We rarely provide advice solely in relation to personal insurance, it usually being associated with more comprehensive advice. Where risk only advice is offered we charge a fee of $750 as a cost recovery fee which is only charged if you choose not to implement our advice, or should your policies be canceled within the first 12 months. We still accept insurance commissions as there is an alignment of goals which is different from investment advice. With insurance both the adviser and you benefit by ensuring you have the right cover in place up to an amount that you can afford. We will happily discuss with you a fee for service arrangement rather than the commission in connection with assisting you with your insurance needs, but in our experience removal of the commission from many insurance products does not provide you, the insured with an equivalent saving in the premium.

Our initial advice takes place over a series of meetings. Once you have engaged us to provide you with initial advice (usually at the end of our Getting to Know You Meeting), we will ask for an engagement fee of $550 including GST. This fee will be deducted from our Advice Preparation and Presentation Fee (typically $3,300 including GST), which will be payable upon presentation of our advice. You then have the choice to engage us to provide you with ongoing service, which is offered in accordance with our Core or Watch service offerings detailed above. For more complex cases we will negotiate an ongoing fee in advance with you depending on your particular circumstances.

We don’t believe that our advice is valuable to only those with significant assets, nor do we believe that those with large investment balances should necessarily have to pay more for the advice they receive, after all their needs can be quite simple and nothing much might be going on in their financial world. We also don’t believe we should receive a pay rise due to factors outside of our control, like positive market movements. We have been charging a flat dollar fee for our services for many years, long before it became slightly more common amongst our peers. We believe that our fees are fair for the services offered, transparent and clearly set out in advance. We don’t discount our fees for indiviual cases as in our view this would be unfair to those paying the full fee. If you really need our advice, but are unable to afford it, you can present your case to us and we may consider allocating one of the limited pro-bono cases we provide each year for those in special need.

It’s human nature to exploit situations that provide a better outcome for ourselves. We’ve taken the time to price our services in a way that protects you as a consumer, by removing any linkage between the products we recommend and how we are remunerated. As mentioned above we still accept insurance commissions as there is an alignment of goals which is different from investment advice.