Warwick & Sue Hoban

Warwick has kindly written the article below on his and Sue’s working life, retirement and relationship with GFM Wealth Advisory. We greatly appreciate Warwick’s contribution to Trade Secrets.

As a young man, I felt very sophisticated when I took out a life assurance policy with Legal and General in 1968. I was 20, had no tertiary qualification, and was cheerfully unconcerned about what the future held for me, so it’s hard to understand now what prompted me to be so responsible at the time.

I had a few different jobs over the next few years, but my main focus was sailing, and my working life had to fit around the yacht racing calendar. In the early 1970’s I had seven summers in a row – the summer racing season in Australia, followed by the northern hemisphere summer in either England or the US. It was a great time for me, and I became pretty well known around the waterfront – so the natural progression was to become Melbourne’s first-ever yacht broker. This became my life’s work until I eventually sold the business several decades later. By then, it had grown, and we were also dealing in yacht sails and hardware and running some events (the most notable of which was Hamilton Island Race Week).

Along the way, the agent who had sold me the initial life assurance policy had left L&G, and I had been handed over as a ‘policy orphan’ to Tony Gilham. In 1985 Tony suggested I convert the life assurance into superannuation, which we did – the first of much good advice from him. By then, I was married. Over the next few years, Sue and I accumulated several superannuation policies with various fund managers – it was starting to get a bit messy.

We felt we needed some professional help, so in 2002 we paid for a financial plan from three different operators – GFM and two others. We were impressed with the GFM plan presented by Tony and Paul Nicol, the ‘new kid’ who’d been around for the last few years. To go with GFM was an easy choice for us – there was no trickery or fancy accounting, just solid good sense – and our self-managed super fund was born.

Since then, our relationship with Paul, and GFM, has grown ever stronger, and we are extremely relaxed and comfortable with it. Sue, in particular, is delighted that she is included in all decisions and is happy in the knowledge that she can rely on GFM for honest and sensible advice if she happens to find herself alone one day. As a business, they have every right to be proud of themselves – providing quality service and advice for clients, along with a sound and enjoyable workplace for staff.

The fact that so many employees have been there for so long shows what great employers they are, and the number of long-standing clients they have shows that they have also been delivering value for them. Few businesses can balance the dual interests of staff and clients as GFM has done over the years. It makes for an easy relationship for us as clients.

As for Sue and I, we are now retired, in excellent health and good financial shape, thanks largely to Paul and the GFM team. Life couldn’t be any sweeter – well, actually, it could be if COVID-19 would go away and allow us to resume our travels! We shouldn’t complain, though; we’ve had a very good run and haven’t suffered much at all through the pandemic. Hopefully, the world can get back to normal soon!