Financial planning pioneer ‘pays it forward’

Augustus “Joe” Ferreria (Joe F. in this article) has all the trappings of a high-profile job. A big corner office in the Makati financial district, a nationwide sales team, and the solid name of the SM Group of Companies and Generali Pilipinas behind him.

As senior executive vice-president of Generali Pilipinas, Joe F. is the revenue guy. In the first five months of 2007 alone, sales clocked in a 75% growth compared with the same period a year ago to P974 million.

That amount may seem tiny compared with Philamlife’s P14.5 billion in 2006, but not if you realize that Generali began operations in the Philippines only in 2000. Joe grew the company from a P400 million company to P2 billion in one year after he joined the firm in 2004. As an upstart in the insurance industry, Generali is playing a quick catch-up game.

It’s a fast-paced and pressure-filled job, but on top of it, Joe has agreed to mentor a volunteer couple from MoneySmarts who are just starting out on financial planning and learning the keys to building wealth.

When he says mentoring, Joe means it. He doesn’t just churn out financial statements or cash flow statements. Joe takes time to understand his clients from MoneySmarts, visits them at home, talks to th

em about how they grew up, helped them open a bank account, and on Tuesday next week, will bring them to Madame Auring to introduce them to the world of investing.

His reason? Joe says he wants to “pay it forward.” Joe is a Registered Financial Planner and a fellow of the Life Underwriting Training Council but has stopped taking personal financial advisory clients. For Money Makeover, he said he would make an exemption. Anyway, it’s pro bono.

“There were people who helped me to get to where I am now. I just want to pay it forward,” he says.

Where he is now is obvious. Where he came from, however, is in itself a lesson in personal finance.

Joe grew up almost like an orphan, having lost his father to death when he was only a year old and his mother when she remarried. “I grew up like a basketball, dribbled from place to place. I know what it feels like to have nothing,” he recalled.

Perhaps it was this deprivation of material things that fueled his ambition. Fresh from college at 19, he wanted to become a millionaire by age 35. Realizing that his clerical position could not help him reach his dream, he left, dabbled in journalism and advertising, and finally found his calling in selling insurance products.

When he entered the life insurance industry, it was a time when agents were chased by dogs and sold their policies like used-car salesmen. Through self-study and by observing those who claimed benefits, Joe decided insurance products were huge nuggets in a gold mine that were not handled by agents properly.

“I came to the conclusion that this is a wonderful financial product and all that should be fixed is the way by which it was being sold,” Joe said.

To cut a long, interesting story short, he used the financial planning approach to make people realize why they need protection. He found out what his clients lives were, their families, their birthdays, their financial needs. They became friends. By word of mouth, Joe was contracted to do remedial banking, meaning helping bankrupt persons regain their financial footing.

“It was a marvelous experience. As I worked with these people, I realized what real wealth meant. It’s not just about money,” he said.

Joe believes that building wealth cannot be taught by talking only about personal income statements or cash flow. “Way back I talked about nonsense, goofy stuff to my clients like looking at their personal finance worksheets. But I discovered that the experiential type of advisory is a better approach than technical training, as long as these were founded upon financial principles,” Joe said.

He calls this the heuristics approach, which uses techniques akin to behavioral psychology. He goes deep into why his clients spend the way they spend, or invest the way they do.

“I cannot teach you how to save until you understand how you spend. I can give you the formula, but you will be bored stiff and when it gets technical and difficult, you won’t stick with the program,” Joe said.

At the end of the day, experience can indeed be the best teacher. Watch out for the first month checkup next week of Joe mentoring session with our volunteer couple Diego and Bianca.

Share This