Financial planner

Id like to hear some experiences from forum members on financial planners, esp say experiences with navra financial services, or travis morien. Ive been considering them but have always been reluctant do to them charging an upfront fee, upfront commission and trailing commission.
I have also been considering fee for service planners like www.travismorien.com. He seem to put a lot of clients portfolios on index value funds like the DFA australian value trust - which is an excellent fund which many planners dont have access to like an 18% 5yr return.
The navra fund is really an income fund and as stated on their website is good for parking funds - to allow mre funds to be allocated to growth investments.
I have no idea how NFS structure their share portfolio - any growth funds, or just navrainvest.
I already have a significant amount in navrainvest, and property but want to improve my risk profile with other share funds, and get prudent advise on margin lending, and asset protection. Having too much in any one fund is not safe

Id love to hear some opinions, and recommendations!

Hi DKMC,

I am the wrong person to reply to your post, but I thought I might comment on the diversification aspect of Managed Funds:

First up, we do not ONLY recommend Navrainvest as a MF option and can supply literally every other fund to our clients as an option.

However back to diversification:

When you invest into Navrainvest; Colonial 1st; Macquarie; others . . . you will find that all these funds place 90% of their funds into the same listed companies!!

So you end up getting:
BHP
NAB
CBA
AGL
ETC
ETC
ETC
... with all of them

The 10% difference might be a preference of one blue chip share over another and then also some small and mid cap companies.

So you end up with many fund managers buying mainly the same stocks . . . so much for diversification.

The only real RISK diversification you might get is fund managers style.

Then of course you might choose between Income or CG funds.

The other choice obviously is local ASX shares as opposed to International shares.

We are happy to advise on all the varieties.

Regards,
Steve