Leading with trust

Matt Lawler's love for financial advice began at the age of 15, when he put on a nice shirt and a tie to accompany his father, a corporate superannuation adviser, on the road during school holidays.

Lawler remembers walking into a factory as workers called out to his father across the floor, eager to catch up and talk about their super.

On one such visit, he noticed an older worker at the end of the factory line, looking visibly nervous.

"They went into an office and he was very worried. But I can remember he came out with a big smile on his face," Lawler says.

"I guess that cemented my passion for advice right then."

But it was not just the feeling of helping somebody, Lawler was equally drawn to the investment side.

He joined the industry when life insurance was evolving from a culture of sales and products towards the professionalism of regulated financial advice. This suited Lawler's values well.

Lawler began his career in corporate superannuation before becoming executive general manager at MLC and NAB Broker. He later led Yellow Brick Road and served as executive general manager at OneVue before joining Wealth Market as chief executive.

Across these roles, Lawler learned that trust can be a fragile commodity in the industry.

"Even though 99.9% of people can be doing the right thing, it's your weakest link that really does drive the reputation," he says.

He understood this well when he stepped into the role of managing director at AMP Advice in July 2021.

AMP was still facing backflash from the Royal Commission. Among other headwinds, its own advisers had filed a class action against the wealth giant for changing the conditions of its Buyer of Last Resort (BOLR) agreements, significantly reducing the price at which AMP would buy back advisers' client books if they exited the business.

"Heading into an environment like that, there was a lot of mistrust of leadership," he says.

Lawler knew the advisers under the network had borne the brunt of the Royal Commission fallout.

"The sentiment was quite low. I would even characterise it as toxic in some ways," he recalls.

Very quickly, Lawler got out and started speaking with advisers. He wanted to start by fixing the five things most important to them.

They were ensuring transparent and open communication, introducing an approved product list with a wide range of options, updating out of market policy positions, improving templates for advisers to follow and restructuring the licensee fee framework.

Lawler told his team he wanted to achieve this within six months "come hell or high water". He knew to gain back the trust of the community, the team had to show they were actually doing the work rather than just talking the talk.

"At the end of the six months we had delivered on the five things. I wouldn't say it was perfect, but they could see that we actually committed..." he says.

To move forward, Lawler understood AMP had to deal with the big issues of the past. For instance, in November 2023, AMP committed to pay $100 million to settle the BOLR class action, an amount double what it initially provisioned.

Lawler says the first two years were about rebuilding trust in the business. The next phase was to figure out the future of the business.

The key here as well, he says, was giving the advisers a seat at the table.

After multiple roundtables and discussions, the direction was clear, and AMP offloaded its advice business to Entireti.

After the sale, the business needed its own identity. A branding agency was enlisted and Lawler sent out a shortlist of potential names for the advisers to vote on, something the branding agency advised him against.

Akumin was the clear favourite.

"People felt like they had an influence on which brand we chose. When that brand was launched, it was already well understood," he says.

The transition, Lawler says, was a monumental task undertaken by the efforts of Akumin, Entireti and AMP. He adds Entireti group chief executive Neil Younger has been a terrific sponsor of the process, helping the broader AMP Advice team integrate well.

A year on, Akumin is taking on a life of its own. But for Lawler the job is never done.

He feels the business can sometimes be pigeonholed as just "the licensee", but he wants more for Akumin.

Along with licensing, Akumin helps the network improve efficiency through technology support, broadening services, professional development and connecting the community with one another.

Adviser satisfaction - tracked through a survey Lawler launched in his first month at AMP - has risen over the years, reaching its highest level of 82% in December 2025.

Central to his vision of staying ahead is anticipating the 'next big thing' in the industry.

First is a reaction to what is going on in the advice industry with the fallout of the Shield and First Guardian collapses.

"We have to, once again, rebuild our reputation with the community and with government," he says.

"That means we have a lot of contact with our advisers and looking at the advice they produce, and giving them feedback, and also dealing with areas of substandard performance."

Lawler notes Akumin has one of the most resourced supervision and monitoring programs in the marketplace, and he doesn't shy away from that.

"I do hear a lot of people saying they never hear from their licensee and that worries me,"
Lawler says.

"Even though people might be doing the right thing, it's still good to get feedback on how your advice benchmarks against somebody else's."

His long-term mission is to help the network prepare for the artifical intelligence (AI) revolution. Last year, Akumin took the simple first step to help advisers integrate AI to take file notes.

"We had specialist resources who were available to go into practices to show them how to do that," Lawler says, adding the second phase is now using AI to produce advice.

Lawler says as a senior executive in the advice space, he recognises his role in adhering to the highest possible standards to set the right example for the community.

"It's not about doing edgy things and doing risky things. It's fundamentally about doing the right thing by the customer," he says.

"Making sure that financial advice is doing the right thing by people is something of a moral compass for me."

Forty years after his initial brush with advice, Lawler remains passionate as ever about advice, feeling he was almost born into it.

He says: "It's great to have a career which is a lifelong passion as well." fs