Staff Reporter
Palesa Dube, a Certified Financial Planner and director of advisory practice Wealth Creed in Sandton, has been crowned by the Financial Planning Institute (FPI) as its Financial Planner of the Year for 2022/23. She received her award at the FPI’s annual gala dinner at Fourways, coming in ahead of the other two finalists, Thomas Brukman and Philippus Hendrik Spies.
The demanding contest included candidates submitting a detailed financial plan based on a given case study, an ethics and practice standards audit, and a final panel interview testing their grasp of legislation and industry trends.
The judges commended Dube for proving herself to be “the best out of a very tough line-up through the depth of her knowledge, the impressive detail of her financial plans and her personal commitment to her clients”.
Overjoyed on winning this high honour, Dube emphasised the importance for households of financial planning: “Financial planning is needed by families today more than ever before. Our clients need us to be keenly attuned to their personal values and how these influence their financial and legacy aspirations. As professionals we need to respond to this need with more than just our technical skills but more with a deep sense of care.”
The outgoing Financial Planner of the Year, Ryan McCaughey, of Hewett Wealth in Cape Town, said: “Being the Financial Planner of the Year has been both a rewarding and humbling experience, yet it has been an amazing journey that benefited our financial planning practice and me in more ways than I could ever have imagined.”
Lelané Bezuidenhout, CEO of the FPI, was full of praise for everyone who entered and for planners who won other awards at the event: “All the respect to the winners for the years of dedication and hard work they have put in, which has taken them to where they are today. Their commitment reminds us that hard work, dedication and professionalism, rather than luck, are the only things that can guarantee success.”