Bill Foddy & Ann Sanson

Ann is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research has focused on understanding the role of child, family and community characteristics in children, adolescents and young adults’ social and emotional development and wellbeing.

Ann is a principal investigator on the 36–year Australian Temperament Project, which has followed a large community sample from infancy through early adulthood. She was the initial Project Director for the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, following 10,000 children nationwide. The central focus of Ann’s current work is on the impact of climate change on current and future generations of children. She is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development and has over 200 publications.

Bill was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Monash University. His principal research areas were the use of shared facilities in cluster housing and privacy. He taught courses in social psychology, the sociology of self–processes and survey research techniques.

Bill is the author of Elementary Applied Statistics for the Social Sciences (1988) and Constructing Questions for Interviews and Questionnaires: Theory and Practice in Social Research (1994). The National Library of Australia holds Bill’s 1994 book, his 1982 research “Cluster housing in Australia and North America”, and his 1976 research “Multi–own–your–own unit residential complexes”.

We thank Ann and Bill for their contribution to Trade Secrets.

After I retired from University some 25 years ago, I sold two investment houses – I had found that being a landlord did not sit well with my general values. Following advice from friends, I spoke to GFM, and as a result, set up a self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) to contribute the proceeds from the sale of these two houses. Sometime later, my partner Ann became a member of the SMSF.

From the start, we have appreciated GFM’s transparency. We have always been impressed with how they have taken on board our preference to invest in ethically sound stocks. We also have valued GFM’s dedication to educating their clients in financial matters through the regular seminar series, dinners with invited speakers and bi-annual face–to–face meetings – in our view, these place GFM at the top of the pack. Further, we have been impressed with how the GFM advisers work as a team, meeting regularly to evaluate potential investment opportunities.

Over the years, we have been struck by the friendly, well–knit GFM team when we visit the GFM premises. We are always greeted as friends, the staff appear to be genuinely interested in our lives and families, and we have enjoyed the social events they organise, allowing us to meet other clients. We have never seen or experienced any sign of friction between staff members, and this no doubt helps to explain why there has been so little staff turnover over the 20+ years that we have been their clients.

In the early days of my association with GFM, I was recruited (as a retired academic with little business experience) to join a focus group. The goal was to get feedback and recommendations from clients about ways to grow the GFM business. Something must have worked because GFM now has many more clients than they had at that time. Most impressive is that this growth has occurred through the recommendations of existing clients to their family and friends. GFM has never needed to rely on impersonal advertising.

In sum, the sound financial advice and management we have received from GFM have given us the peace of mind and financial capacity to pursue the interests that are dear to us. I am acutely aware that GFM has managed our resources far better than Ann and I could have. Without this support, we would not enjoy the secure financial position we have today. This is why we have recommended GFM to many of our friends and relations, and I anticipate this will continue well into the future.