How money can buy you honey

Annette Wassmer-Tirol gets up every morning for a job that aims to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos. The thought perks her up more than a double espresso.

As SVP for sales at HSBC, she aims to create wealth opportunities for others.  And by empowering people with financial security, who knows? She just might be more successful than President Arroyo in bringing this nation to its feet.

Annette, wife to Martin Tirol and mom to Gabriel, 8, and Francesca, 6, will surely laugh this off as a hyperbole.

But I won’t.

Annette manages the 800-person strong sales team of HSBC, and aside from selling credit cards, she sells the idea, nay, the reality, of wealth. How to create wealth and if you already have it, how to keep it.

“For example, a lot of people start off with a savings account, and then put it in time deposit or auto saver. Others come in with a hundred thousand and they’re saying, ‘I’d like to do more than put this in time deposit. I’d like to invest it more.’ So we have the discussion with them, we call it a financial checkup.”

Annette says we often have check-ups for our skin, our hair, even our cars. But our finances? Most of us think we cannot afford a financial adviser, one who’s going to guide us through our financial growth the way a pediatrician will guide a baby through his teething stage.

“Oh, you can walk in anytime and have a financial checkup,” assures Annette. “You don’t even have to be a client of HSBC to avail yourself of a financial checkup. We’re actually telling people to call up if you want a team to go to you. Because before you get to your goals, someone will have to help you pave the way. People oftentimes ask, ‘Tell me what product I should get.’ Me, I say, I can’t tell you outright. Finances are not that way. I need to understand first what your goals are, what is your definition of short-term and long-term. Every person has his own short-term, medium-term goal. Depending on that goal, there are different products out there to help you in your savings plan. There’s no one silver bullet for us all. All of us are different,” she says.

“They may say, I could take risks,” continues Annette. “But when you start to ask the hard questions, that’s not true. We are different in terms of our risk appetite. So as we go through the financial checkup, you’re able to get a sense of who you are as an investor, and given that profile, what should I match to you. At the end of they day, you will choose. I will not choose for you. But my job is to make sure that I understand you and I lay out the opportunities for you to look at. Some people after that say, ‘I’m intimidated.’ No problem, set it aside then read the options when you’re ready. Some people would say, ‘I’m such a gastadora. There’s nothing to save.’ Okay, then let’s talk about how to start the saving. You don’t have to come with a bayong of cash. It starts from, ‘Okay, how do we start the saving’?”

Annette says HSBC has Powervantage for those who are starting out, and Premier for the more affluent category.

For Powervantage, they give financial advice to people who are setting aside their first P100,000.

The product and complete service for the more affluent is Premier banking, which is really a global proposition. “If you’re a Premier customer here and you go abroad, you’re a Premier customer abroad. If your children go to school abroad, it makes the transition so easy for you. It’s a relationship manager who is there to help you and keep you abreast. “Every Monday, we send an SMS to our customers to update them about the market, the currencies, everything you see in the newspaper, but we’re putting this all together for you,” points out Annette, whose first job after college was with another international bank. “That’s what the relationship manager brings to the people. The relationship manager has access to the client, they are in constant contact. So in the relationship with them, they share ideas. We do market watches also, where we share views from our team of market specialists, given these trends, about what is going to happen.”

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Annette, the youngest of  Leo and Adela Wassmer’s seven children (she is 20 years younger than her eldest brother), says HSBC also wants to guide brand-new cardholders through the sometimes  tricky credit-card route.

“They’re probably deciding on their first job and getting their first credit card and learning how to manage credit all at the same time,” she says.

“What we offer them is a relationship with the card. Let’s talk about how you spend on your card, how to use your card wisely. Then let’s start talking about saving, how do you start saving. We’re looking at the profile of so many young people –– first time on the job. We have a lot of young people. You see how some of them have the newest cellphone and gadgets all the time, everything is new, branded, but they don’t save. It makes you understand that you have to start helping people understand how to save.”

“It doesn’t mean that just because we’re a card company, we want people to spend over and beyond their means. We don’t want that. We want to teach the population how to manage their spending habits before they enter the deep end.”

In other words, Annette really wants to spread the wealth around. Because it can be done, with the right management of one’s money.

“There’s a population out there that wants help in becoming financially stable, but the question is, how. It’s like a diet. I want to be fit. You ask around, how did you lose weight? Some say, they went to a doctor. My quest is to bring the knowledge to the customers. The insight to us is you have to make sure that you’re constantly educating your customer base, particularly your card base. While they’re young, while they’re on their first year, second year in the job, how do you teach them to remain financially sound? To me, that’s fertile land. The others in the extreme are those you can’t talk into saving money just yet. So you need to talk to them on how to use their card properly. Once you have that, you talk to them about savings.”

I asked Annette if she believes her team can change the country by educating people on their spending and saving habits.

“No, not the country,” she smiles. “But every day, you go out and help more people in their mindset –– I think that makes a difference.”

“I think our project is to make ourselves available for people who are ready to say, ‘I want to save, I want to start...”

Ideally, how much money should we save?

“For emergency purposes, we should have saved up to six months our monthly income. But on a monthly basis, you could just set aside at least 20 percent of your take-home before expenses. Other people save after they spend. You should put your savings in a different account. Kung anong naiwan, yun ngayon ang operating fund. Kasi for other people, it’s the reverse. I pay all my bills, kung anong natira will go to the savings. You budget.”

Annette says one should treat one’s savings account as a utility that must be paid. “You are actually paying yourself and you put it out of the operating fund. The fresh grads, they don’t know that because they only have one account. So it’s for everything.”

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We have doctors, instructors and advisers for everything and anything, but most of us –– unless we’re big-time –– don’t really have an adviser on how to build wealth.

Thank God there are people like Annette Tirol and her team who give us prescriptions to good financial health. How to avoid the buildup of financial cholesterol that clogs the road to prosperity.

For nowadays, when you know that you have enough money in the bank for an emergency, for Junior’s tuition and maybe a second honeymoon, money can buy you happiness.

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