Financial Planning
If you are looking for advice to evaluate and help with your financial situation, you need a financial advisor. A good financial advisor (financial planner) will work closely with you, understand your issues or needs thoroughly, and able to create a practical plan to help you solve the issue or achieve your targets.
When you look for the financial advisors, please ensure you only talk to registered advisors and always starting with asking for their qualification (i.e Bachelor in Financial Planning), registration status (i.e Certified Financial Planner; current member of Financial Planning Association of Australia – FPA), and industry experience level.
You shall always take time to read and understand the financial advisors’ Financial Services Guide (FGS) so you know what services they can offer, how they charge, who’s the owner of the business, and their AFS licence number.
Please avoid the Robot advice as those advices are normally general in nature with narrow range of services. (i.e online advice generate by the system with your DIY information inputs)
The followings are some useful tips for you when you are comparing financial advisors:
- Compare their qualifications, registrations, and specialty areas
- Compare their fee structures, how much and how often you paid them, and what you are getting in return.
- Compare how they will manage your money
- Compare how often you will meet; How often is the reviews or updates
- Compare how they will consult you on decisions
- Compare how they will monitor and manage your investments
- Compare their commission structure and if they are independent advisor when they choose products to recommended to you.
- Understand who will look after your account or what’s the arrangement when the advisor is away.
- Compare their ‘dealing with complaints’ process.
- Compare what it takes to end your engagement with them; any penalty or notice period?
As your accountant, we only work with high calibre financial advisor who can deliver the value to our clients. Please feel free to contact us to discuss.
