We provide fee-based advice. What are the fees?

• We work for you – not for a product manufacturer.
• You are in control – you can turn off the fees at any time.

• Most importantly, who is paying the financial planner?
  • Bernie Ripoll, Chairman Parliamentary Inquiry into Financial Services 24/8/2009 “The responsibility of anyone selling any product is to the person who pays them not to the person they sold the product to necessarily”
  • Therefore, since you are paying our fees, our responsibility is to you.
  • This is a first and critical step in ensuring you get the service you are looking for.
• But will I get value-for-money?
  • To make this a win-win relationship, we have to work to make this relationship succeed – and so do you.
  • The long-term test of value-for-money is very simple.
    • You can terminate the relationship at any time, if you do not feel you are getting value for money.
    • If we were not delivering value for money, we would not have many long-term clients.
    • You are in charge of how much time we put in on your account, and therefore you have a big influence on how large our invoice to you is. If you want a smaller invoice, use less of the time of our staff. Simple. Over time, we get to know your needs, and that helps us adjust our service level to suit you.
    • But how do we know we are going to get value for money at the beginning of the relationship?
      • On this, there is no certainty for either of us.
      • To improve our chances of success, like in any relationship, let us start slowly while we build confidence in each other.
      • As our relationship strengthens over time, we can aim to achieve bigger things and we can move more quickly.

  Structure of our Fees

  Our fees have two components. We charge for the time that any of our staff are required to spend on your file. We also charge a modest funds-under-advice fee. Details are in our Financial Services Guide and in our Terms of Service contract. In summary, we feel that on an equity-basis-between-clients, this fee-structure allocates our costs more equitably between our clients than any other, thus supporting our ability to provide a cost-effective WIN-WIN service to our clients.

  Time-based charge:

  Very few advisors charge for time. We are proud of this difference and it makes our practice more effective and efficient for our clients.
• We are your consultant and adviser.
• Some clients require only a small portion of our time each year. This might be because their affairs are simple. It also might be because the client is very well-organised and very well informed and very decisive.
• Some clients require a lot of time spent on their file. This may be because in one year, we have a lot of estate planning issues to work through. It might be because one year there might be some complex tax modelling and tax planning required. Regardless, our fee-structure means we can accommodate your needs.
• We feel it is simply fairer that we charge more to the client who uses a lot of our resources.
• A time-based charge also imposes a discipline on our clients to use our time efficiently - and this helps ensure that we have a WIN-WIN relationship.

  Funds under advice charge:

• We spend a lot of our money each year on research.
• We spend a lot of our time each year on research.
• Therefore, to run a viable business, we need to allocate these fixed costs across our clients.
• We know that we can add more value to larger portfolios - and we know that it is these fixed research costs which provide the intellectual base to provide our advice.
• Therefore, is it fair that a client with a large portfolio who uses only a very small portion of our time each year, just pays for the time we have to spend on his/her file? We think that fairness dictates that the answer is NO.
• Therefore, we think it is a straight question of equity-between-clients that a funds-under-advice fee is charged because it enables us to allocate our costs much more fairly across our client-base. And very clearly, if we are to run a viable WIN-WIN business supporting our clients, we do need to allocate our costs across our client-base.

  
  
  

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When investing in shares, a little fear is a healthy thing. It helps investors, not to become reckless. It motivates investors to be careful to take only “acceptable levels of risk.” It helps ensure that we consider the down-side risk and not just the up-side potential.