Thank you for coming along to support this AGM. Your Board has spent time over the last 12 months on several matters, some which the Board had been working on for some time, and some that came out of left field through the year.
Firstly, last year we repositioned the TripleA Advisers Association as the “Best Value Professional Body” and your Board continued the process of putting in place the steps required within our business plan to complete that repositioning. We continue to increase the membership numbers, currently 52% of our members have being in the TripleA for 8 years or less and signed off on a marketing relationship with Strategi. All these business strategies are now effectively operational.
Secondly, the review of the Financial Advisers Act has involved a lot of your Board’s time. Board members have attended MBIE/FMA/Stakeholder Engagement Group meetings held in or near the centres they reside, around the country and made two submissions on behalf of our members.
Thirdly, AMP Distribution invited the Board to be involved in their Succession Planning Forum, which involved two face-to-face meetings and conference calls to discuss the process our members should consider when wanting to sell their AMP agencies and the opportunities of doing this to third parties. A small number of our members are in the old NMLA Defined Benefit Super Scheme and AMP clarified the Transition Plan they required in order to comply with the Trust Deed for an AMP agency to be terminated and collect their pension. Our members who exited this Scheme could also remain in the industry representing other Insurance companies, if that was their intention.
In the last quarter of 2017, the two TripleA Adviser “PI Trustees” resigned from their roles, citing a change of direction they were individually wishing to take in 2018 with their respective businesses. The Board and CEO quickly put in place an interim robust PI new applicant review process, whereby all Board members carried out the duties which the two previous PI Trustees undertook. The Board took this opportunity, to perform a full review on the future role of PI Trustees, together with the observations of our previous Independent Chairperson, and came to the decision that the Interim PI process which has been operating for over 7 months, involving 51 new members joining our PI scheme, was to become a permanent role for Board members, CEO and administrator.
The Association of AMP advisers again invited TripleA Advisers members to attend their annual conference, this year held in Nelson, which has some very good speakers and very relevant industry workshop sessions. However, the response from our members to attend was down on last year, even though we continued to offer an early bird member registration subsidy towards costs. This was not well supported and will not be offered in future.
August saw the launch of the TripleA Advisers Association “Scholarship programme”, being run in partnership with Strategi, where we have made subsidised funding available for advisers to complete the Level 5 qualification.
We have an excellent Board culture, and this aligns with the operating environment our Chief Executive works within.
I would like to thank my fellow Board members for the hard work they have put into representing our members best interests and governance of our PI Scheme over the last 12 months. Board member – John Robinson is not standing for re-election this year and on your behalf, I would like to acknowledge his four years of valuable contribution representing our members and input into the Board matters.
I would like to conclude by thanking our CEO – Wayne Smith and our Administrator Christine Eves for their valuable contribution to running our Association.
Malcolm Papworth – Chair