More than ever, the success of face-to-face advisers depends on their ability to increase productivity while meeting the complex and unique business needs of individual customers. This conference is specifically designed for top advisers with the aim of helping them make the most of market opportunities through motivation and the development of financial planning skills.

Building on the success of the last three years, the fourth LIMRA/MDRT financial advisers conference brings together the best producers in Europe to share technical knowledge, sales techniques and client management processes while promoting ethical conduct and professionalism.

This is the number one event designed specifically for top European financial advisers, with the aim of helping them to make the most of market opportunities through motivation and the development of financial planning skills.

J.G.P. Bonello, managing director of Financial Planning Services Ltd of Ta’ Xbiex, and area chairman for Europe – Zone 3 – of the Million Dollar Round Table, will be the keynote speaker today, with a 45-minute presentation entitled: Professionals of Character, Calibre and Congruence.

In the technical part of his presentation, he will review the vital role of the independent financial adviser in today’s world – where the consumer suffers from an overload of massive amounts of conflicting and confusing information. Mr Bonello maintains that: “Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not experience and experience is not wisdom.”

Mr Bonello has gained international recognition as an acclaimed keynote speaker at wealth management conferences in the UK, the USA, Canada, the Far East, Spain, Italy – and earlier this year – in the ex-communist new EU member states Hungary and Poland.

In a review of what is still considered to be the weather vane of the world’s stockmarkets – the Dow Jones Industrial Average – Mr Bonello discusses the striking similarity between the Great New Era Bull Market of the 1920s and the Dot Com Bull Market of the 1990s, and looks ahead to the Dow Jones levels at the end of the first decade of the new millennium.

Regarding the personal qualities of independent advisers, Mr. Bonello draws analogies to the five circles of the Olympic flag, and on practice management, to the passing of the Olympic torch. An interesting coincidence is that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was first published in May 1896 – the same year that the Olympic Games of the modern era began in Athens.