In 1964, Lambert began his career as a young banker within Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s finance division.
During his early years with the bank, he studied accounting at university and then by correspondence after being transferred to Papua New Guinea.
While many may have packed up and moved home, country boy Lambert thrived, captaining the region’s cricket and football team.
He was so welcomed into the community that he was asked to try out for the Papua New Guinea rugby union side, and if trials weren’t on the same weekend he was returning home on leave, history may have been different.
Upon returning to Australia, Lambert became a cadet executive, training with the bank along with a fellow called David Murray. Murray would later become the bank’s managing director.
At this stage of his life, Lambert was married and had two mortgages – one from the bank proper and one from a credit union. As well as securing his first investment property and qualifying as an accountant, the repayments on his loans prompted one of his first big ideas.
“I applied to the bank to see if I could do some tax returns after hours, because I worked in the city and at that time I was working in the bank’s finance company, CBFC [Commonwealth Bank Finance Company],” Lambert says.
“So the bank approved me to do tax returns after hours so I could help pay the mortgage. So I guess the point is that it’s all come out of necessity.”
Lambert called his new venture After Hours Tax Services. He put an advertisement in the Yellow Pages and after a stream of phone calls came in from people requesting help from all over Sydney, a second big idea came to him. He began advertising work for accountants, creating a referral network of accountants.
As the group of accountants grew, so did the Yellow Pages advertisement. It was at this point Lambert gained notice with GIO and AMP knocking on his door.
Instead of taking any of the firms up on their offer, Lambert investigated his referral business idea on his own. He attended industry seminars and formed the view that accountants, not salespeople should be giving financial advice.
In August 1980, he formed his own accounting company. Operating from offices under his house, he initially named the company after the name of his house, Vailima, which had poetic reference to letters written by Robert Louis Stevenson while he was living at Vailima in Samoa.
Lambert later changed the name to Investment and Tax Services, before being struck by five letters literally within his own profession – ac-COUNT-ant.
Today, Count Financial is Australia’s largest accountant-driven financial advisory firm, with more than 864 financial advisers, more than 418 practices and about $10.6 billion in funds under advice.
In the 30 years since Count Financial’s formation, Lambert openly admits many have offered to buy him out.
“Over the years a lot of people have wanted to buy Count and I used to not think about it too much because Count was never about selling out to anybody,” he says.
“It was originally about getting accountants involved in financial advice and providing competition to these salespeople. That was the only thing that drove me.”
Lambert recalls it was a stockbroker from Melbourne who first approached him over a sale, then a friendly society and, of course, the major banks.
He has had two serious offers over the years: one for $135 million and another for $150 million. Though rather than selling interest in the firm to external parties, the company chairman stayed true to his independence and instead listed the firm, giving its own member firms a chance of obtaining equity.
“I always knew there was a strong role for independence and I still believe one of our great attributes is that we’re independent of institutions and therefore our advisers understand that,” he says.
“I’m not saying that someone who works for a bank can’t give good advice, but it’s just a perception from a client’s point of view.”
Lambert is of the view that the firm will keep accountants who want to belong to Count independent of institutions for as long as possible.
“I believe in 20 to 30 years time when I’m not here that Count will be out there as a force that’s independent of all those other so-called major institutions. But I guess by then I might be a so-called institution itself, which means it will be no different to the rest,” he says with a laugh.
