Jane Campbell has a unique perspective on financial planning for injury victims as both a lawyer and certified financial planner. Her legal background includes defending insurance companies against injury claims, which showed her the need for financial support beyond legal settlements. She lobbied for six years to make structured settlements using annuities tax-free in Australia, though these are rarely used today. Instead, Campbell helps clients invest compensation in superannuation for flexible income streams, which she believes is the best global solution. However, she opposes moves away from lump-sum payouts towards state-run no-fault injury schemes.

1. JANE CAMPBELL’S LEGAL BACKGROUND
GIVES HER A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ON HOW
FINANCIAL PLANNING CAN HELP ACCIDENT
INJURY VICTIMS, AND ON HOW FINANCIAL
PLANNERS ARE VIEWED BY OTHER
PROFESSIONS.
WORDS SIMON HOYLE PHOTOS MATT FATCHES
Jane Campbell knows only too well
how other professionals view financial
planners – specifically, how lawyers
view them. As the principal of Aeran,
a self-licensed financial planning business
established in July this year, Campbell specialises
in helping the recipients of accident compensation
payments. It is an area of the law that fascinated her
as a first-year law student at Melbourne University;
was nurtured while working as a lawyer for
insurance companies; and came into full focus
during a period living and working in the United
States in the structured settlements business.
But to provide financial planning services to
injured people, Campbell had to become a financial
planner. In addition to being a qualified lawyer,
she is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP); and for
referrals, she relies on plaintiff lawyers – those who
represent accident victims seeking compensation.
Campbell says the legal profession’s opinion of
financial planning is not high, and that was a major
reason she believed her business had to be truly
and demonstrably independent.
She says some of the attitudes towards financial
planning are “justified, based on the unfortunate
structure of financial planning to date – or the
industry to date”.
“It was an industry, it was poorly structured,
and the lawyers could see that,” she says.
“And so they’ve always been very suspicious,
and still are. I’ve tried to say that not everybody
is like that. But it’s been hard, and that’s why
I am so pleased to see all the reforms that are
happening now and the stance that the [Financial
Planning Association] took in being a professional
body. All that has helped me.
“I’m still educating the lawyers that the
planning profession is doing everything it can
to be professional.”
Campbell left the AMP-owned licensee ipac
securities in January this year, and after a six-month
non-compete period set up her own business.
“It became increasingly evident to me that the
lawyers, upon whom I rely for all my referrals, can
see [and] are getting closer to the financial planning
profession,” she says.
“To be really precise, the big plaintiff law firms
are increasingly involved in suing financial planners.
The plaintiff law firms who I’ve always worked
with have been asked to be involved in the CBA
remediation, the Open Advice Review program.
I know those lawyers are having a very close look
at financial planning and I felt with their increased
knowledge of the way it all works, how could I not
be independent?”
//I JUST LOVED IT. I NEARLY DIDN’T TAKE
THE TRIP OVERSEAS. IT WAS JUST SO MUCH
MORE INTERESTING [THAN I EXPECTED],
BECAUSE EVERY PERSON IS A STORY
THE
PEOPLE
FOR
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2. A FOOT IN BOTH CAMPS
With a foot in both the legal and financial
planning camps, Campbell bridges the
gap between when an individual receives
a compensation payment, and the rest of
their lives. She first encountered this issue
while doing work experience with
FAI Insurance in Melbourne.
“I got the job on the basis that I said,
‘Oh yeah, I’ve done tort law’ – you know,
first-year torts, and therefore I knew
everything there was to know about
personal injury,” she says.
“They threw me in the deep end and
gave me certain letters of the alphabet
and all the clients with those surnames,
and my job was to get people back to work.
“I just loved it. I nearly didn’t take [my
planned] trip overseas. It was just so much
more interesting [than I expected], because
every person is a story.
“There was such a strong view within
the insurance community that people were
frauds and cheats and malingerers…but
I saw the impact of people being taken off
workers’ comp, which is that there were
lots of suicides, and it really hit home
what it meant for these people.”
In the end, Campbell’s European
sojourn lasted only three months and
she came back to FAI. Her experience
meant that when she was looking for a
job as an articled clerk she landed work as
an insurance litigator, which focused on
defending personal injury claims – acting
for insurance companies against claimants.
“I very quickly realised that I wanted
to help the plaintiffs,” Campbell says.
“I suppose I justified it for a while on
the basis that if I am here, I can help make
good, fair decisions. But in the end I didn’t
think the system treated people very well.
“And I was fascinated – from then until
today – by what happens when the legal
case is over. The lawyers do their job, they
apply the law, come up with a lump sum,
and the person is spat out of the system
at the end, with a cheque, stumbling into
their future.”
STRUCTURED SETTLEMENTS
When Campbell heard a visiting US
lawyer talking about the idea of structured
settlements – essentially, providing an
injured person with a lifelong income, in
preference to a single lump-sum payment
– she decided to check it out and spent a
year working in Ohio.
“I would observe the defendants trying
to settle the case, the plaintiffs looking
for financial security, and the structured
settlement brokers would put together a
package of annuities to meet the person’s
needs for life,” she says.
“They also had people called ‘life care
planners’, who would look at someone’s
medical needs for life, and we would map
the annuities to the needs. There was a
lot of competition in the annuities market,
and a lot of appetite for the life companies
to discount their annuities.”
Returning to Australia in 1997, to NSW,
lump sums for motor vehicle accidents
were a political hot potato. Insurers were
complaining about the size of lump sum
compensation payments (and blaming
the lawyers), and started to tighten up
underwriting.
The then head of the Motor Accidents
Authority (MAA), David Bowen, who
is now head of the National Disability
Insurance Scheme (NDIS), believed that
injured people in NSW needed an income
stream to pay for their care.
“The MAA supported me to lobby to
change the tax law in Australia to make
annuities tax-free for accident victims,”
JANE CAMPBELL / principal / Aeran12
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3. Campbell says.
“They said, ‘We want these structured
settlements in Australia, so can you do that?
And we think it should take you about six months.’”
It took six years.
“It’s a funny ending to that story,” Campbell says.
“The law is there. And I’ve never once
recommended [annuities] to anybody. They have
never been used. All this work I did with the
government, pushing for annuities. They spoke to
me several times and said, ‘What’s going on [with]
these annuities - we changed the law for you, and
nobody’s doing them.’ I said, ‘Well, in the real
world, people don’t want them.’”
Campbell says that during the time she was
lobbying for the changes, “superannuation law
evolved in Australia to the point where we had
allocated pensions, which are a far superior,
in my view, solution”.
“There are a few reasons,” she says.
“Number one: they are flexible – you can change
the payments up or down. Number two: you can take
lump sums. Number three: you can be invested in the
market – better returns. And number four: if you die,
the money will be part of your estate. It’s just like
your super fund. If you die, it’s your money.”
CLIENTS EFFECTIVELY ‘RETIREES’
Campbell says that her clients are, effectively,
“retirees” – even though they may be as young
as 10 years old when they retire.
“I use that word ‘retire’. There’s a special rule in
superannuation. We’ve got caps to what you can put
into super but there’s an exclusion to the caps that
says if the money you are putting into super comes
from personal injury, there is no cap,” she says.
“If somebody gets
$5 million, they put
it into super. There’s
a special rule about
getting it in. Once
you’re in, the normal
super rules apply,
which is usually [that]
you can’t access your
super until you’re 65.
But one of the conditions of release from super
is ‘permanent incapacity’.
“So my 10-year-old can put it all in; I can then
say he’s got a permanent incapacity; we can roll
the super over to an allocated pension; and he has
a flexible income stream for life. It’s perfect.
“It’s best practice in the world, because I know
very well what they do in America and in England,
and we’ve got the best solution in the world.”
But Campbell says all of this is under threat from
plans to remove the right of individuals to sue for
lump-sum compensation, and to introduce pure
no-fault, state-administered schemes instead.
It’s a move that Campbell opposes, and against
which she is working with the Australian Lawyers
Alliance (formerly the Australian Plaintiff Lawyers
Association).
“We’re trying to say to the federal government,
what are you doing?” she says.
“You’re moving people from the private sector
where we’ve got this beautiful solution for effectively
managing lump-sum compensation. We’ve got
fantastic super systems and great competition,
and flexible income streams that protect people;
and instead you want to force everyone into a
government bureaucracy.
“For a start, you can’t afford it. You’re setting
up or expanding all these bureaucracies around the
country. People don’t want it; they want choice,
independence and self-determination. What are
you doing?
“There are just a few very influential people in
Australia who do not like lump-sum compensation.
They like the New Zealand scheme, where nobody
can sue or receive lump-sum compensation. That’s
the model that we’re actually currently moving
towards.
“And I don’t think that’s a good model for
Australia. We should not be removing legal rights
and condemning people to a lifetime of bureaucracy.”
CARE ON A NO-FAULT BASIS
Campbell says that although she is concerned
about the situation for people who do have personal
injury rights and entitlements, “I fully support
the introduction of the NDIS as a broad-based
and improved safety net”.
“There’s a statistic that 45 per cent of Australians
with a disability live in poverty,” she says.
“And that’s terrible on an OECD average. We’re
one of the worst countries in the world for people
with a disability.
“The Productivity Commission did a report in 2011,
which looked at disability in Australia. They said it’s
terrible and what we need is to give people care.
“However, they said, well, we can’t pay for
everyone, it’s all going to be very expensive, so we
need an NIIS - a National Injury Insurance Scheme -
which almost nobody has heard of.
“The vision is that state government compensation
will eventually fold into the NDIS and we will end
up with a New Zealand-style, pure no-fault scheme,
whereby the taxpayers pay for everyone.
“We’re trying to say that the legal system and
the private sector do a pretty good job of looking
after people who get injured as a result of negligence.
People take out insurance. People get injured. They
sue. There’s insurance that pays. They put their
lump-sum compensation into super. It’s very
competitive and the fees are low. People have choices.
“Why are you forcing everyone into something
that you cannot afford?”.
//
IT’S BEST PRACTICE IN THE WORLD,
BECAUSE I KNOW VERY WELL WHAT
THEY DO IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND,
AND WE’VE GOT THE BEST SOLUTION
IN THE WORLD
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