1. SEARCHING FOR
A SILVER BULLETMATTHEW ROWE HAD A TASTE OF WORKING ON A NATIONAL STAGE
AS CHAIR OF THE FINANCIAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION. NOW HE’S
OFF TO THE US TO BROADEN HIS HORIZONS AND WILL RETURN
NEXT YEAR WITH A DETERMINATION TO SERVE THE PUBLIC
INTEREST – AND IMPROVE THE FINANCIAL PLANNING PROFESSION.
While Matthew Rowe was managing director
of the Adelaide-based financial services
company Hood Sweeney, he had a quote affixed
to the wall above his telephone. It read:
Conquer anger with calm
Conquer evil with good
Overcome greed with generosity
Vanquish liars with the truth.
It is Verse 223 of The Teachings of the Buddha, Rowe explains.
There were times during the four years that Rowe was chair of
the Financial Planning Association (FPA) that his adherence
to the Buddha’s advice must have been severely tested.
Whether it was copping the ire of members over the FPA’s
stance on regulatory issues (including refusing to participate
in commissioning the Trowbridge report), facing down the
largest financial institutions over the behaviour of their
financial planners, or pacing the corridors of Parliament
House putting forward the FPA’s principles and ceaselessly,
tirelessly pushing the cause of financial planning – or any
one of a range of other issues – Rowe was a focal point for
the profession through one of the most tumultuous times
for financial planning.
He emerged from his tenure not only with his sanity more
or less intact but also with his character and reputation as
both an advocate and negotiator enhanced. Having developed
an extremely effective and close-working relationship with
the FPA’s chief executive, Mark Rantall, there is no doubt the
association is in better shape now, and better respected by
policymakers, than when Rowe came to it.
He has left both the FPA and Hood Sweeney behind now,
and leaves Australia this month to study at the prestigious
Harvard Business School in the US. It won’t be until he
returns to these shores at the end of the year that his next
move will be known. But whatever that turns out to be,
Rowe says he is determined to do something that is clearly
in the public interest and which genuinely advances the
financial planning profession.
WORDS SIMON HOYLE PHOTOS MATT FATCHES
Interview
12
| A U G U S T 2015 www.professionalplanner.com.au

2. “I will take my time to work out what I do next,
but I would like to do something that I’m suited to,
where I can use my skill set and understanding of
financial services, and can potentially make a difference
for the public and my profession,” he says.
Towards the end of his dual tenure at the FPA and at
Hood Sweeney, Rowe admitted to suffering burnout.
But he says burnout at work doesn’t come from working
too hard, “it comes from a lack of meaning in work”.
He stresses that the comment isn’t aimed at Hood
Sweeney. “I love that place [and] a very deep sense
of where I see myself in the world is wrapped up
in the firm,” he says, but adds that he believes in
“constantly challenging yourself, and having authentic
conversations about where do you really want to be
in the next 10 years”.
Rowe says his stint as chair of the FPA gave him the
sense that there is a bigger world to take on. “When
I talk about meaning, meaning is around, ‘could I be
doing more?’” he says. “I did get a taste of the ‘more’
through the Financial Planning Association. I was able
to stand on a national and sometimes international
stage and make a difference to my professional
community, but also to the Australian public.”
Rowe has turned his back on a financial planning
career that started in 1998 as a multi-agent and an
authorised representative of Garrisons, after leaving
National Australia Bank to become a sole practitioner.
His background was in banking, but he got into the
advice business after meeting his wife-to-be, Lesley,
and deciding they wanted to make Adelaide their
home. With the banking world centred on Melbourne
and Sydney it was, in a literal sense, a career-limiting
decision.
But Rowe knew financial advisers through his father,
who had worked for National Mutual for 30 years, and
while he was inspired by the work they did, he wasn’t
completely enamoured of the structures they did it in.
He decided he’d do it differently, and set out into the
world of financial planning, much to the amazement of
his banking colleagues, many of whom assumed he was
going off to sell life insurance. Not that there’s anything
wrong with that; it’s just that even the better part of
two decades ago, Rowe had a broader vision than that.
“I wanted to set up a business that worked with
accountants,” he says. “I wanted a holistic approach
that had the client at the centre of the universe, working
through tax and accounting, working with lawyers for
estate planning; you’d have the financial planner and
you’d have other like-minded professionals, so it was
a spoke-and-hub model.”
But Matthew Rowe Associates got off to a slow
start. “In my first year, because I was fee-for-service,
I didn’t generate enough fees to cover my rent,” Rowe
says. “And there were a few days during that first year
when I thought, ‘What have I done?’ But Lesley, my
wife, was just fantastic. We were lucky that she is a
professional woman and we were able to pay the bills
through what she was earning. But there were days
when I would get despondent about why don’t people
get that I want to act in their interest and charge them
a fee to deliver high-quality advice?
“The first client who ever walked in my door was
a guy called Tom Wilkinson. He’s a dentist. And he’s
still a client 17 years later. When I told him I was
stepping down and transitioning out of Hood Sweeney,
we cracked a bottle of red wine and had a really good
conversation about the 17-year journey. In that
conversation, and a number of the others I’ve been
having, you gain an appreciation of how important
you are to people. You provide them peace of mind.
The word ‘trust’ came through quite a lot. That I’ve
still got my first-ever client, that’s for me one of the
highlights.”
In 2002, Rowe’s practice merged with Hood
Sweeney, a firm set up in 1976 by Peter Hood, who
was joined by Graham Sweeney in 1989. Rowe was
appointed managing director of Hood Sweeney
in 2005.
The next phase of Rowe’s professional career
seems likely to be focused on the big picture,
grappling with the issues of how to instil the virtues
of professionalism into a large group of people who
are often employed in situations where those virtues
aren’t readily acknowledged.
“In my experience, particularly of institutions,
the very, very large majority of people are good
people and want to do the right thing,” he says.
“The challenge when we talk about ethics is not
sitting a subject and doing an exam; it’s not a
compliance process and tick a box. It talks about
the moral compass of an organisation. It talks about
what is accepted behaviour, and it also talks to giving
people a sense that they can call behaviour when they
see it, and not have to wait for the boss to do it.
“To be able to do that, people need to understand
the way they see the world themselves. Is that
congruent with how the organisation wants to be
seen, both internally but also by the community
externally? It’s not about having rules or the core
values up on the wall, it is all about leadership and
it’s about the culture within an organisation, and
it is about wanting to do good.
“Your definition of success should be to know that
you’ve made a positive difference to your client’s
life, and then to know that you can have a successful
organisation for shareholders as a result, where you
can find a balance between your clients’ interests and
your shareholders’ interests. I think that’s the silver
bullet for financial services.
“The ethical dilemma that comes into play is that
there are some who [think] our world should be a
‘buyer-beware’ approach around products…but how
can you, if you’re running an organisation that has a
client-best-interests duty for advisers, how can you
[say] you’re going to be acting in the best interests
of your clients and having a buyer-beware attitude
as well? They just do not reconcile.”
//
YOUR DEFINITION OF
SUCCESS SHOULD
BE TO KNOW THAT
YOU’VE MADE A
POSITIVE DIFFERENCE
TO YOUR CLIENT’S
LIFE, AND THEN TO
KNOW THAT YOU CAN
HAVE A SUCCESSFUL
ORGANISATION FOR
SHAREHOLDERS
AS A RESULT
Matthew Rowe,
former chair of the
Financial Planning
Association and former
managing director
of Hood Sweeney
Interview
www.professionalplanner.com.au A U G U S T 2015 |
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