Puzzle Financial Advice - planning a good investment result in the most challenging market for more than 100 years.
Home

About us

Typical clients

Advice Process

What makes us different?

Fees

Fixing Financial Planning Profession in Australia - 2009 Parliamentary Inquiry

Links

Contact us





INVESTMENT VIEWS Investments Views

Puzzle blog **

Interesting charts





INVESTOR EDUCATION Things investors need to know about investments

Managing expenses is key to financial security. Variability of long-term investment returns is a major challenge to financial security.


What is GOOD ADVICE?


Understanding conflicts of interest that may taint investment advice





ADVANCING THE FINANCIAL PLANNING PROFESSION
The Australian Financial Planning Register

Mission Statement:

Helping you (and your family) to maintain and achieve financial security for the rest of your life through thoughtful investing, robust estate planning & minimising tax. We care.

For the next 10 years (2010-2020), I expect our primary focus will continue to be guide our clients through a long, volatile global financial crisis specifically including actively managing client portfolios
  • taking advantage of opportunities as they arise and
  • avoiding investment pot-holes as they become visible.

Are you solving the right investment problem?


    Your answer to this question is critical to your financial security!

    Are you aware that we are in the middle of a 200-year historical extreme? If you regularly read the good financial and investment literature, you probably sense that this statement is true.

    Have you adapted your investment strategy to suit this period of historical extreme? If not, your investment strategy may be suitable for the last few decades, but may not be optimal for the next decade.

    This one of the things that makes Puzzle Financial Advice different. We have been researching this historical extreme for the last decade. Maybe we can help you to get a better result though this challenging period.

Our value proposition:

What do we offer?

  • Good listener. We spend the time to understand your needs and issues so we tailor the right advice for you.

  • Ethical, competent, trustworthy. Just ask our clients.

  • Well-researched advice and we have the competence to explain this advice to you to the level of detail you require. It is our research which has prepared us for this period of economic extreme.

  • Written advice is short, understandable and tailored for you.

    • This is in contrast to some financial planning sales people who prepare 100-page standardised templated advice which the government now realises is unread and bad for consumers.

    • However, we also keep our clients up-to-date with extensive circulars discussing issues that will influence our strategy. This enables our clients to build their own investment knowledge – and also remain well-informed in these very challenging times.

  • We are working for you.

    • The only way we get paid is by you paying our fees.

      • Bernie Ripoll, Chairman Parliament Inquiry into Financial Services said 24/9/2009 “the conflict that exists is that the responsibility of anyone selling any product is to the person who pays them not to the person they sold the product to necessarily”

    • We get paid by only by you – so we are not working for a fund manager to sell you a product.

  • Value for money – win-win relationship.

    • We always aim to provide you with value for money. If we feel that we cannot provide you with value for money we will not take you on. If you feel we are not providing you with value for money, you can walk away at any time – no lock-ins.

    • If we did not provide value for money, we would not have as many long-term clients, many of whom have become good friends.

  • We are seeking to enable our clients to survive and thrive in the riskiest markets for more than 100 years.

  • We are seeking to protect our clients financial security.

    • That we are working to get you through this global financial crisis as best we can.

    • That choosing us to advise you, you are grappling with the difficult challenges ahead – and that you are not burying your head in the sand hoping these historically large challenges will go away.

  • Our eyes are open.

    • Because we are not beholden to any fund manager:

      • we do not ear blinkers that enable us to see only products of a fund managers and

      • we do not wear rose-coloured glasses that only allow us to see products that pay commission.

  • Flexibility to offer you best of breed strategies and best of breed investments.

    • After identifying the major investment themes we want to invest in, we go searching for the best possible investment vehicles to harness those themes. Since we are not beholden to any fund manager, we can offer you the best-of-breed products and where fund managers are not adding value, we can offer you the most cost-effective solutions such as exchange traded funds, index funds, direct listed securities, term deposits and bonds.

While we believe estate & tax planning strategy is absolutely crucial to our client service, investment strategy is the core focus of our practice. We believe that anyone with a very good long-term understanding of investment history can see that we are currently in a very high risk time for investors, with the last 25 years being a very poor guide for astute investors.

Speak to our clients, if you want to know what it is like to be a client of Puzzle Financial Advice.



Testimonials:

  • Peter Toohey (retired businessman), Rainbow Bay, Qld 3/9/09
      “We have been clients of Puzzle Financial Advice for 10 years and from this experience can confidently and unhesitantly recommend Puzzle to other investors. Bruce Baker is definitely not your average financial adviser. He often runs contrary to the accepted ‘wisdom’ of most market commentators. For example he was preaching extreme caution about the world investment scene well before the words ‘Global Financial Crisis’ were coined. Bruce is intelligent, logical, highly-researched but most importantly to me, he has a personal integrity rating second to none. I know I have a very strong supporter beside me in helping to retain and grow our wealth. I am happy for Bruce to use me as a referee to potential clients.”

  • David Peel AM (businessman), Noosa, Qld 4/9/09
      “In 1999 we (our self managed superannuation fund) were disappointed in the performance of our financial advisor who worked for a share broker. We felt that whilst they were happy to buy shares they seemed reluctant to sell them, thus leaving us exposed to poor performing securities. We were looking for an independent advisor that charged fees to us however received no commission from any other financial products provider or bank (any trailing commissions or rebates are rebated to us). After meeting with Bruce we decided to become a Puzzle client and have been happy with the quality of advice, the professionalism of the service and the interaction with Bruce. He is always open to our points of view however the sheer weight of his logic and research usually means we stick to the game plan. Although we have missed some opportunities, our portfolio has performed well and we are happy with our retirement strategy, that Bruce has helped us develop over the years. We are happy to recommend Puzzle Financial advice.”

  • Vincent McNamara (education consultant - client since 1997), Phnom Penh, Cambodia 7/9/09
      “Great to see that (as a result of the current Parliamentary Inquiry into financial services) others may be able to have the freedom from conflict of interest we have enjoyed for years.”

    Note: Puzzle Financial Advice does not comply with ASIC's requirements to use the term independent because while we rebate up-front commissions and we do not accept soft-dollar or other payments from fund managers, we annually approximate any trailing commission we receive and credit it to client accounts to reduce fees otherwise payable. To comply with ASIC's requirements to call ourselves independent, we would need to monthly calculate trailing commissions and we would need to send monthly refund cheques of these amounts to clients. We do not do this because it would create a large financial impost on our business and would leave our clients worse off because this cost would need to be passed on to our clients. In FY09 trailing commissions made up less than 15% of revenue for services provided to clients. Ideally this problem could be solved if we could rebate all trailing commissions directly to our clients own accounts and this is what we have argued for in our submissions to the 2009 parliamentary inquiry into financial services.



Would you like to receive our Occasional Newsletter “Solving the Financial Puzzle”?



Interview on ABC National - National Interest

Letter to editor of Australian Financial Review.



What is the next step?

  • If you think our services might fit your needs, please give us a call.
  • If we have a chat on the phone, we can make an initial assessment of whether it is worth while taking the next step.

    Is distance a problem?

  • No, we have clients overseas and interstate.
  • These days with Internet connections complementing the occasional phone call, distance is no problem. Voice over IP also makes long-distance calling cheap or free. However, nothing beats a face to face meeting at least early on.





    For some discussion about this chart, click here.


    For discussion about some related topics, our web log is regularly updated. click here.

    `

    • "Attempting to look into the future is fraught with difficulty. Failure to attempt to do so is reckless."
    Bruce Baker