One of the things we are going to hear a lot about this year is the adviser taskforce.

The thought that I have been pondering for the past few weeks is Helen Clark’s cabinet reshuffle late last year that saw Pete Hodgson move into the Minister of Commerce role, now that Margaret Wilson is going to become the speaker.

My interest in this is that the minister is the one who appointed the taskforce. As I mentioned before to try and understand where the taskforce will go you probably have to look at it from this angle.

The man heading the group is a lawyer and he is likely to tackle the project from the viewpoint of “who is his client”.

Now he has a “new client” does his brief change at all?

Also interesting is that this is the third Commerce Minister in about a year. Lianne Dalziel seemed genuinely interested in looking at the adviser issue, and all reports are that she was getting some good dialogue going with key stakeholders.

Wilson, much to everyone’s surprise, launched the taskforce. Hodgson. What will he do?

Hodgson is considered to be one of the “greener” ministers, and he is also on the left hand side of the political spectrum.

People who have dealt with him in industry reckon that where he doesn’t have an ideological preconception he is pretty open to discussion – a bit like Michael Cullen in that regard.

He has a reputation as being the sort of minister who loves asking for report after report.

Clearly one of the risks is that the taskforce maybe just the first in a number of reports. Let’s hope not.

Good Returns has tried to interview him on the subject, but we have been told that it will be at least a month until he has got up to speed with the issue.

No surprise really as he is a particularly busy guy being the Minister of Transport, Commerce, Land Information and Statistics as well as being the Associate Minister of Health and the Associate Minister for Industry and Regional Development. To top it all off he is the Convenor of the Ministerial Group on Climate Change

To me it suggests the issue isn’t top of his agenda. Or he maybe another stop gap commerce minister as there is a rumour he will get the health portfolio after the election.

Time will tell.

To me the start of the year is an enjoyable time. After a good long break at the beach I get back to work full of enthusiasm and ready to implement lots of new fresh ideas.

Coming back to the office this year is a little different. I’ve had a poignant reminder about one of the things l like about the financial services industry and why I have stayed involved with it for more than 15 years.

Simply it’s the people.

Over the weekend I found out that Glenn Thompson, an adviser based in Fielding, had died from a heart attack. Glenn wasn’t particularly well-known in the industry as he didn’t belong to the FPIA or anything like that. But he was a member of SIFA and it is at their conferences that I got to know GT.

He was one of those blokes who love to talk and share a story.

While he wasn’t one of these high profile guys he epitomised some of the great qualities I find amongst advisers. He was a likeable guy who wanted to help people.

I’ve talked to a few other people about GT. One former BT business development manager described him as the client services team’s “favourite adviser”.

Here’s what he said: “Some of the things he did just made our day. He would always remind us that we worked for a great company. He’d write to BT’s CEO to tell him that he liked dealing with us.

“He’d also write to tell us what he thought of new services we had implemented, or changes that we made. He was always constructive, and always encouraging.

“Glenn would ask the young Client Services Representatives if they had a savings plan, and if they didn’t, he’d encourage them to get started. One thing with Glenn though was he’d love to chat – so you knew you’d be on the phone for a while when you heard his familiar greeting “gidday my boy, GT here”.

In many ways its guys like GT, not all the technical stuff, the markets and the product, that make the financial services industry such a great place to be.