After almost six decades in the advice world, Don Trapnell is ready to step away and leave the profession behind. But before he does, Don provided a little history of his life in advice and how the profession has changed over the decades.
To start – when Don joined the industry – it was an industry and not a profession. He was not an adviser but a life agent and by following his path we can see how the industry grew and matured and became a profession.
And we can also see what makes a business successful now hasn’t much changed. Hard work, good people and a great culture was what helped Synchron develop into one of the country’s largest dealer groups – their conferences were memorable, the focus on people and their families and a focus on soft skills alongside the technical learning.
Don’s dealer group Synchron was born in 1998, but Don joined the industry in 1967.
Straight after leaving school, he started working at a company called Federation Insurance Limited as an accountant.
“I wanted to be an accountant. My father said to me, son, be an accountant. Mr. Green, across the road [an accountant] wears a suit to work every day, and he sits in an air-conditioned office on stinking hot days,” Don said.
Don took his advice and took the white-collar pathway and went to Caulfield Tech to become an accountant.
“I was bored witless. I said there’s got to be something different to that,” he said.
Fortunately for Don, Federation Insurance started “a new thing” called life insurance. They started a life branch and Don was one of the foundation members starting as a junior clerk.
He stayed for seven years working in all departments. He then left to join a registered life insurance broker called Sedgwicks as a country executive in the employee benefits division.
From there he was head-hunted by Friends Provident to develop the corporate broker market for them.
“Friends Provident was very strong in tied agents [brokers] but didn’t have many. I built the broker division up to their largest division and the state manager left and I took on the role of state manager.
Not long after that, Don said he had a “light bulb moment” that no matter how hard he worked he was never going to own Friends Provident.
“I picked up my rate book – and it was not as easy as I thought – I saw most clients at night from 4pm, and during the day was out building centres of influence with accountants.”
This became a master agency where Don and his business partners were able to make 10% of what their agents were bringing in so that for every 10 brokers, he was making the average of what they were making.
The beginning of Synchron
Despite the business doing well, Don saw no future in it and so sold the majority ownership to start Synchron, with John Prosser and Paul Riegelhuth. Synchron was a registered life insurance broker and set up their dealer’s licence about two years later.
The partners didn’t draw a wage from Synchron for nearly five years, living on their own insurance sales. Even when they hired their first staff members they paid from their own pockets. In time Synchon had more than 500 representatives.
A lot of the life insurance companies at that time got their own dealer’s licence and turned their agents into financial planners, Don said.
In the early days Don was involved with the predecessor of the AFA, the Life Underwriter’s Association. And was involved with the AFA from its beginnings and is now a member of the FAAA.
Looking back on the industry
In his time in the industry there have been many changes, but the one that he said had the biggest effect on the industry was the Life Insurance Framework (LIF) reforms around commissions. According to Don, this led to a dwindling of the life insurance advice industry.
“The LIF legislation was the worst bit of legislation for an industry any government has ever done and that is proven by the fact that there’s now less than 400 life insurance specialists,” he said.
Education has veered into a more technical area, leaving behind sales skills, Don said. “Selling is not a dirty word. No one is taught how to sell and everyone is selling something.”
“I think maybe the day that we overtook Charter and AMP to become the largest writer of life insurance in Australia, that was that was pretty big,” Don said
“That meant from that day on we protected more Australians than any other licensees in the country.
And he was also proud of the NextGen conference they ran when iPads were first launched.
“They were brand new and we ran a NextGen conference on iPads and we bought $45,000 worth of iPads and every delegate at that conference got an iPad from us.
“And the first lesson of the conference was let's learn how to turn it on.”
Time to say goodbye
Don sold Synchon to WT Financial Group in 2022. “We started negotiations probably nine months earlier when John and I decided it was about time started thinking of retiring.
“Then we had a problem. I’m terrible at golf and I don’t like gardening.”
Fortunately, WT Financial asked Don to stay on as executive director and chairman of Synchron, which he did.
Finally, Don feels it is time to travel with his wife and spend more time with his family.
During a short stint in hospital last year, the fellow in the bed next to him heard Don say he was cancelling his trip to France. “I said, I’ll do it next year and he said, well you’d better make sure you do because we’re running out of next years,” Don said.
“You might not die, but the ability to travel independently becomes harder and harder so you just have to do as much as you can now.
“I think travel is a very big part of what I’ll be doing and fill in my next years of doing that as opposed to sitting there tiptoeing through life hoping to make it safely to death.”
