Advice

The ageing population has many implications for financial advisers – more than the growing numbers either transitioning to or already in retirement. There is also the matter of dementia. The law allows an adviser to assume a person’s decision-making ability, but the law, like financial services, is complex. With either discipline, a wrong action can…

Super funds have battled with providing financial advice for decades but have not yet found a solution that can make it affordable and efficient for millions of low-balance members. Digital advice – including ‘robo’ – which, in theory, solves the affordability problem, has also been a decades-long dream for Australian wealth management, a revolution in…

Rob Prugue, well-known investment manager and a former regional chief executive of Lazard Asset Management, has called on the financial services industry to appreciate the need for extra awareness of people’s mental state during the current lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne. Prugue, the founder and director of People Reaching Out to People (PROP), a mental…

Global asset manager Natixis Investment Managers recently released their latest Global Investor Survey. Undertaken with the support of CoreData Research, the ‘pulse check’ of global markets surveyed some 8,550 individual investors from around the world, 400 of which were located in Australia. Titled ‘The next normal’ the report asks the important question of whether investors…

BetaShares and Investment Trends released their latest ETF Report, a quantitative study of the financial advice industry based on the responses of around 800 advisers. Whilst representing only a small portion of the industry, the results of the survey were enlightening. According to the survey, as many as 75% of the advisers that responded are…

With the astonishing skew to “what is working well,” reading monthly fund reports one would expect equally astonishing alpha. Clearly, that is not the case, and investors are largely left with cursory comments on the less-than-useful positions in the portfolio. At least in listed markets the attribution can be verified, assuming the fund is forthcoming…

This week we had the pleasure of speaking with fixed income gurus Mark Mitchell and Justin Tyler from Daintree Capital to get their view on the interest rate and inflation outlook together with some insights into their Core Income Fund. Daintree is a specialist Australian active fixed income manager and part of the Perennial Group…

The Financial Planning Association (FPA) this week released guidance on best-practice approaches to file note records to support more transparent and detailed record-keeping. The changes come in response to consumer complaints that highlighted gaps in records as part of subsequent investigations. The FPA said “The new guidance provides innovative ways for financial planners to create…

As highlighted in our article recently covering the formation of the ‘single disciplinary body’ to govern and regulate individual financial advisers, the landscape continues to evolve on a near daily basis. Comments from ASIC in response to their call for submissions to make financial advice more affordable, suggested the Record of Advice could be set…

Not that long ago a fund manager could provide a mesmerising presentation slide on how it uses “big data.” Examples might be using Google Earth to discern real-time movement in shopping centres, building activity based on shadowing over the day and seasons as structures grew in size, right down to the mundane of what was…

Part 3 – Daintree Capital Core Income Trust Sydney-based Daintree Capital is an ultra-modern, specialist absolute return funds management boutique with a primary focus on protecting client capital against downside risk. How is Daintree innovating? Daintree has developed an innovative short-duration, active fixed income strategy that manages risk in a ‘lower for longer’ or rising…

Global investment manager Pacific Investment Management Corporation (PIMCO) released the results of an extensive survey of Australian investors this week. The first of what will be a regular temperature check for investment markets, questioned 2,500 individual investors aged over 35 with liquid assets exceeding US$100,000 on key market indicators. The survey spanned five key Asia…