Gean Saw works in no ordinary nine-to-five job. She is the Director of Financial Services of the Gean Saw Branch, representing Manulife (Singapore). In other words, she is a financial planner, and has been one for over 12 years.

Looking back at her experiences, Gean recalls that it took quite some time before she took up this career back in 1994. At the time, she had gone through six different jobs in seven years, after graduating from polytechnic with a diploma in chemical engineering.

Soul searching
Gean finally received her wake-up call after being retrenched from her sixth job. “Fortunately, the timing was not too bad, as I was expecting my first child at the time. The retrenchment package helped me tide over the period, and it also gave me the time to do some soul-searching. I wanted to think again about what to do in life,” she says.

A close friend then persuaded her to join him in the insurance industry. Gean had turned him down previously because she did not have a high opinion of insurance agents (as they were known back then). This time however, she decided to give it a try.

As expected, Gean did not experience a smooth entry into the industry. There were many rejections, disappointments and eventually, many doubts as to whether she had made the right move.

After returning from her maternity leave in April 1995, Gean did some self-assessment yet again. “I gradually realised that I haven’t actually received many outright rejections. Rather, it’s more usually the case that my prospects had not yet made a decision. This is a reflection of my working style — I give my prospects a lot of space. I do not impose on them,” she says.

Basically, Gean sees herself as a facilitator. She firmly believes in helping every prospect make an informed decision about his personal fi nancial needs. As a result, many of her prospects are touched by her sincerity, and eventually become her clients for life.

Ahead of her time
“The breakthrough came in September 1995, when I began to close one sale after another. Most of these were a result of all the seeds I had patiently sowed over the previous months of hard work,” Gean says with joy. Her success justified her faith in her working philosophy, at a time when many insurance agents were more interested in meeting sales quotas than in helping their clients.

The rest, as they say, is history. “My last drawn pay when I was retrenched had been $1,800 per month. Today, I am earning many times that amount,” she says modestly.

Having gone through her trial by fire, Gean is keen to make sure that her financial planners do not have to go through the same experience. She has set up a unique training system to complement Manulife’s comprehensive training and development programme, called “Head Start”. It is a five-day training programme, based on a system of mentorship and progressive training. It is especially tailored for new planners, to help them set realistic goals, based on what they personally want to achieve in life.

The programme is also aimed at addressing a common concern — new planners are typically worried about their chances for success. The first six months are often the
hardest, as they would be starting with very few leads, and thus very dim prospects of closing any sales.

Thanks to “Head Start” however, every new planner in Gean’s agency has been able to close at least one sale within his first month of work. If the planner were prepared to learn, and to apply all the basic skills, he would be able to gross between $2,000 and $3,000 per month within his fi rst year. By the second year, he would be hitting about $45,000 per annum, and this will quickly snowball into a six-digit figure by his
third to fifth year.

“An income of $100,000 per annum is not uncommon in this industry,” says Gean. “But of course, how far you go will really depend on how much effort you put in. That is the beauty of this career — there is a direct link between effort and reward.”

Be your own boss
To put it another way, Gean feels that top performing financial planners tend to be people who enjoy being their own boss. This is a career where an individual needs to get rid of the “employee mentality”, where one is content to draw a fixed income every month in exchange for minimal effort.

In fact, it would not be wrong to imagine a fi nancial planner as the sole proprietor of his own business. There is no limit to how much a fi nancial planner can potentially make — all it takes is an equal amount of hard work.

Businesses can grow over time, and in a similar way, so do financial planners. If he performs well, a fi nancial planner may become an Associate Manager within two years, and a Manager within another year. His roles and responsibilities would naturally change, because he would then be in charge of growing and mentoring his own team of planners.

Subsequently, if he is up to the challenge, he could then become a Director within another three years. At this level, he would not only have to take care of his managers and financial planners, but also of the various strategic issues related to growing a business, such as training and development.

Today, the Gean Saw Branch boasts a total strength of five managers and 20 financial planners. This is a significant achievement, and Gean personally regards it as her way of giving back to the company that has helped her achieve so much over the years. It is Gean’s dream to build a mega agency of 100 professional and productive financial planners.

Great satisfaction
But Gean derives her greatest satisfaction from another source: her clients.

“The real test comes when it is time for you to handle a claim. You must make it a point to deliver what you have promised,” says Gean. “I make good on this promise by ensuring that my clients or their next-of-kin successfully receive their cheques.”

Her most heartfelt moment came one day, when she personally delivered a cheque to a cancer-stricken client. “So many things had gone wrong, so much emotional and physical pain, and here at last, he received one thing that went right,” says Gean quietly. Her client’s gratitude touched her deeply, and it continues to leave a very strong impression.

For Gean, this is what being a financial planner is really about — a desire to make someone’s life better by taking care of his financial needs. This is what makes her career deeply meaningful. It is something she looks forward to sharing with as many people as possible.

ABOUT MANULIFE
Manulife has revamped its products and services after merging with John Hancock in 2004, along with its compensation scheme and career path structure. Today, Manulife can confidently claim to offer the most competitive fi nancial planner packages in the industry. This is because Manulife regards its fi nancial planners as its most strategic asset.

Gean can be reached at gean.saw@manulife.com.sg and tel: 68338623