Wealth Advisors: directory of firms

The Financial Advisers Register lists individuals authorised to provide personal advice to retail clients on relevant financial products. Someone who provides personal advice only to wholesale clients is not on it, though they may appear on the Authorised Representatives Register instead.

The professional standards, including the qualifications standard, the exam, the professional year and continuing professional development, also apply to relevant providers advising retail clients. They do not apply to people who only give personal advice on relevant financial products to wholesale clients. If you are being treated as a wholesale client, ask on what basis, and what you are giving up.

An asset-based fee is a percentage of the total value of the assets in your portfolio, so the more you have under management the more you pay. Moneysmart says you should be given the dollar amount alongside the percentage, because the percentage alone makes the cost hard to judge.

Underneath that sit product fees and costs you pay regardless of the adviser: investment platform fees, administration fees, establishment and contribution fees, investment management fees, performance fees, buy-sell spreads, brokerage, withdrawal fees and insurance premiums. The fees you will incur if you implement the recommendations should be set out in the advice, and a Product Disclosure Statement will also outline the product's own fees.

Before giving personal advice, an adviser should gather information about your objectives, financial situation and needs, directly from you or, with your permission, from third parties such as your super fund. Expect a questionnaire that works out how much investment risk and volatility you are prepared to accept in pursuit of your objectives.

ASIC's view of good quality advice is that it is strategy led, with product recommendations following the strategy rather than directing it. If the conversation starts with a product and works backwards to a rationale, that is the wrong order, and it is a fair thing to say out loud.

ASIC publishes targeted guidance for the areas where wealth advice most often goes wrong: Information Sheet 274 on giving self-managed superannuation fund advice, and Information Sheet 182 on complying with obligations when giving super switching advice. Ask an adviser recommending an SMSF or a fund switch how they have addressed that guidance.

A Statement of Advice on a switch should explain the pros and cons of moving to another financial product, including another super fund, and set out any benefits you might lose and other significant consequences of proceeding. Insurance held inside a fund you are leaving is the benefit most commonly lost without anyone noticing.

AFCA can consider complaints about investments and financial advice, and its determinations bind the firm once you accept them. But it cannot consider a complaint solely about the investment performance of a financial investment. Losing money is not, by itself, a complaint AFCA can hear.

What it can consider is conduct: advice that was inappropriate, information that was not disclosed or was misleading, instructions that were not followed, fees charged for services never provided. Compensation for indirect financial loss and for non-financial loss is each capped at 6,300 Australian dollars per claim for complaints lodged on or after 1 January 2024, on top of direct loss.