An insider at Storm Financial is back in business, writes Stuart Washington.
Jodie Nolan is walking and talking a fine line. On one hand the bright, charming woman sitting next to me at lunch is at ease in a world of opportunity. There's a book, a business she has founded and her telegenic good looks appear to suit her aspirations for a reality television show. On the drawing board is something like a budget boot camp for hapless people's household finances. Or, as I reformulate it, a super nanny for budget retards.
The book, the business, the seminars, the talks, the TV project, the full-time personal assistant - all fit Nolan's current passion for financial literacy. She expresses a keen desire to lift the sorry state of financial education in this country, particularly for women and children.
Her worthy goals and strong sales skills are gaining a wide audience for a subject that in other hands would be deadly dull. On the day we meet at restaurant King 143 in downtown Sydney she has just appeared on Seven's Sunrise program. In the next week she is booked to appear on The Circle and The Project.
Not that Nolan, 36, is trying to hide a secret past. Her book's title, Surviving the Storm, invites the difficult questions. Those questions centre on Nolan's role as a financial planner inside a company called Storm Financial, responsible for one of the biggest investment collapses in Australia's history.
You can see the fine line. On a favourable perspective, Nolan is relying on her experiences to learn from past mistakes and promote her new (profit-making) vision.
On a less positive view, Nolan was a financial planner whose advice cost her former clients a boatload of money. Some lost their life savings. And now she wants to talk about financial literacy?
There's a lot to like about Nolan. A country-girl warmth shines through repeatedly, possibly an echo of childhood years on Melville Island north of Darwin before moving as a nine-year-old to the sun-kissed Sunshine Coast.
A lunch with Nolan is punctuated with a fond farewell to the Herald photographer - "Thank-you sweetie" - and exclamations about the arriving food - "Thank-you darling, that looks wonderful"; "Wowee, that looks fabulous too."
The focus for these utterances are seared scallops and calamari spring rolls followed by her order of well-done salmon. There is some banter about whether she will have some of the bowl of shared chips. As far as I can see she doesn't.
The rough edges of her upbringing also poke through, and that's not a bad thing in this media-managed age. A former colleague is "slimy"; the word "fricking" is very occasionally used as an adjective.
Storm Financial was the Townsville-bred financial planner that collapsed with $3 billion in investment losses in late 2008, ruining retirement plans for thousands of mainly elderly Australians.
The marketing of Nolan's book is based on a formula of riches to rags to (possibly) riches again, after she lost it all when Storm collapsed.
The press release states: "She shares her inspiring experience of how she started with nothing and went on to make millions. In fact she was a self-made millionaire by the age of 29. Jodie then shares with us how she lost it all and how she is now building her wealth back again."
You can imagine how poorly this sales spiel is going down with some former Storm clients, given Nolan's role inside the Storm machine.
Nolan doesn't duck the hard questions over lunch. But that doesn't mean she gives convincing answers.
In 2005 Nolan, then known as Jodie McIver, joined Jelich Jones, the Maroochydore office of a financial planner dealing in Storm's products.
It followed a career in which she reached the position as "number one financial adviser" for ANZ.
(Observers of financial planning may pause to wonder about an industry in which a 20-something person with - at that stage - no university education can reach such dizzy heights, all the time advising people about their life savings.)
In her book, the first chapter relates her experiences inside Storm Financial. The rest of the book offers uncontroversial details about the basics of finance, budgeting and investing, sprinkled with a dusting of "you-can-do-it" self-belief stuff.
To hear Nolan tell it, her role within Storm was as a small cog in a big machine, even if she had legal responsibilities to ensure customers received the right advice.
Storm's business model was all about debt. Customers were encouraged to take out a mortgage over their houses, then that cash was used as the basis for another loan. Storm then invested the full amount in the stockmarket.
This model of trusted advisers advocating a strategy of debt-on-debt led to situations such as Tracey Richards, then a 46-year-old receptionist on a salary of $45,000, accumulating a margin loan of $1.48 million to invest in the stockmarket.
When the markets crashed in September 2008, the investments were sold to pay the margin loans. Many Storm clients were left owing the full amount of their home loans. Richards ended up in a caravan park.
What still rankles former Storm clients is the 7 per cent fee they paid to Storm on the whole investment amount - a practice now outlawed.
Confusingly, many former staff within Storm Financial have identified themselves as victims of the fallout, partly based on their own investments in the unstable scheme and partly by blaming banks which loaned the money.
There's a familiar flavour of the staffer-as-victim in Nolan's explanations. She and her husband Peter followed the Storm model. Storm's founder, Emmanuel Cassimatis, was her financial planner.
Nolan says a couple of times during lunch: "We have lost more than anyone I know."
On Cassimatis's advice, Nolan says in June 2008 she sold an investment property and used the $700,000 in cash as the basis for a margin loan. She then invested the lot in the stockmarket, paying Storm $80,000 commission along the way.
(And now she wants to talk about financial literacy?)
When it all fell down in late 2008 - while Nolan was nursing her three-week-old baby on maternity leave - she was left with a debt of $1.34 million on her house, which she is still repaying.
In the book there are passages that smack of outright denial about Storm's collapse. Nolan writes: "Academically it was the perfect wealth system - use someone else's money to make money, buy low and sell high."
At lunch, she is more open about the impact her work with Storm had on her former clients, describing it as "beyond horrendous".
At this stage during lunch the sunny facade falters and Nolan holds back tears. She tells of depression, getting a prescription for sleeping tablets and writing a suicide note about what to do with her life insurance payout.
"It breaks my heart even just thinking about it. I left a note about how the money was to be divvied up, all the people I had to pay back, it was awful," she says.
A rescuing call from a friend, an intervention by her extended family and a $50,000 loan from her husband's parents and Nolan was on her way back.
During lunch, Nolan tells her own story of a studious fat kid from the Sunshine Coast who lost weight, dyed her hair blonde and became extremely popular when she moved to a co-educational school in year 11.
There is a sense from an upbeat Nolan that she is on a path to a similar conversion. The past and its shadows are being swept away. They hardly rate a mention when she does feel-good television spots.
Like a good saleswoman, she inspires trust and confidence. And, indeed, that's what she was with Storm: "It was a sales role. They would train us on the adversities you would come up against for paying up-front fees."
As for her responsibility, she gets closest to it towards the end of lunch when she says: ""No excuses. I was involved. I was there. I put my family in it because I believed in it so much."
Then life moves on; the restaurant bill is paid. It's off to the next step in selling the importance of being financially literate.
Jodie Nolan is walking and talking a fine line. On one hand the bright, charming woman sitting next to me at lunch is at ease in a world of opportunity. There's a book, a business she has founded and her telegenic good looks appear to suit her aspirations for a reality television show. On the drawing board is something like a budget boot camp for hapless people's household finances. Or, as I reformulate it, a super nanny for budget retards.
The book, the business, the seminars, the talks, the TV project, the full-time personal assistant - all fit Nolan's current passion for financial literacy. She expresses a keen desire to lift the sorry state of financial education in this country, particularly for women and children.
Her worthy goals and strong sales skills are gaining a wide audience for a subject that in other hands would be deadly dull. On the day we meet at restaurant King 143 in downtown Sydney she has just appeared on Seven's Sunrise program. In the next week she is booked to appear on The Circle and The Project.
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On the other hand, there are shadows in the Queenslander's past that threaten the personable image of financial efficiency that she portrays so brightly.Not that Nolan, 36, is trying to hide a secret past. Her book's title, Surviving the Storm, invites the difficult questions. Those questions centre on Nolan's role as a financial planner inside a company called Storm Financial, responsible for one of the biggest investment collapses in Australia's history.
You can see the fine line. On a favourable perspective, Nolan is relying on her experiences to learn from past mistakes and promote her new (profit-making) vision.
On a less positive view, Nolan was a financial planner whose advice cost her former clients a boatload of money. Some lost their life savings. And now she wants to talk about financial literacy?
There's a lot to like about Nolan. A country-girl warmth shines through repeatedly, possibly an echo of childhood years on Melville Island north of Darwin before moving as a nine-year-old to the sun-kissed Sunshine Coast.
A lunch with Nolan is punctuated with a fond farewell to the Herald photographer - "Thank-you sweetie" - and exclamations about the arriving food - "Thank-you darling, that looks wonderful"; "Wowee, that looks fabulous too."
The focus for these utterances are seared scallops and calamari spring rolls followed by her order of well-done salmon. There is some banter about whether she will have some of the bowl of shared chips. As far as I can see she doesn't.
The rough edges of her upbringing also poke through, and that's not a bad thing in this media-managed age. A former colleague is "slimy"; the word "fricking" is very occasionally used as an adjective.
Storm Financial was the Townsville-bred financial planner that collapsed with $3 billion in investment losses in late 2008, ruining retirement plans for thousands of mainly elderly Australians.
The marketing of Nolan's book is based on a formula of riches to rags to (possibly) riches again, after she lost it all when Storm collapsed.
The press release states: "She shares her inspiring experience of how she started with nothing and went on to make millions. In fact she was a self-made millionaire by the age of 29. Jodie then shares with us how she lost it all and how she is now building her wealth back again."
You can imagine how poorly this sales spiel is going down with some former Storm clients, given Nolan's role inside the Storm machine.
Nolan doesn't duck the hard questions over lunch. But that doesn't mean she gives convincing answers.
In 2005 Nolan, then known as Jodie McIver, joined Jelich Jones, the Maroochydore office of a financial planner dealing in Storm's products.
It followed a career in which she reached the position as "number one financial adviser" for ANZ.
(Observers of financial planning may pause to wonder about an industry in which a 20-something person with - at that stage - no university education can reach such dizzy heights, all the time advising people about their life savings.)
In her book, the first chapter relates her experiences inside Storm Financial. The rest of the book offers uncontroversial details about the basics of finance, budgeting and investing, sprinkled with a dusting of "you-can-do-it" self-belief stuff.
To hear Nolan tell it, her role within Storm was as a small cog in a big machine, even if she had legal responsibilities to ensure customers received the right advice.
Storm's business model was all about debt. Customers were encouraged to take out a mortgage over their houses, then that cash was used as the basis for another loan. Storm then invested the full amount in the stockmarket.
This model of trusted advisers advocating a strategy of debt-on-debt led to situations such as Tracey Richards, then a 46-year-old receptionist on a salary of $45,000, accumulating a margin loan of $1.48 million to invest in the stockmarket.
When the markets crashed in September 2008, the investments were sold to pay the margin loans. Many Storm clients were left owing the full amount of their home loans. Richards ended up in a caravan park.
What still rankles former Storm clients is the 7 per cent fee they paid to Storm on the whole investment amount - a practice now outlawed.
Confusingly, many former staff within Storm Financial have identified themselves as victims of the fallout, partly based on their own investments in the unstable scheme and partly by blaming banks which loaned the money.
There's a familiar flavour of the staffer-as-victim in Nolan's explanations. She and her husband Peter followed the Storm model. Storm's founder, Emmanuel Cassimatis, was her financial planner.
Nolan says a couple of times during lunch: "We have lost more than anyone I know."
On Cassimatis's advice, Nolan says in June 2008 she sold an investment property and used the $700,000 in cash as the basis for a margin loan. She then invested the lot in the stockmarket, paying Storm $80,000 commission along the way.
(And now she wants to talk about financial literacy?)
When it all fell down in late 2008 - while Nolan was nursing her three-week-old baby on maternity leave - she was left with a debt of $1.34 million on her house, which she is still repaying.
In the book there are passages that smack of outright denial about Storm's collapse. Nolan writes: "Academically it was the perfect wealth system - use someone else's money to make money, buy low and sell high."
At lunch, she is more open about the impact her work with Storm had on her former clients, describing it as "beyond horrendous".
At this stage during lunch the sunny facade falters and Nolan holds back tears. She tells of depression, getting a prescription for sleeping tablets and writing a suicide note about what to do with her life insurance payout.
"It breaks my heart even just thinking about it. I left a note about how the money was to be divvied up, all the people I had to pay back, it was awful," she says.
A rescuing call from a friend, an intervention by her extended family and a $50,000 loan from her husband's parents and Nolan was on her way back.
During lunch, Nolan tells her own story of a studious fat kid from the Sunshine Coast who lost weight, dyed her hair blonde and became extremely popular when she moved to a co-educational school in year 11.
There is a sense from an upbeat Nolan that she is on a path to a similar conversion. The past and its shadows are being swept away. They hardly rate a mention when she does feel-good television spots.
Like a good saleswoman, she inspires trust and confidence. And, indeed, that's what she was with Storm: "It was a sales role. They would train us on the adversities you would come up against for paying up-front fees."
As for her responsibility, she gets closest to it towards the end of lunch when she says: ""No excuses. I was involved. I was there. I put my family in it because I believed in it so much."
Then life moves on; the restaurant bill is paid. It's off to the next step in selling the importance of being financially literate.
