Why Would I Need A Financial Planner?

“Financial Planning” is the process of providing advice and assistance to clients for the purpose of determining whether and how clients can meet their financial needs and life goals through the proper management of financial resources.

A Financial Planner will work closely with your other professional advisers, such as Accountant or Solicitor, and act as a manager/coach to help you achieve all of your financial and lifestyle goals.

All activity involving money has risks - for your protection, you should work with someone who is an Authorised Representative of a Principal Member of the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA). In doing so, you are protected by a number of benefits and safeguards.

Firstly, the organisation whom your planner is an authorised representative of gives an undertaking that its representatives will abide by the FPA Code of Ethics, and Rules of Professional Conduct.

Secondly,  the FPA has established a free Financial Services Complaints Resolution Scheme. This means that if you have a complaint about advice received from a financial planner whose company is an FPA member, you can be sure the matter will be investigated.

What Should I Expect?

As professional Financial Planners, we use a six step process to determine your current situation, and what it is you wish to achieve financially. We then provide appropriate advice to help you meet your objectives. The steps are as follows:

1. Identify Your Goals/Objectives

What is it that is important about money to you?

2. Obtain your information

What resources do you have to work with? We gather personal details, including income, expenditure, assets. liabilities, etc..

3. Identify Any Issues

Do you have particular likes/dislikes that we should know about in preparing advice for you? Are there deficiencies between where you are now financially, and where you want to be?

4. Prepare a Statement Of Advice, incorporating your Financial Plan

This will summarise your current situation, identify alternate strategies we considered, outline the strategy we recommend, provide solutions to fulfil the recommended strategy and model the anticipated outcome.

It will also outline risks associated with the recommended strategy, and show all costs to you, and benefits we may receive when you act on our advice.

5. Implement The Advice

This is the paperwork stage, where actions are undertaken to put in place the recommendations you agree to.

6. Review and Revise

In accordance with our Service Agreement, we will meet regularly to ensure you remain on track to achieve your objectives. We also review the ongoing relevance in light of the economic/legislative climate, and your changing lifestyle.