Meet Hong Nguyen

Hong is a Customer Support Officer in the Financial Planning team at Empower Wealth. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree with a major in Finance and Marketing.

Transcript

When I’m not working, I like to spend time with my friends and family. We like to catch up for dinner. We like playing board games. Personally, I like bingeing TV shows, trying to keep fit and doing a little bit of reading sometimes as well.

How did you get started in the financial planning industry?

I started at Empower Wealth in August 2019. I was in a similar role, just in another boutique financial planning firm before that.

One of the things I valued most was working in a company that had a great culture.

So they not only valued their clients in the industry, but they also valued their employees. So when I was doing my research about which company I’d wanna work at, I really resonated with Empower Wealth’s core values. And because of that, I truly felt like this was definitely an environment where it would allow me to not only learn from my colleagues but in the business as well as expand my knowledge in the financial services industry.

What role do you play in the whole process?

The customer support team is obviously here to assist in the implementation of advice, recommendations provided by the advisor to the client. So we basically just take all of the advice that’s been provided and we just make it all happen. That really just involves us working closely with both the clients and the advisor on various things such as opening superannuation accounts, we apply for insurances with them, do any super rollovers or open any investment trading accounts as well.

Our aim obviously is to get everything done as quickly and seamlessly as possible cause we understand that there’s usually a lot of moving parts and a lot of information provided around super and insurances that can make it a little bit overwhelming for clients when they first come to us.

So that’s why it’s our job and we want to ensure that this process is as stress-free as possible for them and we’re always obviously with them every step of the way.

What’s one of your most memorable moments at Empower Wealth?

We had a couple come to us and they said they didn’t really have a great experience with the previous financial advisor. So you could tell they were a little hesitant to engage with us at first. By the time they developed trust with the advisor and they came to me to help them implement everything. They knew they were able to just rely on me and I was able to help them implement their new super and insurances. I was able to complete that really seamlessly and really quickly as well.

So they were really grateful to receive help from us.

Super and insurance can sometimes be very confusing to your average person. So for us to really take that on board and be involved in the process and explain it to them in a clear way where our advisors help them and we help them as well, it just makes you feel really nice, especially when we get emails or feedback or calls.

And for this client, we received like a nice little hamper from them so that was really lovely as well. So it really reinforced how valuable the work that we do for clients is.

What advice would you give to someone looking for a Financial Advisor?

I think it’s common for us at any age or stage in our life to really not be aware of how important it is to prepare for your financial future or really sit down and think about like, how much do I need to, how much money do I need to live off each year when I retire or like how much should my super balance be?

And I think as a millennial, you don’t really sit down and think about it.

Our lives also get so busy and we become time poor. So in your head, you just push this back and it’s kind of just sitting there and you’re like, “Oh yeah, I can sort this out later on, it’s fine.”

And then it kind of becomes too late, you know?

It’s also topics like, you know, super, insurance and investing, it’s quite difficult to wrap your head around if you’re just sitting in town and Google it. There’s also so much information and so much resources out there and you don’t know where to start. So that’s why personally I think the Financial Planner is a qualified licensed professional. They’ll be able to sit down with you, break down all of this information in a way that’s simple and easy for you to understand and they can assist you with any of your financial objectives and needs that you wanna achieve.

So if it’s a short term goal or long term goal like retirement or you’re just wanting to start investing or something like that, they are able to sit down with you and really understand your needs what, what you wanna achieve and then yes, tailor recommendations based on that as well.

You can learn more about Hong Nguyen here. Or if you’d like to book an initial consultation with our Financial Planners, simply fill in the form below and we’ll email you the next steps.