropic foundation that supports the promotion of literature, music, a performing art, a visual art, a craft, design, film, video, television, radio, community arts, and Aboriginal arts. Join Greg in his endeavors to Support the Trust.
Financial Planning Expertise:
For the past 12 years, Greg has expanded his expertise in all aspects of Financial Planning and Wealth management. He has been coaching and advising clients at INKOM Wealth Management, Citifinancial, Credit Suisse Private Bank, BT Financial Group, Westpac Private Bank and Westpac Business Banking, and worked in partnership with Macquarie Equities, Colonial First State, ING Funds Management, Deutsche Asset Management, Barclays Capital, Vanguard Investments, Investors Mutual, Merrill Lynch, Platinum Asset Management, Templeton, Man Investments, Fidelity, UBS and many other asset managers.
He is also an art specialist investment adviser and founded ArtTrust.com.au.
Apart from Greg’s many academic and professional qualifications in Finance, Human resources and management, his main strength lies in his ability to communicate with his valued clients and help them demystify the money-go-round.
In 2006, Greg Nazvanov became a CFP® or CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERTM practitioner. The CFP® or certification is the global symbol of financial planning excellence. As a CFP® professional, Nazvanov has completed rigorous study in financial planning, has extensive industry experience, and abides by the Financial Planning Association (FPA) Code of Ethics and Rules of Professional Conduct.
In February, 2007, Nazvanov was named as “One of the nation’s top 50 best financial planners” by Australian Financial Review Smart Investor (Feb 2007, p.46). He was the only adviser from BT and Westpac to receive this award that year.
Once again he was awarded as one of the top 10 financial planners in Australia in the prestigious Australian Financial Review Smart Investor Masterclass for Financial Planning in 2008 (Feb 2008, pp.52-53). The award recognizes his high level of knowledge and expertise that enables him to provide exceptional advice to his clients.
The following is an excerpt from the article ‘Masterclass for Financial Planning’ that accompanied the announcement by FPA: “Forget investment advice – these days a planner needs to be a technical whiz with an in-depth knowledge of the myriad laws and rules that govern our financial affairs, as well as the nous to use that knowledge to work out strategies to come up with the best results for their clients.” The Smart Investor
Masterclass was first introduced in 1998 in response to readers (of the then Personal Investor magazine) begging for recommendations for financial planners they could trust with their financial affairs. The Masterclass for Financial Planning is a test of technical knowledge of a financial planner and an ability to apply expertise to common scenarios. The areas of knowledge tested in the exam include financial structures, tax, superannuation (including self managed super funds) asset allocation, social security, and investment strategies. Professionals are eligible to sit the exam only if they are a CFP member of the FPA or a CPA financial planning specialist member of CPA Australia or a CA of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia.”
In 2009, Greg completed a MGSM Master of Business Administration (MBA) which has a reputation as a leading management qualification in the Asia-Pacific region. Renowned for its quality, flexibility and extensive subject range, the MSGM MBA is designed specifically for individuals in positions of responsibility who have been identified as possessing higher management and leadership potential, and for those who aspire to a general management position. The program is intensive and rigorous, with strong emphasis placed on workplace relevance.
MGSM has received EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) international accreditation by the European Foundation for Management Development. Leading business schools in Europe to have gained EQUIS accreditation include INSEAD and London Business School.
UNICON was established in 1972, initially as an informal common interest group of executive education program directors. The group soon evolved into an incorporated, not-for-profit organisation with a commitment to the
development of university-sponsored executive education. With a key mission to promote executive education and foster its continued development, UNICON has become the pre-eminent voice for management and executive education and development worldwide. Members of UNICON include Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge and many other leading business schools worldwide. Candidate organisations must meet the rigorous requirements of UNICON’s membership criteria. Only those organisations with the necessary resources, management structure and highly credible track record in the development and delivery of executive education are selected. MGSM is included amongst the elite UNICON membership.
Greg loves market analysis and has created a system (with his team) offering FREE Mobile Financial apps for free including INKOM Blue that offers FREE LIVE access to global markets from India to London to LA to Hong Kong.
Having spent a decade in Business Advice for BT and Westpac Banking Corporation, Greg helps SME to startup grow and gives ALL ebooks for free.
What professional certifications are required to be a financial advisor? Is it different in all countries?
They differ from country to country. In Australia, the financial advisers are licensed through ASIC. ASIC Chairman, Mr Jeffrey Lucy, today reminded consumers that anyone providing financial advice or offering financial products needs to be licensed through ASIC.
A 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 detailed strategy tailored to a client’s specific situation, for meeting a client’s specific goals.
As a financial planner, you are part of one of Australia’s most dynamic and fastest growing professions. The CFP Marks will allow you to set yourself apart from other financial planners.
Read more about CFP here.
In the above article you will also find some valuable information on how licensing for Financial planners works in different countries.
Does a financial advisor sell products or services or both? Please elaborate.
Most advisers view themselves as salespeople and use Risk analysis questionnaires and similar Profiling tools to box the client into a particular category, then sell them a preset amount of products based on the box that they tick. In my early days in Banking & Wealth Management giving retail advice was somewhat a car manufacturing plant. In the latter years at Westpac Banking Corporation I was given a rather peculiar title of an “Executive Business Hybrid Financial Planner”, which stands for “someone who works in a Hybrid role in the Private Bank, Business Bank and Institutional Bank and can provide a full range of advisory services to SMEs, corporate, government and private clients who are HNW individuals”.
As clients’ needs become increasingly complex and their orientation more global, they can only be addressed with tailored strategic advice in all areas, not just sell pre-set product from a list.
Often the strategy had to be tailored with the help of Technical Strategy experts like Sean Fannin (who is still at Westpac) and Aman Ramrakha (who since left to Commonwealth Bank). Clients could expect unique investment, insurance, business, retirement and estate planning advice and comprehensive financial planning. We did this with passion and full dedication. My personal recipe for success is quite simple: We do well when our clients do well. I first spoke about clients’ financial goals and objectives, their personal and business circumstances and understanding of different risks (liquidity, currency, market, etc) Only when we were clear about these aspects we devised an overall investment strategy covering all entities, both business and personal.
Product-wise, besides in-house managed portfolios, we used various external Absolute Return and Hedge Funds, Sector funds, ETFs, complex investment vehicles and approaches, structured solutions, ‘tax-effectives’, Corporate and personal pension plans, direct property trusts, actively managed direct equity portfolios and institutional bank solutions.
I had no product limitations and all of my time was spent on strategy and implementation.
How easy or difficult is to find clients if someone has recently stepped in the financial planning career with little or no experience?
Yes, working as an apprentice or asking for a work experience will typically help. Having gained sufficient skills and expertise it is very easy now for me to network in social groups like Twitter or LinkedIn and ask for business, network through Chambers of Commerce or other professional groups. For someone who just started they would have very little belief in themselves, usually not goal-driven and a mentor is the best gift they can have. I had a mentor who was Dan O’Dea. Dan originally created the Business Advice for Westpac Bank in Australia. He was passionate and generous with his time, guiding me in the first 2 years before I could truly feel that I could stand on my both feet. He since ran the Financial Planning at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and recently retired.
I am open to be a mentor for all planners out there, so that all of you can achieve your life dreams and aspirations.
What does your typical work day or week look like?
Depends on your time management and the size of the business. These days I do not have an assistant to fill my diary, although at the Banks this is done for you. I make proactive calls; upload my books on Investing, Tax and other topics in forums and Social Media, then link back to my company webpage. When people download my books, they leave their contact details and I call them asking if they need any clarification or further help. This has been a very successful approach, where we get over 500 enquiries a month. On top of that I network through Cultural Foundations, Charities, Business Groups and alike to source further business.
I allocate 1.5-2 hours a day to creating and managing my new business flow, 1 hour to meet with my admin support staff regarding the status of submitted business, and the rest to face-to-face client meetings and strategy creation. Our para-planning department will then prepare the financial plan based on my instructions.
What are some of the advantages and drawbacks in this profession?
Advantage is that if you do the right thing all the time for people, this is the most rewarding profession, as you feel like managing not just the money but people lives, holding their hand through all the hurdles that life throws at them. The drawback is when the client is not tuned in, not willing to accept professional advice. For example, if someone is spend-drift and refuses to follow budgeting, then the most perfect investment strategy may fail as a result. The solution is to build a client base of homogenous clients, who appreciate your expertise and follow your advice.
Effectively, you assume a role of their personal CEO and they assume a role of the Chair-persons.
What have you found most challenging so far?
Work-life balance. I finally had a break through where I block the time in my diary to focus on me and my family. I now play the violin, dance Jazz and Latin, Scuba dive and Travel around the world. I lost 52 kg in the past year with a personal trainer (again, one needs a mentor, a coach!) and now attend gym and swimming pool daily.
Greg’s View on Equity Markets
I have been in this advice business long enough and advised many people about owning shares via the traditional buy and hold, at any time and at any price method for long enough to know that hindsight and recent movement in share markets can lead to a range of emotions and views that are not always helpful.
Whilst feeling good about being invested in the share market from 2003 through 2007, even gains from the strongest bull market in history can vanish very quickly. We are at a point in time where the risk of a long term sharemarket decline is very real and have written a book to explain those risks and what you can do about it.
Whilst it is always frustrating to watch the market go up sharply knowing you had funds that you wanted to have invested and quite possibly could have been invested, these gains could well be illusionary with the traditional methodology.
I am reluctant to blow my own trumpet too much, but what we use the Directional Market Decisions (DMD) technology which is literally unique to the financial planning or investment advice world. It is literally a mathematical method to capture the large portion of market gains whilst avoiding the large portion of market declines.
As good a discovery as it is, it is so vastly different from anything we, let alone anyone else in the financial advice world, have tried to put into practice for clients before, that I needed to know I could properly implement it before putting client funds to work. DMD methodology, it works far better and with much less downside risk than any form of buy and hold investing, in both long term secular bull and secular bear markets.
As a final note, whilst I am convinced we have now entered a secular bear market in the U.S., which will most likely spill over substantially to the rest of the world, whether this holds true or not (and of course only time will tell whether this is indeed the case as the next few years unfold), investing via the DMD methodology with a facility that allows me to do this for our clients, is a dramatically safer way to invest than anything either of us have seen before, with far better results as well.
Your website and contact information?
Other Resources:
You can also apply for a a bachelors or masters program in finance or accounting through the website phoenix.19gi.comwhich offers online or campus based degree programs.
Related Articles:
Financial Planner Licensing in Different Countries
Financial Analysts and Personal Financial Advisors – BLS website
