What a big bank teaches you about being a better adviser

Alex Thompson has a habit of cutting through. Ask him what financial advice is really about, and he does not reach for a framework or a product menu. He reaches for a fact of life.

“We are all going to die one day,” he says, with the matter-of-fact calm of someone who has sat across the table from enough clients to know that this is where the honest conversation has to start. “So let’s get super clear about what life you actually want to live and work backwards from there.”

It is not the kind of opener you learn at a big bank. But then Thompson did not come to advice through the conventional door. He spent years as a director in ANZ’s institutional banking division, building a career around markets, capital management and institutional investors.

The work was intellectually demanding. The rewards were real. And, eventually, it was not enough.

“I wanted to do something I’d genuinely enjoy every day and have a bit more control over my own destiny,” he says. “It sounds cliché, but it’s just the truth.”

A deliberate move

The decision to leave institutional banking was not impulsive. Thompson spent time inside IFA businesses through his prior role, gaining an unusual vantage point on what good advice actually looks like in practice.

That exposure mattered. It gave him an appreciation for the profession that most career changers do not arrive with. When the time came to make the move, he knew what he was stepping into. He took a pay cut. He has not looked back.

Today, Thompson works as an adviser at Viola Private Wealth, a boutique private wealth management firm advising on around $2.5 billion on behalf of wealthy individuals and families. His clients include successful business owners, senior executives, family offices and not-for-profit groups. The common thread is not their balance sheet size. It is the weight of the decisions they are facing.

“The most rewarding part of the job is helping people navigate significant moments in their lives,” he says. “Being the person they can turn to for an independent, unbiased perspective when important decisions need to be made.” Business exits, inheritances, property sales, structuring for the next generation: these are the conversations that fill his weeks. No two are the same.

The institutional background has proved more transferable than he might have expected. Not the jargon, not the product sophistication. The underlying frameworks.

“Diversification, long-term decision making, managing risk appropriately and remaining disciplined,” he says. “These are all perspectives I apply to my clients’ personal balance sheets.” The numbers are different. The logic is the same.

“A portfolio is simply a means to an end. It’s easy for people to become fixated on a constant pursuit of accumulating assets and lose sight of what the money is actually for.”

Simplicity as discipline

One of the things Thompson says has genuinely surprised him about this career is how little clients actually want complexity. The people he works with are intelligent, commercially sophisticated. The people he works with are intelligent, commercially sophisticated. They could handle sophisticated dialogue if they wanted it. But they do not want it.

“They don’t want fancy words or complexity for complexity’s sake,” he says. “They just want someone who can simplify things, cut through the noise and help them make good decisions.”

From the outside, financial advice looks like a technical exercise. From the inside, Thompson has concluded it is something else entirely. “The job is actually fundamentally about being human more than anything else.”

That perspective shapes everything from how he frames an initial client meeting to how he thinks about the profession’s purpose. Good advice, in his view, is not about demonstrating intellectual range. It is about linking every recommendation back to what the client is actually trying to achieve.

“You can have a technically perfect strategy,” he says. “If it doesn’t fit the person sitting in front of you, it’s not good advice.”

His view on portfolios captures the philosophy neatly. “A portfolio is simply a means to an end,” he says, and he says it often, because he sees how easily even financially literate people lose the thread. The accumulation instinct is powerful. It can crowd out the question of what the money is for. Thompson sees part of his job as keeping that question alive.

The case for the profession

Thompson is candid about the friction in the current operating environment. The regulatory framework, he believes, is broadly sound in its intent. The execution has made advice harder to deliver than it needs to be.

“There is too much friction, too much process in the production of retail advice and too many barriers that don’t improve outcomes,” he says. “Australians need access to good advice more than ever, particularly as they get older and their lives become more complicated.”

He is more optimistic when the subject turns to the profession’s appeal for the next generation. Many graduates, he observes, gravitate towards funds management or investment banking because they assume advice is less exciting. He disagrees.

“This can be an incredibly rewarding career, both financially and professionally,” he says. “The world of advice can offer so much more. It gives you the chance to do work that has a real impact on people’s lives.”

What the textbooks do not prepare new entrants for, he adds, is the weight of the human side. Technical skills can be taught. The ability to understand someone, apply emotional intelligence to complex problem-solving, and help people make good decisions under pressure: that takes longer. “Just be prepared that the job is far more human than most people expect,” he says.

Life outside the office

Outside the office, Thompson’s compass is his family. His wife Lauren and two young children, Lola and Hugo, absorb most of the time not claimed by clients and strategy work.

He grew up surfing and still gets out when he can. The ocean, and the pace it demands, have a way of resetting perspective. So, he says, do the children.

“They remind you of what really matters. Money can be an enabler but it’s about how you choose to spend your time, how you look after the people around you, and the kind of life you want to live.”

It is, almost exactly, the advice he gives his clients.