Getting to Know: Mark Weaver

Who are you and what do you do?

I am Mark Weaver and I recently retired as a principal of Meville Jessup Weaver, a firm of consulting actuaries and superannuation scheme administrators. In 1976, I qualified as an actuary, and emigrated to New Zealand and windy Wellington in 1982, courtesy of Tim Henaghan and the Wyatt Company. My career has spanned employer-based superannuation schemes, general and life insurance, and investment consulting. It's been varied. I enjoyed some successes in my career which I mostly put down to getting lucky from time to time.

If there is one thing you would like to change about the financial advice industry, what would it be?

The remuneration needs to change and the changes required need to be done properly. The whole financial sector is in a sorry state and we need to rebuild integrity from the top. I believe wholeheartedly in the importance of proper financial advice - financial literacy is important, but how products are sold, and the value of the products offered, is everything. There are a whole bunch of highly skilled advisers out there which NZ needs to tap into - top quality people. Of course I believe in the recommendations put forward in the FSC report but it needs to go further. We have to eliminate the incentives both in the remuneration and in the product design that attract the wrong people into the industry and lead to advisers making the wrong choices for clients. This ultimately means level commission at rates maybe up around 20%-25%.The alternative is products with limited customer value and the question left as to whose benefit the product was sold for. The life industry has morphed over the last 20 years to providing annual renewal term policies with changing benefit offerings. If the client really does need their benefits to be updated each year, then the adviser needs to go to see them every year and get paid for seeing them. Okay, it takes more time in year one, but that's called investing in your business. It follows it has to adopt similar commission solutions to general insurance.