Who we are
Our story began with an email, willing and open hearts, and caring experts who generously want to share their skills in wealth management.
While working for INQUIRER.net, the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s online edition, journalist Ma. Salve Duplito cooked up a social experiment in 2008. She asked readers who wanted to be coached by a financial planner to volunteer for the experiment, on condition that they would be willing to share their story with the world. By following their progress for one year through the INQUIRER.net network’s MoneySmarts blog, the experiment would illustrate that it is possible to break from debt or payday-to-payday existence. "Filipinos don’t need another academic article or another Sermon on the Mount on personal finance. It’s time we see how it can really be done," she thought. A panel of editors chose a single male and a couple -- "financial babies" with not a checking account to their name.
A huge part of the experiment was getting two financial planners who had the experience, expertise, and the generosity. They would have to share their time and knowledge for free. One of those chosen was Augustus J.V. Ferreria, then senior executive vice-president of Generali Pilipinas. Joe wasted no time in expertly unraveling what had previously been personal financial puzzles for the couple—for example, why Bianca is wracked with guilt when she spends even when she can afford the item or why Diego could not save anything that he puts in his wallet. An expert on heuristics, Joe showed that the road to real wealth could be bumpy but with discipline and the right guidance, dreams are possible to achieve. He proved that financial planning is not about the money. All sacrifices—pride, time, and giving up that gotta-have-it mentality—will result to not just higher net income but happier relationships and a more secure future.
The money makeover experiment ended very successfully in 2009 (read article in PDI), but the friendship within the group flourished. Bianca and Nannette Ferreria, Joe’s wife, became fast friends and started dreaming of a financial planning company that would replicate the couple’s learnings to create a million Filipino millionaires. Everything started falling into place like a series of serendipitous moments especially with the unique skills brought on by each of the three couples: Joe and Nannette as the backbone of the firm’s financial planning practice, Diego the artist who took care of the company’s design needs, Bianca the lawyer who ensures seamless solutions to estate planning cases, Salve the journalist who handles the firm’s publishing arm, and Dan the information security expert and programmer who makes sure that in this day and age of identity theft and other related crimes, MoneyDoctors’ clients’ information are secure.
MoneyDoctors is a firm born out of big hearts and big dreams--a vision of Filipinos that are financially secure, wherever they are in the world.
Partners’ Individual Profiles
Augustus J.V. Ferreria, LUTCF, RFP, RFC* (*certification
pending)
President
Joe to family, friends, and clients, Mr. Ferreria is one of the country’s first financial planning practitioners. He and his wife Nannette decided in the early 80s that the only way they can be the best insurance agents for their clients is by taking a deep interest in their financial well-being. Moving away from the product-centered tact used by most agents of their day, Joe and Nannette had to invest a lot of time and effort in doing financial planning for each client who had their own quirks and personal money issues. It worked, and they both qualified in 1991 to the Million Dollar Round Table, an organization of the top 5% life insurance professionals worldwide. At that time, they had no inkling that their long years of hands-on, involved coaching for their clients would become the immensely valuable foundation for MoneyDoctor’s heuristics model for financial planning. Joe had years of experience dealing with different kinds of persons of all levels of wealth, allowing him to intuitively and scientifically profile money personalities and find working solutions for financial problems.
Joe left the practice to join the corporate world in 1999 and served with distinction in the management teams of Allstate Life Insurance Co. of the Philippines and Ayala Life Assurance Co., and Generali Pilipinas. Despite his demanding schedule, he found time to lecture and moderate classes for the Life Underwriters Training Course and the Registered Financial Planners Institute, as a way of contributing to the growth of the financial services industry. Last year, he retired as the Senior Executive Vice-President of Generali Pilipinas. While the prospect of unlimited golf games make Joe smile, his true passion beckons and he is back in the practice as President of MoneyDoctors Inc., fondly called "Doc Joe" by television viewers both here and abroad.
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Nannette S. Ferreria, RFC, LUTCF
VP for Finance
Behind every man’s success is a woman, and that cannot be truer than in the case of Joe and Nannette Ferreria. Nannette is the Princess Leia to Joe’s Han Solo—she is formidable in her own right and has the deft touch of a woman-general on the battlefield of finance. When the couple works together, which they did in the early years of their career and again now in MoneyDoctors, the husband and wife tandem shows perfect form and synergy even when they have different and strong opinions about many things!
Nannette developed with Joe, through their long years of experience in the financial planning industry, the unique heuristic approach of MoneyDoctors in financial planning. She began her career in Insular Life Assurance Company in 1982 and garnered Insular Life’s prestigious Unit of the Year Award for her team’s performance in 2002. She consistently qualified for Insular’s honors clubs and is a three-time qualifier to the Million Dollar Round Table, served over 2,000 individual clients and more than 20 corporate clients. She has helped clients put together financial programs, estate tax plans, and insurance trusts. She has advised corporate clients in establishing executive and employee benefit plans as well as business continuation programs. She has given personal finance advice to the public many times through ANC’s Shoptalk, QTV’s The Sweet Life, and other shows.
Some of the secrets to Nannette’s success are her skills in listening intently, her ability to pay close attention to details and not get lost in them, and her long years of experience in the financial planning field. Even the toughest client opens up to her, allowing her to give wise advice. She would tell you that being a wife to a successful insurance executive and a mother to six children gave her ample preparation for whatever the world puts on her plate.
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Atty. Melissa Remulla-Briones
VP for Legal Affairs
It’s hard to catch up with Atty. Ma. Melissa F. Remulla-Briones, who manages to make you feel that the world is surging forward when you’re together. That’s because Melissa is a magnet for action and advocacies. She’s into personal finance, Internet marketing, publishing, producing shows, promoting women in business, and that’s just to name a few. In fact, it was Melissa’s decision to email INQUIRER.net’s then business editor Ma. Salve Duplito about her and her husband’s financial situation that led to the setting up of MoneyDoctors.
A graduate of the University of the Philippines (with honors), Melissa passed the Philippine Bar exams in 2007. She is currently a legal counsel at ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation where she was an executive producer for almost five years. Prior to her return to the television network, she was assistant corporate counsel for The Net Group and associate attorney for Salvador & Associates.
An excellent writer, Melissa is also a columnist for Asia, the Journal of Culture and Commerce published in California. Many of her written works have also been published locally on INQUIRER.net, The Philippine Star, and on her website, YouWantToBeRich.com.
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Danvic C. Briones
VP for Operations
You’ll immediately know Danvic Briones is an artist when you see him. From the way he talks to the way he walks, he is a non-conformist through and through, and walks with his right brain instead of his feet. (We tease him of being a walking eater, constantly stimulated by his senses whenever he goes out!). A graduate of the University of the Philippines with a degree in Fine Arts (Major in Painting), Danvic also has extensive experience in video production having worked as art director for Star Cinema and other production houses. He is also an educator, having taught in the School of Design and the Arts at De La Salle College of St. Benilde and St. Scholastica College.
What you won’t fully realize when you first meet him, however, is how much delight in working with people an artist like him can have. Danvic is a natural when working with youth and yuppies and thus a valuable addition to the MoneyDoctors team. He can amuse and inspire at the same time, with his trademark wit and humor.
Danvic is also currently the Creative Director of Lefthand Graphics. His art and graphic works are featured on his websites ArtByDanvic.com and LHGStudio.com
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Ma. Salve I. Duplito, RFP (certification pending)
VP for Marketing
Back in 2007, after finishing her studies to complete her Registered Financial Planner designation, a nagging question kept Salve awake at night.
"How does a financial planner work and what impact does he have on the lives of ordinary people?"
It was the start of what eventually became a yearlong project by the Philippine
Daily Inquirer, which uncovered what happens in the real world between a
financial planner and volunteer couple Bianca and Diego.
The journey did not stop there. Today Moneydoctors Inc. is a reality because
of her personal advocacy to bring financial planning to as many Filipinos
as possible.
Salve is a prolific and multi-awarded business and finance writer. Some of her outstanding work include starting MoneySmarts, an online personal finance and business blog for Inquirer.net. Under her care, Moneysmarts became one of the most-read blogs in the Inquirer network. Co-editorship of the best selling books "Pwede Na: The Complete Pinoy Guide to Personal Finance" and "Pwede Na: The complete Pinoy guide to Retirement and Estate Planning."
Aside from her financial planning work, she is editorial consultant for Synergeia Foundation and the World Bank, a contributor of the The Philippine Daily Inquirer, director for content of Writers Edge, a columnist in Money Sense, and currently owns and writes Money Stories, a blog on personal finance.
Her contribution to the business community did not go unnoticed. She received numerous awards such as the Citibank Award for Excellence, Best Feature Story and Best Beat Reporter (EJAP-Globe Telecom Awards), the Jaime Ongpin Award for Investigative Journalism and the Louie Prieto Award for Journalism.
A straightforward and caring person, Salve is the glue that keeps Moneydoctors together.
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Dan Jose D. Duplito
VP for Information Technology
You can’t be too careful about securing financial information in this day and age of identity theft, malwares, trojans, keyloggers, data miners, and other criminal activities both over the Internet and the real world. That’s why MoneyDoctors is very serious about protecting its clients’ financial information and relies only on the best people in this field.
Dan Jose Duplito is our resident expert who guards the information you share with us. He is a certified paranoid geek who protects financial information as a hobby. His hobby turned serious and became work when in his mid-20s, he began providing security/penetration testing consultancy services (meaning: protecting a company’s IT system from attack by breaking in and discovering its weak spots) for private and government entities. At that time, he already had several years experience in secure Linux administration, firewall and network services management, secure network design implementation and remote access solutions, as well as web development (both design and programming) experience.
The corporate world beckoned in 2005, where he saw a new challenge to raise his game. Since that year until the present, he is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Head of the Information Security Department of the Philippine Savings Bank, a member of the Metrobank Group of Companies. Dan built the department from scratch since he is the first PSBank officer to hold his position in the organization. He now has more than eight years formal experience in information security management, security assessment, penetration testing/ethical hacking, and developing Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) covering 14 security domains.
Despite his wide technical skills, Dan is far from the cinematic stereotype-kind of hacker-kid who speaks no other language but computerese. He would be the first to tell you that the technical aspects are easy enough to trump—it’s the social engineering aspect that’s more challenging. So you see, in MoneyDoctors, we explore all vulnerabilities and aim to leave nothing unprotected.
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