Our Team

Craig Gunawardana

Founding Director and Senior Financial Adviser

Like most successful businesses they start from one person’s passion and drive to make a difference and our story is no different.

After completing a Bachelor’s degree majoring in Finance and Finance Planning Craig began working with KPMG in their corporate insolvency division. It is here that Craig witnessed first hand the terrible financial position allot of very smart people were in and the most annoying fact that they wouldn’t have been in such a position if they received quality common sense financial advice first.

It was very early on in Craig’s career he realised a passion and a strength of his which was to help others not only make the right financial choices in life but most importantly not to make the wrong ones which according to Craig is often one of the most important intangible benefits of his advice.

Over the years Craig worked for a number of large institutions including two of Australia largest banks delivering quality financial advice to thousands of individuals and families.
However as with many large intuitions Craig started to experience the downside of scale which started to restrict the service and advice his clients needed and so in with the backing and support of one of Australia’s most trusted advice groups (MLC) on the 15th of November 2010 Client First Financial Planning (CFFP) was founded.

When Craig is not helping others Craig loves nothing more than spending quality time with his young family.

Vishi Wickramasinghe

Client Services

Vishi will primarily be responsible for managing the back-office administration and client servicing work in our office.

Vishi has worked in the financial services industry since 2011 following the completion of her Bachelor of Economics and Finance degree at RMIT University.

Vishi will utilise her experience over the past years to provide a better service to our clients. In her spare time, Vishi loves spending time with her family and enjoys cooking and travelling.

Louise Andrew

Paraplanner

Louise operates our paraplanner partner business, The Advice Docs.

She established the business after 8 years’ experience in financial services, learning the industry from a range of roles and perspectives.

She has a Bachelor of Commerce from La Trobe University and an Advanced Diploma of Financial and is accredited with RG146 qualifications through Kaplan.

Shelly Gunawardana

Marketing and Communications

Shelly will be responsible for all the marketing and communications at Client First.

After completing a Bachelor of Business in Retail Management and Marketing she has worked at Chadstone shopping centre in centre management and is now helping the family business.