Financial stress can have a negative impact on a persons’ health and wellbeing. As a financial planner you have the opportunity to speak with your clients’ about both of these and affect positive change.

In this episode of the FPA Podcast, we talk to AIA Vitality Ambassador Dr. Preeya Alexander and Elise Sanders, the Head of Enablement, Marketing and Communications at AIA Australia and Dr Preeya Alexander, a general practitioner and AIA Ambassador about how financial planners can look after both their client wealth and their health. This podcast is proudly sponsored by AIA Australia.

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Episode Transcript

Ben Marshan

Hi everyone, I’m Ben Marshan, Head of policy at the Financial Planning Association and welcome to today’s FPA podcast. Today we’re going to be talking around AIA Australia’s 5590 report, which is a report that talks about mental health and physical health issues that affect your clients. And one of the things that financial planners we are really good at is talking about the financial wellbeing of our clients. But through that deep understanding of clients that we get, we might pick up that there might be some mental health issues with our clients, we might pick up that there might be some physical health issues for our clients, and we need to be thinking about how we can help our clients more holistically get the right help at the right time to help their whole… Not only their financial position, but their health position as well. So, in today’s podcast we’re going to be talking about what are the similarities between the issues we deal with as financial planners and as doctors.

We’re going to be talking about some of the conversations you can have with your clients. We’re going to be talking about some of the advice and assistance you can give to clients if you see them struggling with their health, with if you see them struggling mentally and who you might be able to reach out to and some great resources. So, in today’s podcast we’re talking about health, we’re talking about finances, we’re talking about wellbeing, we’re talking about awareness

Today’s podcast is proudly brought to us by AIA, Australia’s 5590 report. And I’d like to introduce you to AIA Vitality Ambassador Dr. Preeya Alexander and Elise Sanders from AIA Australia.

Ben Marshan (1:38)

Welcome to the podcast. I’ll start off with you, Elise. Firstly, can you just introduce yourself to our members.

Elise Sanders

Elise Sanders. I’m the Head of Enablement, Marketing and Communications at AIA for Retail. I’d probably dub myself an insurance nerd and an advice nerd, I’m totally passionate about advice and totally passionate about risk mitigation through insurance.

Ben Marshan

Thanks Elise and Preeya, or should we call you Dr Alexander? Sorry.

Preeya Alexander

Oh no, Preeya is absolutely fine. So, I am a doctor, I’m a GP, I work in Melbourne. I would say if Elise is an insurance nerd, I am a medical nerd. I’m passionate about preventative health, breaking down complex medical information for people so they can digest it and make informed health choices. But that’s my background.

Ben Marshan (2:26)

Very good. Thanks for joining us. Now, Elise AIA’s done research in the past about leading causes of death and I think the last report showed that 90% of deaths of Australians were attributed to four main risks to health. Those were physical inactivity, unhealthy diets, smoking and excess alcohol. And there were four non-communicable diseases being respiratory disease, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. From the most recent research you did in 2021, can you give us a brief overview from that report? What’s kind of changed over the years?

Elise Sanders

Yeah, Ben, I mean we originally sort of did the 4490 report just because we wanted to start to look at whether or not that changed our ecosystems in rehabilitation and wellness and health and wellbeing. And through that report, to your point, we could see that there were four inactivities… Or bad diet, inactivity, smoking and alcohol drinking were attributing to 90 per cent of deaths through noncommunicable diseases. So, diseases that we could change just through modifying just behaviour. And it was this that then changed our focus around the time of claim to preventative and predictive sort of healthcare programs in AIA that also could significantly change the Australian population’s health and wellbeing. So it was that study that led to this change in what we were thinking about and what we were focusing on for clients and partners.

And then what we did was we went back, and we reviewed that report, looked at it, and what we found was that we actually needed to start to look at… When we looked at the global data around disease, we actually were finding that mental health was also a contributing factor, and it was a factor that we could address and change and modify. But then also we saw that our interaction with the environment was leading to those communicable diseases. We’ll talk about the stats when we get into further discussion, but we could see that just air pollution was attributing to a high percentage of cardiovascular issues, stroke and the likes. And as we’ve seen over the last couple of years, mental health is on the climb and depression, anxiety in the Australian population has been exacerbated through the last couple of years with COVID. But what we’ve found is all of these things are things that we can actually help predict, we can prevent, and we can intervene before it gets to an exacerbated level. And our clients and our partners have to then manage claims. So that’s why we of built this report and what we’ve done is, we’re constantly evolving this report over time. So, it’s definitely not the last report, the 5590 report, but it’s definitely the most current.

Ben Marshan (5:50)

Thank you Elise. Yeah, I mean I’ve certainly noticed even from my… Well definitely from my interactions with members that mental health in particular has become a much bigger factor over the last couple of years. We’ve had obviously the double whammy of COVID and everything that’s gone on with the education standards around financial advice in particular. Preeya, you as a GP and I understand you’ve got a blog called the Wholesome Doctor. What’s the shift that you’ve seen over the years of people considering their health. You discuss in your blog in particular, healthcare from a holistic point of view, can you kind of explain to us what our members should be thinking about, what they should be discussing with their clients in terms of holistic healthcare, what it looks like and how they should be considering this shift in healthcare?

Preeya Alexander

So, I do think that people are definitely more proactive in the health space. I think people want to actually know more, they want more information, they want to make informed health choices. And we’ve seen that through the pandemic in particular, where people have gone searching for answers often to unqualified sources, sadly, which has led to some confusion sometimes. But people are hungry, they want to make good choices and they want to know how they can improve their health. I think there is also, what I’ve seen through time and why I started this kind of blog and the Instagram a little while ago, is that people are acknowledging that mental health, physical health, the environment, they all interact, and they can all have a significant impact on the individual and also the community.

And so, I think people are talking more about the fact that mental health is just as important as physical health, sometimes more important. I think people are now talking about, okay, we’re talking about climate change. What impact does that have on health? What can I do as an individual, as a community to improve my health outcomes and for the planet too? So, we’re all a little bit better. So, what I have seen is that people are definitely more proactive, and I think people want to make informed choices. Give me the building blocks so I can change my health outcomes.

Ben Marshan (7:56)

Absolutely. And I mean I see it, there’s a consideration mental health I think at the extreme level where we see catastrophic outcomes for people. But mental health’s probably got a broad spectrum of outcomes on people’s health. What are you seeing from a longevity and quality of life perspective, even from I guess low level mental health concerns to across that spectrum.

Preeya Alexander

So, I see literally everything in my consulting room. As you say, it is a complete spectrum. I have to say that we know now as medical professionals, but also, I think in the community thanks to more discussion, breaking stigma down, we know that mental health, physical health, there’s a very strong interplay. So, we know that uncontrolled stress increases the risk of generalized anxiety disorder. We know that anxiety can be a contributing factor in hypertension. We know that depression, ischemic heart disease can often coexist. So, we know that that physical, mental interplay is really important.

But what I see is that people, you’ve already alluded to this, but there is a mental health crisis at the moment. The rates are climbing in general practice, it is a huge part of our job at the moment, but I’m seeing everything from people struggling with sleep, stress at work, productivity goes down. You then get people who struggle with depression, lower motivation, again, lower productivity at work. These things impact family life, they impact work life. They’ve got far reaching consequences. And even if it’s mild, it can still have significant impacts on people’s day-to-day life.

Ben Marshan

Absolutely. And what kind of impacts are you seeing on not only their lives but how this mental health epidemic, I guess it is at the moment, is affecting the lives of family and friends and work colleagues more broadly?

Preeya Alexander (9:53)

I think that people are talking about it more, but I tend to see at the moment that there are caregivers or people within a home where someone is potentially struggling with anxiety or depression. And I have patients who come in and they are not personally affected with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, whatever the diagnosis is, but they are also living this with the person in their home. And so, they also experience… If someone in the home loses their job due to severe anxiety or depression that has consequences for a family. And it’s often the other people in the family who are picking up the pieces, kids often feel it. I have in my consulting room a lot of kids who felt pressure through the pandemic with adults perhaps going through mental health issues.

So, I think we tend to forget… As a GP in particular, I can tend to focus on the patient, but really the tentacles of mental health issues go very far. And there’s things like the Black Dog Institute in Australia, which actually give practical tools and tips to the people who are living with people who are affected by mental health issues, which tells you actually there’s a lot of support that needs to be given to the people around as well.

Ben Marshan (11:05)

Yeah, absolutely. And we might come back to that resource in a minute actually, but Elise, obviously financial planners are dealing with their clients over long periods of time. Often, they’re helping them understand their financial position, but through those conversations they get into really deep conversations. They can often get a real understanding of the person and what’s going on with their lives. What role did the report show that financial planners play in mitigating some of these risks and particularly considering how mental health, physical health, environmental health is impacting a family unit as a whole?

Elise Sanders

I think with the report, what it does is it just highlights that those conversations are broader than the actual client that’s sitting in front of them. To Preeya’s point, the ripple effect has an impact to a family member, a child, a parent, a brother, a sister. And so, what it really highlighted for us is just that when we are thinking about the preventative measures, when we are thinking about predictive measures, the advisor plays a crucial role in being able to identify that. Because they see the life, to your point Ben, they see the life cycle of that client. They see them from the moment the fact find is put in right through to the moment that that client says to them, I’m transitioning through to retirement. And their goal as a financial planner or an advisor is to one mitigate risk and to identify risk.

And then also their jobs is to try to get that client to get to the best financial outcomes at the time of retirement. And so, what it is about understanding this information, being able to help identify for clients what I call blind spots in their life. So, you’ve got this blind spot where a client comes in, they’re probably thinking about, well I just want to draw down debt, I just want to make sure that I can pay off debt. I want to be able to have some savings. I want to have some superannuation in my superannuation account when I retire. But it’s about looking at okay, what are other people or other influences that could reduce my client’s ability to do that? And my job is to look at those blind spots on behalf of my client, make sure that there’s no one jeopardizing that client to get to the healthiest outcome that they can financially but also physically and mentally.

And so, it’s really important that the advisor overlays that understanding, is able to field underwrite that to some degree and then start to think about the product selections that they’re choosing when they’re addressing that particular client and that client’s lifestyle. And this is where advisors’ knowledge comes into play, it’s that intimacy around product knowledge. So being able to know the difference in the features, in the benefits of a product, what support mechanisms are already pre-built in, what tools are available to them through those product providers as well as things that they have built and established within their own business. So, for me, when we look at this report it’s understanding that data but then being able to apply that data and that knowledge into their field underwriting and their risk assessment of the client.

Ben Marshan (14:58)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that we might come back to that point in a second about how we can help our clients, but Preeya, in terms of the impact, not only the impact from health perspective, but obviously being unhealthy, needing medical treatment has a cost impact in terms of treatment but also time off work. What’s your experience from your clients that you’re seeing as an outcome of these health issues that are identified in the report?

Preeya Alexander

So, you are right and it’s only until you raise it like that, but I actually link it back after hearing Elise speak and go, oh actually these financial stressors then cause more ripple effects as you said before Elise. But I do see patients who have significant chronic medical conditions where they start thinking about accessing their superannuation to receive medical treatment and have to go through a lot of forms that I’m involved in the process with them. But I see the amount of stress that people go through going, I need this medical treatment, I’m not going to get it through the public system. I don’t have private health insurance, or I do, but it’s not… And it generates a lot of stress for a lot of people. And I also see people who have medical conditions where, as you say, they need time off work and that can also yield a lot of stress.

And I think we need to appreciate here that stress and financial stress, it doesn’t matter where the stress is coming from, some stress is okay, it’s good, it drives a good response, it motivates us. We tick off jobs, we manage our debts, whatever it is. I’m talking in finances and that’s not my realm, it’s the medicine. But when it’s uncontrolled stress, which for a lot of people, if I now reflect on it as a GP, it does come from finances, that can really have strong impacts on health. I’ve already mentioned the increased risk factor for generalized anxiety disorder, but stress can also impact sleep, which can then impact mood, which can impact your heart disease risk, hypertension. So, I have to say I see this in very interesting ways in my consulting room, would be the short answer.

Ben Marshan (17:15)

And are you able to quantify in any way what the… From the health perspective, costs are for some of these impacts of mental health and the physical health issues that are identified in the report?

Preeya Alexander

I probably can’t quantify it Elise, I don’t know if that’s kind of your area of expertise, but I think it really depends on what the context is, what the condition is, how much time off work they require, how much medical intervention they require, whether or not it’s on Medicare and they get the rebates. So, I think it’s complex but Elise, I don’t know if you can add to that.

Elise Sanders

I think yeah, to your point Preeya, it depends on the illness, the disability, or the mental health condition. But just common depression where that person’s inability to return to work on a regular basis, when you start to look at the downstream impact in someone’s life and in that customer or client’s life, just being able to… If we look at things like just the salary coming through the door, the ability to pay your regular bills, when we look at paying a mortgage, it starts to put stresses on those and all of a sudden it leads into a spiral of when you start to say, well the stress is actually contributing to the financial impact of the household and then that household can’t pay the basic and utility bills, the basic mortgage repayments, we start to then see that it actually exacerbates the illness.

So, you’ve got this spiral that someone can’t start to get out of, which is actually really quite damaging to their household and to the family. And then when you start to think about this ripple effect, it’s not uncommon that if insurance is not in place, that you start to see people reaching out to family, to community to support their household. So, the social impact is actually far greater than the individual. And I suppose when we’re talking about quantifying that cost, it’s very hard to do because if we’re relying on family and friends and community and organizations that can supply financial support, that’s a hard thing to add up and say, well where is it coming from? But it does have an impact. And mental health, it’s one of these silent ones that you really… Normally what’s happening is there’s a steady decline into mental health. And so, you don’t see that financial stressor occur at the start, it starts to do that gradual decline that you start to see the financial impact inside the household.

Preeya Alexander

Can I say though, just to add to that point, it’s very interesting because when I see a patient who is stressed or anxious about finances, as a GP, I’m managing the stress, I’m prescribing exercise, reduced caffeine, meditation, more sleep, whatever it is. But I don’t have the tools as a GP and I’m reflecting as we’re talking today to help the person with their financial stressors. And for a lot of patients, I’m just thinking of two of the patients I know are coming to see today. I know that financial stressors through the pandemic with their businesses with lack of income coming through the door, climbing debt. I know that’s a big factor, but I sit there in my consulting room and I’m helping the brain and the physical health, but I don’t have the tools for the financial stuff. I have no idea. So, Elise you were talking before about the people listening to this podcast are perfectly positioned to actually help people in that space prevent this potentially from escalating, I think we all have a role here potentially.

Ben Marshan (21:12)

Preeya, I was going to say, when you do see financial stressors being one of the causes of the stress and the health issues that you’re seeing your patients have, are you referring them to financial planners to have a conversation or you’re just dealing with the symptoms?

Preeya Alexander

It’s interesting. So, I do very holistic… So, I’m dealing with the person, the patient, their family often. A lot of people I see the patient and also the rest of the family. But it’s interesting that you say that. So, I haven’t ever said to my patient, well a lot of them actually already have input by the time they’re in my door, they’ve already got input in this space. I get people, I say to people, you need to get experts here. That’s clearly a big stressor, we need to address the stressors head on to try and help your brain. But I’m clueless in that area myself, so there is nothing I could really offer my patient in that space. But clearly if you want to address the stressor you need experts in that space to help you, like Elise.

Ben Marshan

I think Elise, one of the things that I sort of reflected on from when I was a planner is you’re spending two, three hours at a time with the client, getting to know them, talking about their financial position, talking about their lives and what’s happening in their lives and what their hopes and their dreams are and how they are sleeping at night and what’s work like what’s happening with their family.

We are probably in a position to help not necessarily diagnose stress, not diagnose mental health issues, not diagnose other issues, but be in the position to pick up that something is going on in their lives that they probably need to think about from a health perspective. Does the report cover off what kind of conversations and what sort of support planners can provide to their clients when they do observe that this is not a happy, comfortable, confident person at the moment. And maybe they do need some form of health intervention.

Elise Sanders

The report takes it more at a high level with regards to those preventative measures. And I think advisors are really good with reading documents. Once they look at this report and they go through the statistics of the report, their findings of the report, they’re going to start to think about clients that naturally just pop into their mind and what they can do and what things that they could be implementing inside their business. Whether that’s a change and a shift in the conversation, whether it’s going back and thinking about things such as, hey, I have a cohort of clients that I could probably be thinking about changing the conversation, doing more preventative, more intervention programs with them.

When we initially sat down with this client, they talked about the fact that they were a small business. How is that small business going through COVID at the moment? Is there a greater risk of mental health involved in that person’s business? And does that change my conversation? Does it change my advice? Does it change the way we look at risk and insurance? Should I be thinking about things like what programs and intervention programs and predictive programs in my insurance policies that I can leverage and actually really highlight to my clients, get them involved in to actually try to mitigate that risk? Because an advisor is trying, when they implement insurance, they are actually trying to remove that obstacle and that risk of illness and disability from their client’s life.

They can’t prevent it, but what they can do is they can financially remove that risk from that client’s financial plan. They ensure that they’re not eroding super, that they’re not drawing down from super if an illness occurs, they’re not drawing on assets or drawing down assets to be able to deliver financial outcomes around sickness and illness and disability. So, I think when reviewing this report, what an advisor’s going to be able to quickly identify is, wow, I have a cohort of clients that I probably need to be talking to them a little bit differently. Or the environmental risk is around this postcode, this region. So, I think it’s really just like an individual financial plan. The report is general in nature enough that they’re going to be able to identify what they want to do, what they want to highlight, and what they want to extract out of that information.

Ben Marshan (26:00)

I think focusing back on my career as a planner, you’ve got those clients that are easy to deal with and you can have easy conversations with them and they’re going well financially and it’s an easy meeting. They’re not the ones that you actually change their lives and make better. You have to be comfortable having those really difficult conversations with the clients and planners are probably more comfortable with the conversation about, “You’re spending too much. You need to pull in your spending, or you may not be able to retire on as much as what you wanted to retire on,” or in the context of insurance, “If something happens to you, then we need to have a backup plan in place.” Having conversations about health issues are probably less comfortable, less out of their comfort level. And Preeya, have you got any tips to our members around how they might start to bring up some of those conversations to make them more comfortable saying you should maybe go to talk to a GP, maybe you should go talk to a psychologist or a specialist or something to have a talk about this issue.

Preeya Alexander

So, I think for me, and I’m having these conversations all the time in the consulting room, tricky conversations, rapport definitely helps. So, I’m assuming much like me financial planners are seeing their patients, or clients, sorry multiple times. And I think building that rapport is really important. I often have a patient come in to my consulting room and I know there’s something we need to talk about in that initial consult, but I write it in my notes, and I let it go and I actually write, wait till rapport built. And then it hurt my feelings before when you said you have those consults with GPs, I thought no, you need to keep hunting and find the right GP for you. Because it should be this beautiful long-term therapeutic relationship. But I think when you have that rapport, you know as a GP or in the case of the financial planner when the moment is right. The patient is comfortable with you, they’re safe, they’re sharing things with you, and I often start a conversation by checking the person’s understanding.

So, you’ve got type two diabetes and high blood pressure, what do you think could happen here? And very often this conversation you’ve been building yourself up for and been stressed about saying to the patient, I think that we’re at the brink of renal failure here and we might need to go down the dialysis path. They’re already there just when you check their understanding, they get halfway there for you, which makes your part of the job a lot easier. And then you kind of work together to get to the end and your kind of delivering a blow like your spending is a bit too excessive at the moment in the finance case. But if you actually ask people, what do you think about your spending? How do you think it’s going? If you look at inflow and outflow, often people get there on their own is what I found over time. And I always check understanding first.

Ben Marshan (28:58)

And the reality is some people go to a financial planner because they are that kind of person, they just want to go and get the answers. Other times stress has built up around their financial position or uncertainty has built up around their financial position and it’s gotten to the point where they are coming in and asking for help at this point. But I think the other thing mean you touched on retirement, Elise, just before. I think that shift from working to not working is such a mental and emotional and relationship change for people that it is a very difficult time and you probably as a planner do need to start to have that on your radar as something that you need to be thinking about to help support your clients. You both mentioned environmental impacts, you mentioned postcodes Elise and areas that environmental issues might be an issue. As we’re recording this, we’ve got flooding going on around the country and bad storms and things happening. At the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got the droughts in other years that have health issues. What kind of things do we need to be thinking about from environmental perspectives that might impact clients’ health and therefore their financial position in the longer term?

Elise Sanders

Do you want to go Preeya?

Preeya Alexander

Well, as a doctor, I would say that a lot of people will say to me, Preeya, why… The RAC GP, the college that I’m bound to, why are GPS so passionate about climate change? Why are we now reading articles coming out about the impacts of climate change? And it’s because our environment does have significant far reaching consequences on health. And I’ll keep it short, sharp and shiny, but this is a passion of mine. Number one, food supply. You’ve already mentioned storms, droughts, fires, we’ve just seen that iceberg lettuce cost like $10 a lettuce and cucumbers were $14.90 per kilo. And I had patients coming in going, “Preeya, I can’t possibly eat the rainbows you’re prescribing me. I can’t.” Rainbow’s being fruit and veggies, that’s my lingo, sorry about that. But they can’t afford it. So, then we move to the canned and the frozen. So, I’m actually having to talk to patients about, “Okay, if we want to treat your type two diabetes and fatty liver, reduce your risk of bowel cancer, how are we going to do that? Because now food costs too much.”

So that’s one impact of the environment. The other is bush fires. We’ve seen a lot of bush fires in Australia, so you’ve got air pollutants. If you’ve got a respiratory condition like asthma, that is a significant trigger for a lot of people. You’ve also got air pollutants from the roads, we’ve got urbanization. So, people are struggling. If you’ve got chronic obstructive airways disease or COAD, that can be a factor. And then with urbanization, and this is the bit that people don’t often talk about, you’ve got concrete jungles, you’ve got lots of grey, less green spaces. So, it means that people are less  physically active, which has mental health and physical consequences. But also, we know that just being outdoors in green spaces, green nature, trees, grass is good for us. It’s good for the brain, it reduces the risk of depression, manages stress. So, the consequences of the environment on health are huge. Just absolutely massive. Sorry Elise, thank you for letting me go.

Elise Sanders (32:15)

No, no, that’s great. Because I think that’s a thing, right? It is a foreign conversation to think about in financial planning, how does the environment actually impact my advice as a financial planner? And I look at that and think how are we going to be talking about… I’m not going to be talking about global change in the middle of my fact find and my SOA presentation, but what it is we have to take that into consideration because these impacts have such a significant impact on our lifestyle, on our health, but we only look at it as an impact to our lifestyle. I can’t drive from point A to point B because the roads are flooded. But it actually attributes to things like pricing in insurance. It attributes to the increasing in claims, it contributes to our client’s loadings and exclusions in their policies.

And a lot of this environmental piece can be slowly modified in a client’s lifestyle. We can start to get them to eat healthier. To Preeya’s point, it’s got a cost for an $8 lettuce or a $9 lettuce, but it’s things like that and it’s about understanding and using the ability to go out and engage with the environment through exercise, eating better, sleeping better, and bringing that into a conversation through preventative predictive and intervention conversations versus waiting for the time where the loading’s gone onto the policy waiting for the claimable event. So, it feels like a foreign conversation, but in actual fact, advisors are having this conversation with their clients every day just through when they’re applying for insurance, when they’re trying to talk about BMIs, when they’re trying to talk about health loadings. We were talking about asthma just before, filling out asthma questionnaires, filling out all of these additional questions around someone’s health. And that’s because the environment is playing in contributing factor to that.

Ben Marshan

So, I think absolutely, I think that’s all right. And it interestingly enough from the investment perspective as well, asking clients about their environmental preferences is probably something that needs to work into the conversation more for planners anyway in terms of investment preferences. But to your point, it’s obviously also got a massive impact in life insurance as well. So just to wrap things up probably from both of you individually, but what kind of tools, what kind of tips, what kind of resources can planners be looking for to add into the advice that they’re providing to the client, the documents they’re giving to their client to think about these health issues that we’ve raised in the report more broadly in the conversation today?

Elise Sanders (35:41)

I think that we can go and we can look at what tools they’re using. I think just by when we are looking at the report, it’s looking at how their businesses can bring that conversation to life at the point of fact find. It’s definitely looking at product providers such as AIA and looking at what intervention, what preventative tools do they have? What predictive tools do they have? And AIA has AIA Vitality, but other insurers have a lot of other resources and tools available for predictive and preventative programs in their insurance policies. And really leveraging those. Sitting down with myself with other individuals within AIA or with other insurers and saying, “Okay, how do I bring this program or this feature inside your policy to life with my clients? What type of programs should I be talking to? What articles could I be writing?” They can think about things like we’ve seen advisors use the 5590 report around putting in personal development coaches to help with building resilience within that individual.

We’ve seen advisors use community based initiatives within their regions to say, “Well, I’m going to start to have some environmental social governance controls and strategies inside my business where I’m going to take on this community-based initiative and I’m going to create a trickle down effect where my clients get involved with that as well.” So, it’s enabled advisors to be able to do that. And I look at, yes, we’ve got the tools, the predict, prevent and intervene tools to stop the claim from occurring or when the claim occurs, the client has been set up in the best way possible to not get to that point in their life where they start to lose control over their finances, control over their health, which is a very scary reality for a client when they’re in that time. But it’s about what can you be doing within your business to actually start to change that conversation, start to have a really holistic client approach to getting that person from point A to point B effectively. And then the best possible way that we can.

Preeya Alexander

I think mine are probably going to be a bit more medical, but I think things like the Australia Health Report could be quite helpful to people to actually show them what national data tells us in terms of chronic disease risk, cancer risk, how important prevention is, eating your fruit and veggies, quitting smoking, all those things. It gives you really beautiful data on that which might drive behaviour change. The RAC GP has some excellent stuff on prevention for consumers or for patients. So, it’s really simple to understand but, Elise, you’re talking about actually stopping things before they happen. And that resource might be quite helpful. But I mentioned before some resources in terms of mental health, and I think if you’ve got someone who is struggling in this space or with someone who’s struggling this space and you’re seeing a whole family weighed down by the financial impact of things and people’s mental health is suffering, Black Dog Institute is absolutely wonderful. So is things like Beyond Blue, Smiling Mind, but there are plenty of resources in the mental health space including Head to Health, which is a great thing in places like Victoria and New South Wales you can recommend to people as well to get some guidance, but there’s a lot out there.

Ben Marshan (39:20)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think financial planners are often out there selling the dream of retirement and the dream of financial wellbeing. I think this conversation’s been enlightening and I think if planners are looking to more broadly help their clients, but also attracts clients to their practices, thinking about the stress everyone’s under, the mental health load everybody’s under and the impact of financial wellbeing has on their mental health is probably something that if you are looking for an area to broaden out your business and your practice and help more Australians live their best lives possible, thinking about mental health, thinking about physical health and how that affects their financial position as well, I think is critically important and something that can be very fruitful for your businesses as well as financial planners. Thank you, Preeya and Elise, for joining us today on the FPA Podcast. Is there anything else you want to leave us with before we close off today?

Elise Sanders (40:25)

I think advisors can definitely look at programs within insurers like we’ve got AIA Embrace, which is this ecosystem which encompasses some of the organisations that Preeya spoke about. But I think what we need to look at too is, and think about, because we’ve tackled some pretty big conversations around mental health today, we’ve talked about the environment. But I think one thing that we do know about our industry is it is incredibly resilient and we’re immensely adaptable to change. And with financial planners, provided there’s evidence and data set out in front of them that where they can clearly understand that they’re an amazing industry where they always adapt and modify their businesses around the what’s trending in investments, trending in insurance. And I’m really excited and confident that advisors, once they start to look at this information will start to say, hey, it needs a broader conversation with my customers, with my clients, and I think it’s just going to have positive outcomes for all of us. That shared value philosophy. It’ll benefit community, it’ll benefit advisor practices, it’ll benefit clients. And I think I just wish everyone the best in their 5590 journey, really.

Ben Marshan

Thanks Elise. And if members are interested in the 5590 report, can you share with them where they can find that?

Elise Sanders

It’s actually on our website, so just simply Googling 5590 AIA or actually just going into the AIA.com.au website and our 5590 report’s available to them.

Ben Marshan

Very good. And Preeya, I’ve been enjoying scrolling through The Wholesome Doctor blog, do you want point anyone to that? More than what I’ve just said and what might be coming.

Preeya Alexander

No, that’s fine. I haven’t updated the blog for a while, Ben. I tend to be on the Insta these days and battling with three kids but thank you for doing a shout out.

Ben Marshan

Members, thank you for joining us. We’ve talked about lots of difficult things to talk about with your clients today, if you’re seeing something, and I think one of the values you provide as a financial planner is being able to have difficult conversations with your client and adding that value to them. And there’s lots of resources in this podcast for you to think about, but also for yourself or for your businesses. Just remember we’ve got FPA wellbeing there if you need some help personally and if you need some resources personally to help you through some hard and difficult times. But we are also here at the FPA to help you with anything you need. So, thank you everyone for joining us today.