Thoughts on money, from a Financial Planner in Perth
Just what constitutes “personal financial advice”? We here in Wealth & Security Planners have noticed a marked increase in the number of people who are looking at various forms of money market news as “advice”. It is a development that has both good and bad aspects to it. This post is a quick look at … Read more
i don’t know about you but at this time of the year i don’t sleep all that much. A financial planner looks at the end of the financial year as a one-way farm gate – if you don’t get all of your clients’ assets and details through that gate then there are opportunities that are irretrievably … Read more
Do you think that Governments in Australia will ever realise the impact their decisions can have in a country to relies on foreign capital to the extent that Australia does? In the face of wildly flutuating commodity prices – driven by massive, temporay global stimulus efforts and a surfeit of hot and fast speculative money – … Read more
Monday morning and we sit down to digest the raft of professionally prepared updates from various analysts who have spent the weekend poring over the Federal Government’s announcements on tax simplification. The documents released on the government website are beautifully written. Someone has clearly invested a lot of time and energy distilling some fairly difficult … Read more
Just a quick note today… With the broohah surrounding the government announcements on legislating to remove commissions from superannuation and investment accounts there are all sorts of comments being made on the likely impacts – some more informed than others. Feedback in a number of online forums suggests that many people are happy with the … Read more
From a financial advisors’ point of view, a lot of the current debate on the value of advice is more than a little bemusing. Over many years the role of advisor has evolved from what was predominantly an insurance advice role (~40 years ago) through superannuation advisor (~30 years ago), investment advisor (~20 years ago) … Read more
Todays Australian Financial Review (p3) carries an artile titled “Super funds warned” in which Jeremy Cooper (“chairman of the federal government’s review of the $1.2 trillion superannuation industry”) suggests that Australian super funds need to increase returns and gain greater scale to increase opportunities. The example given is “Two Canadian pension funds with a combined … Read more
There has been quite a bit of debate in recent times on various clauses in various “Awards” as they relate to superannuation.
Some argue that this takes away “member choice” and that it unfairly promotes “industry funds” (i have not used capital letters, as i have not investigated whether all awards with these provisions specifically relate to funds that are members of the Industry Funds marketing group). However, i would argue that this is in fact a very good basic step to take in many cases….
We mere mortals here in Wealth & Security Planners have been bemusedly scanning the various reactions to Australian Securities & Investments Commission guidelines for the Trustees of super funds to be able to provide advice to their members. In case you missed it, the guide is set out here. The impetus for the change is … Read more
For many years various pressure groups around the country have been trying to have legislation brought in to ban the payment of commissions from superannuation accounts. Pressure has mounted even further as links are drawn between commissions generated and the recent failures of MIS scheme operators Great Southern and Timbercorp, as well as the demise … Read more