Our PUBLICATIONS
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Rewriting the laws of pricing advice.
This book is a call to action. For too long, existing methods of financial advice time and product billing methods have hindered the delivery of valuable advice to consumers who need and value it. This book is about helping more clients and advisory teams move from a focus on the inputs of advice to where it should be – on what consumers value.
Three years on from the announcement of the $70m Royal Commission into the Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industries, we need
to ask ourselves: Are Australians better off?
With governments constantly changing the rules and with rivalry and point-scoring between different superannuation product providers, it’s become clear that short-term thinking has eroded consumer trust in superannuation. Even worse, it has left most Australians apathetic about their superannuation.
Firstly, there must be a clear separation of financial advice & product advice. Secondly, enforce clear and transparent fee structures. Thirdly, stronger leadership and delivery of the social contract Australians expect from their professional advisers.
To this day, thanks to the power of the incumbent financial advice models, Australians are still paying for advice unaware if it’s product advice or financial advice.
A valuable adviser first seeks to find out the very root cause of why people seek out financial
advice. While the initial reasons may be around an investment, the deeper reasons are much
more personal. To discover these desires takes time and trust.
The primary reason many of us can’t save for a
rainy day is that we live in an ongoing storm.
We’re on the threshold of something big. Both the accounting and wealth industries are fundamentally transforming. With changing technology and legislation, our industries could be disrupted forever..
Seeking Certainty explains that the financial planning industry is badly broken and driven by people intent on selling financial products rather than helping solve people’s financial problems.
This book aims to provide the informed seeker of financial advice an approach to seeking greater financial certainty in their lives. It argues that clients who engage firms that offer on-going management of their financial behaviours, habits, mindsets, life experiences, situational complexities, and personal influences will obtain far greater benefits in terms of achieving their financial dreams that the ‘old style’, product-remunerated firms.
The paradigms that spawned the financial advisory industry in Australia and most of the developed world have unfortunately not served consumers as well as they have served themselves.
DELIVERING CERTAINTY is written for advisory firms focused on building great firms that delivered consistent, methodical advice regardless of markets, legislation, specific products or services (and without payments from product suppliers).
I wrote this book for three reasons…
1. throughout the 2008/9 global financial crisis, a number of my advisory firms actually raised their advice fees as their client asset balances reduced. It was simple – their fees were not aligned to product, but value;
2. new financial advisers entering the market don’t (and can’t) repeat the careers of those that went before them – I wanted to show the next generation of advisers an alternative as to how to get paid for delivering value;
3. pricing theories have languished. The logic behind commissions date back to early 1900s and hourly rates mid-1900s. What Price Advice simplest aim is to advance the debate with working alternatives for professionals that want to move beyond fees, commissions or hourly rates to price their value.
Australians pay far too much for superannuation… these payments to thesuperannuation industry can and should be reduced by at least
half, saving Australians at least $10 billion a year. It is the largestsingle opportunity for micro-economic reform in the economy.
Competition will increase, comprehensive wealth management will be dominant advice model, alliances will be critical and focus on quality not quantity of advice.
Competition will increase, comprehensive wealth management will be dominant advice model, alliances will be critical and focus on quality not quantity of advice.