Independent Financial Planners (ADL)

Hi

Anyone know of any independent financial planners in Adelaide?

Thanks

Hi Legionx

I'm a Financial Advisor whose is licensed through AMP, I work with two other advisors in an office on Melbourne Street, North Adelaide. And I'd be very happy to help you out. Just give me a private message and I'll give you my details.

However if your after a truely "independent Advisor" (i.e. one that has their own financial services license) you might be hard pressed to find one in adelaide.

Prescotts are probably the biggest & best independent Advisor group in Adelaide and they have a few good advisors there. But you'll pay for it as their fees are generally higher.

But in all honesty regardless of whether you see a dealer aligned group or an independent advisor group the only difference will be in the products they recommend.

an AMP guy will generally use AMP products, a NAB advisor will use MLC products, a CBA aligned group will use CFS, a macquarie advisor will use Macquarie products and an independent advisor most likely will use asgard etc etc.

Hi LegionX,

As YoungGun suggested, you will probably pay a higher cost for seeing an "independent" financial planner. The Asgard platform is owned by St George bank, like Westpac using BT and ANZ using ING they use platforms they own (generally, though there are always exceptions to the rule).

Asgard is also rebadged to AMP planners as WealthView, on this rebadged platform there may be some different managed funds available (or not available) as AMP get to choose what their planners have access to. For a recent client, we moved him across from a platform costing a flat 2.3% pa to Asgard which the total cost (MER, admin and adviser fee) is 0.86% pa, this particular client was extremely happy as he is paying 2.5 times less each year! (almost 3 times!!!).

Cheers,

Dan

PS Before making an investment decision speak to an FPA registered Financial Planner.

A tied planner is just a salesman or flogger for his company's products. Internally they will refer to them as the distribution force.

This is fine - as long as you know it is the case. If you walked into a Ford salesroom you wouldn't expect them to advise you to buy a Toyota, even if it was the most suitable car for you. You'd get a Ford.

For instance ASIC recently criticised AMP advisors in an Enforceable Undertaking that 93% of business through certain AMP advisers was going into AMP products. Some AMP products are good, but they're not that good.

The bit about them being more expensive is complete tosh. Not sure what empirical evidence that is based upon.

An independent adviser one actually gives advice based on your circumstances and considers a range of products.
Look one up here:
Find a Planner
Good luck with it.

Based on their fees.
Call a few up and ask them how much they will charge you to set up an allocated pension as you are retiring, then call AMP and some other "tied" planners.

Are you saying that "tied" financial planners don't base advice on client's circumstances and considers a range of products? I think you missed my earlier post listing a small sample of the products as a "tied" financial planner I can give advice on. For superannuation funds, any super fund rated 4 or 5 apples from ChantWest I can give advice on (which is more than 50 funds!).

I'm not sure if that is going to help him as I and many other "tied" financial planners are listed there as well.

Anyway, let us know how you go calling a few different financial planners for pricing comparisons.

Cheers,

Dan

PS Before making an investment decision speak to an FPA registered Financial Planner.

and then they'll recommend a product they always recommend..... Its purely a business decison.

I highly doubt an "independent" advisor would use more than 1 or 2 different investment platforms. Of course they will say they can recommend more, but in reality they would only use 1 or 2 products.

It would be very costly for a financial planning company to do anything else. They would end up with clients spread very thinly across a range of platforms making it difficult to service them all in a cost effective manner.

Any decent planner will do this no matter if they are tied or untied to a dealer group. They need to have a reasonable basis for giving you advice, and just because they can make a commission off you doesn't justify making a recommendation. I regularly tell a prospect that they should only invest if they are happy with my advice, the products i am recommending, and the cost. If they aren't, or i don't feel it is in their best interest to invest, i can't justify making the recommendation.

Then again you will always find shonks in any industry, although i think the industry had done a good job getting rid of a lot of them (then again i have been shown some shocking plans over the last 2 years!).

Ben

thanks guys, very constritive thread so far... good to here some well educated debate on this issue rather than slanging...

Well said Ben! I joined AMP after their Enforceable Undertaking and AMP now ensures that you have a very very good reason to switch a clients investments or products (the Compliance team has rubber gloves that go up to their elbows!).

In most case's the best advice I give is for clients to stay where they are or roll out of their AMP product. In the end it's what's best for the clients that matters most.

Hi

We were caught recently, got fee-for-service advice with a reputable company that refunds commissions, so we thought that removed some of the concern of being offered appropriate products for our situation. Silly us though didn't twig that this company's core business of SMSF meant that's what they would recommend to us, even with a very modest Super balance of 80K available to be rolled over to another fund. At a recommended ongoing management fee of 7-8%. P-p-p-p-p-pardon????

So lesson learned. I like Samaka's thoughts elsewhere that advice should be used as a second opinion against your own first opinion.

Bonnie