In Practice

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…

An Australian start-up, founded by Bryan Rollins, former general manager at Atlassian, WorkForClimate is focused on empowering individual professionals to create change within the corporate sector. Its mission is to speed-up the corporate transition away from fossil fuels by guiding businesses and employees to commit to climate goals across four categories: Energy – Help your…

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…

According to wealth management platform Netwealth (ASX: NWL), “Two in five advice firms will look to integrate their systems and databases in the next 24 months.” Assuming it’s correct, the wealth platform space will either undergo major consolidation or external system integration of some sort, that connects different sub-systems to one larger system that functions…

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…

It’s been a slow week for wealth appointments, though one can imagine that Sydney’s lockdown – and the uncertainty around when it will end (this journalist’s prediction: by Christmas) – could have something to do with what is usually a steady stream of announcements drying to a trickle. That’s not to say there’s nothing to…

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…

The Federal Government has quietly passed several previously flagged changes to the financial advice industry. The majority appear to be a positive step in the face of what is a jungle of red tape currently faced by the shrinking cohort of financial advisers. There were four key changes, with all eyes on the potential for…

While the buzz surrounding its introduction just over ten years ago has abated, an increasing body of research is building on the value of robo-advice. A new paper shows the benefits can be wide-reaching. More than a marketing tool for index managers or various asset allocators and other agents, robo-advice, when properly constructed with a…

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…