MAX Awards honour best of the best

More than 350 industry professionals turned out for Financial Standard's night of nights, honouring the best and brightest in advertising, marketing and sales.

The annual Financial Standard Marketing, Advertising and Sales Excellence (MAX) Awards were presented in Sydney last night, recognising organisations, teams and individuals across 20 different categories.

The biggest winners on the night were BlackRock and Generation Life.

BlackRock won three awards: Website of the Year, Team of the Year - Distribution, and Lawson Enright was recognised as the Rising Star of the Year - Distribution.

The prestigious Team of the Year - Marketing went to Generation Life, which also picked up Campaign of the Year - Financial Education and Integrated Campaign of the Year - Industry for its Not tomorrow's problem initiative.

In addition to Enright's win, the other individual honourees were Franklin Templeton head of consultants and retail sales Louise Thompson who won Executive of the Year - Distribution, Global X's Natalie Jollow who took home Executive of the Year - Marketing, and Katelyn Hynes of Ptarmigan Media who was named Executive of the Year - Agency.

Other winners included Colonial First State, Fidelity International, La Trobe Financial, and UniSuper.

Commenting, Financial Standard executive director of media Michelle Baltazar said: "The awards are a wonderful opportunity for us to showcase leaders in the industry, to challenge others to reach the new benchmarks set each year, and to also share examples of excellence."

"Congratulations to all our winners and finalists in 2025, and we look forward to celebrating with you again next year."

The full list of winners, determined by more than 14,000 votes, can be found here.