Working with Advice Gallery

Good afternoon, everybody watching and watching the recording a little bit later. Hopefully the sounds coming through okay. If there are any issues with the sound, I guess there's no way to really tell me. We'll go ahead are good, thank you very much there's been I appreciate that we will get started within the next 30 seconds or so because I'm conscious that also the last week before Christmas times is getting quite strict. We are trying to get things wrapped up before the end of the year. So I will jump straight in and have to hop back out again to bring people in, that's okay.

Okay, so we've gone through there, where the slides will be coming up. And we've covered a little bit of ground with these webinars. So far, we've had two sessions thus far. What does financial planning actually do? And how does financial planning work? So my goal with these sessions is to really start at the ground level when it comes to financial advice, fully aware that financial advice isn't a big part of life for a lot of people. So I really want to build that foundation of what advice is what it looks like, what it can mean for people. And the third one today is really about how we apply that within The Advice Gallery. So I want to talk a little bit about our practice, how we go about things, there's a few things we do that are a little bit different, I think, in a good way. And then I'll walk through our process in a lot of detail.

We have different meetings; we have different people involved at different stages. So I want to make sure we cover all that off in the discussion today. And there'll be some time for questions at the end. And, I should probably mention it now, actually. Ee have agreed last week, Steve and us, The Advice Gallery was decided to offer until June 30th, 2024, we will waive all financial planning fees that apply to financial advice for people who have been referred to us by people at The Loan Gallery, so friends, family and clients or contacts. So just to repeat that, an introductory offer where we will waive all advice related fees. So all of our fees when it comes to giving advice for anybody in that category. So it's quite a big commitment. Steve has stepped up so he's really committed to this process. And he's excited we are all to see where we can go with this. So just to repeat that, no advice or planning fees payable on any work done up until June 30th, 20 24. Let's hop into it.

Some disclaimers. The usual ones Yeah, we're not going to talk about anything specific today. So there's no real issue about crossing over to general or personal financial advice. But the big one is that we are recording this session today. So we've posted the other two over on our YouTube channel. One of our projects in January of 2024 will be chopping them up into more digestible parts. Anyone who has been online in the last year or two will recognize the importance of having short versions of videos, so we'll be chopping this up. Just as a heads up.

And we'll revisit some of the ground we've covered thus far across the two webinars, and I should flag as well. We have scheduled out webinars now through till April. So if you go you will see that on the website already. We have three more scheduled for January and February and then we've got a run all the way through to April so far already booked. And we'll be looking to continue these all year, every fortnight or webinars going through something of interest around financial planning.

So we've laid the foundation now this will be the kind of the third foundation stone of what we're doing in this series, then we're moving on to cash flow and money management. So covering that in a bit more data. But if we throw my back, this is the pyramid that we use to talk about where we really help people. So there's a difference between strategic and tactical advice. We get a lot of tactical inquiries, what should I do with my super? What should I do with my insurances, etc.

This is the strategic picture. So we work with people over a period of time, normally years, to define their aspirations and objectives. And then from there, build their pyramid towards financial freedom. And that involves putting in those foundational stones of working through what does employment mean, what does that mean for your budget, expenses and income, the debt picture, making sure that's as tidy as possible risk and protections and mitigating the downsides of what can go wrong in life. And talking a little bit about legacy, which also includes estate planning and wills and things like that.

With those stones in place, we then start building towards growing people's net wealth. So it's a matter of growing their net asset picture. Now for most people, their assets will be driven by debt at first. But we're very focused on that net picture. Because that net asset base will then drive consistent income into your personal circumstances. And when we say consistent income, we're also talking about ideally passive income. As you build that passive income, you get closer and closer to that point of achieving financial freedom and financial freedom for us, is when your passive income exceeds your consistent living expenses.

At that point, you can choose whether or not you wish to keep working, which I think is a really critical point in people's lives, rather than waiting to 65 or 70, or for younger people 75, potentially, to "retire" you can take that bull by the horns and really be intentional about the life you want to lead.

So this is where a financial planner can really help over the long term. Life happens right along the way, so things will bump you off this path. So they're constantly tracking and reviewing and adhering to the plan, forms a part of this.

And another one that we've shared a few times already. And this is a really fundamental piece, as well as this is the planning process. These are the steps we go through as financial planners all 15,500 left in Australia, follow something along these six steps: they are meeting, getting to know you, number three is then preparing the advice, presenting the advice number four, and then implementing our recommendations and then tracking and revealing that. We'll go through this a few times as on the recordings of the other ones. But that yellow line is a critical point. To the right of that yellow line is when advice exists. To the left of that yellow line. It's more of a diagnostic and investigative process. So that's an important distinction for down the track.

So a quick chat about how we do it at The Advice Gallery. So to start with, it's worth exploring who we are at the advice gallery. So I am the financial advisor. So my name is Jordan Vaka. I'll be doing this for about 15 or 16 years. And we operate under my financial services license, which is through a commodity company called PlanningSolo Licensing. That license is made to give advice on Australian financial products and services as a fairly broad license. But it is also independent, so we don't accept any sort of commission. I work in the business of The Advice Gallery, Steve Matsoukas, who is the owner and driving force behind The Loan Gallery owns The Advice Gallery, as well. And his mission is to put out as much educational content to help people make the best financial decisions possible. He's really passionate about what financial planning could mean for people's lives at both a tactical and strategic level. So it's a really exciting place to work in that regard. Below that I have two assistants. They're both based in the Philippines. Kim is our office manager. She is the brain behind the operation. She does an incredible amount of work in an incredibly short span of time. She's absolutely invaluable and you will deal with her if you engage us. Kim prepares 80% of the advice. Her technical skills are at the next level, but she also helps prepare all the paperwork, which makes a world of difference for me and the business. So Kim Lee is our office manager and we also have JoJo Cruz, who has just recently joined us she's another assistant based in the Philippines and she will be taking over some of the administrative work from Kim and helping integrate the way that we work in a much better way so she'll be communicating with people directly so you will also deal with JoJo along the way should you choose to work with us. We have a third person in the Philippines Danica, whose primary role is to help with our marketing and communications. So she control your rants on our social posts, chops up all these videos, makes them legible, posts them over on YouTube, posts all the blogs, does all that background work that's so necessary to drive such a strong educational process. So they're based in the Philippines. I live in Ballarat but work out of the Port Melbourne office in The Loan Gallery and I'm there every Tuesday and Thursday. So we can meet there for in-person meetings. Obviously, we're flexible around that as well.

In terms of work hours, so the teamwork is currently daylight savings time. So they work from 9:30 to 5:30 every day, when daylight savings changes, it's 9:00 to 5:00 every day the week. That's quite early for them in the Philippines. So they start work at about six o'clock local time and they're logged on by they're able to take calls and get to work with things as well. We don't work weekends. So we don't have appointments or meetings on Saturdays. Occasionally, I'll be in the office catching up on emails and all that stuff that we fall behind on during the week. But Sundays are a different logo, we don't do any work on Sundays.

In terms of booking availability, I do ask that any meetings or phone calls be booked at least a week in advance. If it's an urgent matter, we can do things earlier. But I find having a week in advance avoids us getting too swamped with work, too many peaks and troughs and lets us manage our workload a lot better. It's really important to me that our business and my team don't have those really awful side effects of having really up and down troughs. I really like to be consistent and steady so that we can put our best into the work that we do rather than running around putting out fires. So that's a little bit about how we work in the background.

So let's hop into the first stage of that advice process which is meet. Now, with meet, this is really where we first come into contact. So generally speaking, you will have come through to us from a referral from your finance broker. So you may have worked with them for a little while that probably helped you buy a house in the past, you might be one of the many people that have helped build their first home as well. So they will send they'll have a conversation with you, you may contact them and say, "Look, I've got this thing on my mind.". "I'm looking to buy a business, or I need to have my super looked at.", or "I'm 52 and if I work one more day longer than I need to I may lose my mind." So others send me an email and say, "Hi, John, I was just chatting with my client, Mr. And Mrs. Jones, and they have some questions around x, could you please give them a call on this number?" Perfect. So I'll give you a call, we'll have a very quick chat, go from there.

Another option may be perhaps you've watched the webinar, you've caught us on YouTube, you've caught us around the traps, and you've checked out the website and you've sent through a website inquiry. In that case, you'll get a response where you can book in a phone call. So we use Microsoft bookings for this part of the process. And it lets you find a time for a chat spent 15 minutes or we we suggest you put aside in the calendar. So you can find a time see here in December, lock in a time, put it in your details and they'll send a confirmation through you and me, block at a time in our diaries, then I'll give you a call. And we'll go from there. So either way, either of those two avenues, we will land in having our first phone call.

In that first phone call it is very much a get to know you. We will not have any answers to any questions you are asking in that discussion. But as I said, if you remember that yellow line, to the left of that is the diagnostic process. So this is really getting to find out how we can help. Which is why we ask these three questions. Firstly, how can we help? Why now? And have you worked with an advisor before?

So commonly, how can we help, "I've got this income protection policy, I need to have looked at" or "I inherited some money, I need to know what to do with it." or "I need to finish work, I've been made redundant. What do I do?"

That also answers the why now question. So redundancy, that's a very critical point. Divorce is similar. So is another sort of bereavement. For other people it might be look, I've been meaning to do some retirement planning for a couple of years now but never really got around to it. So there might be a reason that that's happened now maybe when your colleagues is retired, maybe your brother in law's retired and you say give him bragging about how great it is. So we'll explore that and see if it is an urgent matter and how quickly we need to get on to it.

And the last question is, have you worked with an advisor before? A lot of that's curiosity. We operate quite differently to a lot of other advisors, so it doesn't really matter. But I do like to know if you have worked with say a bank adviser in the past.

So either that phone call, one of two things will happen, it'll either be: "No, we're not really a great fit, here's somebody else who can speak to or send you an email with their details, or it's not really necessary we can help with or, also, it may be something we can help with. But the cost to you outside is introductory special were running the cost to you could be prohibitive." So it might be something like I need to change the investments in my super fund, we're going to charge you quite a fee to do that, often, you'll be better off just calling your super fund directly. So that's if it's not a great fit, we'll put you to the direction of the people that can help you the best. If we feel it is a good fit, the next step will be to send you an email with some information about us and booking in time for the next stage.

Discover, and remember, we're still in that diagnostic phase of the process here. So Discover, it's possibly the longest phase, I think in a six step process. What we do is we first book in that exploration meeting. So this is the first meeting 60 to90 minutes. And we sit down, and we get to know you. We get to know where you are now, where you want to go, what might happen in the meantime, what kind of speed bumps and roadblocks might get in your way.

We also talk about what it would actually mean to you to achieve some of these things. So it's quite a broad discussion. Now, generally, we weren't getting to the nitty gritty of the finances in that position in in that meeting. But often I do ask for people to bring along just some background info, so we know the kind of the size of the pool that we're swimming in. It's going to involve a bit of a budget, income, and expenses. Incomes really easy, expenses can be quite tough. We will cover that in a future webinar. Investment information, if you've got an investment property, just write down sort of the address, what you bought it for, what it's worth, now, is there a loan attached? And what rent are you getting? If you ever share a portfolio, just print out a portfolio valuation if you're anything like that, just bringing the interest so we know what we're talking about. And at least one statement, for Superannuation fund an insurance policy, life insurance or income protection policy that you own, should you engage us? Part of the process will be used signing off on a third-party authority, we will send it to all those super funds and insurers. And we'll reference your member number or policy number on there. So we can start asking questions.

Now this first meeting, as I said, is pretty in depth that we cover a lot of ground, it's a really meaningful meeting, I find. And so we offered two options for that the first one is in person in the Port Melbourne office, I would recommend that I just find that that kind of meeting because it's so big. And because it's the first time we will have met, meeting in person is normally the way to go. Alternatively, we can also meet via teams on a video call, because I can appreciate timing doesn't always work and locations, we don't need to be tied down to a location, definitely a very viable option, we do quite a lot of calls in that mode. But just to flag that it's not quite the same as catching up in person. And a note as well that we record all of our meetings, and we are moving to a system where we can record our phone calls as well. And the reason for that is in our meetings, I'm not sitting there scribbling the whole time, I can really have a conversation with you. And frankly, some of the systems out there now for transcribing and summarizing. And way quicker than me having to sit there write up notes afterwards, to be completely honest. And it's just a nice record of what we've discussed as well. And what we're starting to find out as we've been in this for a little while, we go back to some of those recordings a few years down the track and say, "Look, here's how anxious you were about certain things. Here's what we've done. Do you still feel this way?" And that's a nice little reminder.

Sometimes I get asked if we can organize meetings at home, so house calls? Honestly, no. The work that we do is quite intensive. And we have quite a few people working through that at any one time. So the time required to make house calls actually makes it really restrictive.

There are of course, extenuating circumstances if people can't physically make a meeting, and if they're not familiar with video, we will work around, people but there are extra charges for that. And those charges aren't included in that introductory offer. So I haven't put it on there. It's a very exceptional circumstance.

So we've had our first meeting. Sometimes there's tears, there's laughter hopefully there's some meaning in it and we walk away, and we say, "Okay, great. Now what do we do?" So you will get an email from us within 24 hours of that meeting. Now that just summarizes what we spoke about with a few action items. So those action items could be, "Look, here are three things for you guys to go and do: rerun your budget, contact your super fund, speak to your accountant. Here's some action items for us to do, we will prepare some paperwork for you, get you some documents, get your proposal." So it's all summarized in the one email, we will then send you an engagement letter within five days of that, which will lay out our understanding of where you are now, the services that I believe are most critical for you now, a timeline for delivery of those services, a quote and the terms and conditions. Obviously, the quote, again, you'll still be quoted the dollar amount, but they will all be waived at the end of the process. So there'll be no out of pocket cost, you'll have their proposal, you can then review it, we can have a discussion about it if you like. But for most people, we're just reiterating what we've already covered.

So we will then move on to having that document signed. And then we can get back to work gathering more data. So if you've worked with the guys from The Loan Gallery, you've probably seen something like this already. We use a portal called File Invite, where we have a list of requests, we send that to you. And then we ask you to upload the PDFs or documents around all those requirements. So I'm not sure if it's coming through on your screen. But there's things like we have a short fact find, which is a 2–3-page word document, you pop in your personal details and upload it through here, photo IDs, statements, etc. Now, you can see that with this information, the reason we use a portal rather than just having you send it to us via email, this is very sensitive information. It's really important to us that we make sure it's as secure as possible, hence the file invite setup.

There's also, as of this webinar, two questionnaires that we may ask you to fill out and there will be some more coming on board. And for this, we use JotForm. Now JotForm’s a really great system, really good in the back end but does have some limits around sort of where the data is kept. And there's just a few question marks, but it's not the gold standard we would normally like it to be. But the gold standard options aren't really very good or easy to use. So to get around that what we've done is we will provide you with an anonymized code to put in here to identify yourself, that's been reconciled at our back end, so we know who it is. But other than that, there are no personal details that are added into this form. This one is about assessing your tolerance for investment risk. So how much volatility can you handle? How would you react if things were dropping by 20%, in a 12-month period, those kinds of questions that if you've ever worked in finance, before you'll be familiar with. Insurance one is across four different scenarios. So if you were to pass away, if you'd be disabled, if you were to be diagnosed with a critical illness, or if you're unable to work for a prolonged period. In each of those scenarios, what do you actually want to have happen? What are your financial priorities? Now, we have designed the form there, again, and it's anonymous, so putting the information, the numbers, but that's all we're not going to ask you for details or specifics. So my paranoia around cyber stuff may be coming through.

We will also use those third-party authorities as I spoke about now, we also use that with your existing professionals if you'd like us to. So we can speak to your accountant, we can speak to your lawyer, we can gather information for you on your behalf. We also do Centrelink. So that's a big part of what we're doing.

My team calls the different providers and gets the information we need. super funds have gotten a lot better insurer is a bit of a mixed bag, investment firms they're okay. Other professionals, if your person is really hard to get to, like add to reach, it'll be hard to reach for us as well. Centrelink is a rolling nightmare of hold times. They're getting better. They've been short staffed for a long time they've been gutted by the government. But just so you know, like 45 minutes is not an unusual period to spend on hold for Centrelink, which is why I think quite a big part of our businesses that work.

Now, this can take a few days if it's really simple, or it can take a few months if it was really complex. So if you're somebody that has a business with multiple entities, multiple professional advisors, superfunds all over the place. There's a Centrelink it's harder to get in there and this complexity, it's probably going to take us two months to get the full picture.

If you are a 36-year-old wage earner who's got a super fund, a mortgage, a house and some savings, it's probably going to be a lot quicker. So there's no real golden rule there. But once we have the information We can get to work. And what that means is preparing the advice for you and for your family.

The reason we collect the data that we do, particularly, this is probably a bit of a distinction in my business. I know other advice firms don't collect all this stuff, or power to them. I haven't always done it this way. But what I found is by collecting this data, firstly, I don't have to keep coming back to you during the process going, "Oh, hey, how much is your mortgage? Hey, what's the address again?" It's all done in one fell swoop. It also by having a really comprehensive picture. Your financial picture is like a circle, and you've maybe asked us to look at one segment of that circle. But then I've asked you for information about the whole circle when you might be going, "Why the hell does he need all this?"

Another part of the circle might directly influence the advice in the segment we're looking at. So part of that might be Superannuation. You know, you've engaged us to review Superannuation. Is there a cheaper fund out there? Is there a better option? Can we invest in it better? But from that we then need to look at okay, if we move you out of that super fund to a new one, does that trigger any insurance issues? Are you going to lose insurance? If you are going to lose insurance? Can you afford to lose it? Or do you have a medical history? That means you need to keep it. We then start talking about really nitty gritty stuff like eligible service dates and components.

Following on from that, you know, maybe you've got a kid or two, or maybe you're a blended family, you've got kids from separate relationships, how do we make sure that that estate planning scenario is factored into your Superannuation advice, it might already be right in the fund you're in as moving, you might trigger an issue with that, then we've got an investment risk tolerance, how does that flow on to your broader scenario.

Your Superannuation, if we look at it in isolation, we're probably doing you a disservice, we should also run a scenario to see where your super is going to end up come retirement. But we can't do that in isolation. So is that kind of thing where we have the scope of work and we stick to that, but there's often bleeds into the other areas of what we do. So we collect a very comprehensive sort of set of data, because then we get into start preparing advice for you. Even her team then start loading your information into our specialist financial planning software, we use something called Plutosoft, which allows us to cast really good scenario analysis and trajectory analysis over the next 25 years.

Falling out of that as we get into the tactical side of things. So we prepare product comparisons. So if we're reviewing somebody's Superannuation, we'll compare your existing Superfund with at least two alternatives, one industry one retail, and make sure there's a lot for like comparison to see where the pricing ends up.

We'll then do our dirt analysis. So downsides, upside risks and tradeoffs to work out if it's worth changing, sometimes moving to a cheaper, Superfund isn't worth it. We're working with somebody at the moment, who is a barrister. He's working about 85-90 hours a week, he would like to move from his current Super Fund, which is one of the major ones from the banks to an industry super fund, because they're cheaper, and he always makes I get that. The issue is that he's 58 and he's going to be coming into retirement shortly. And he simply cannot afford the hours of hold time, or administrative hassles that will come with managing his own super through the industry fund that I'm talking about, which I nearly named and probably breached some sort of law. So we avoided that. So in that case, though, it's going to be dearer, he may be better off going to a superior retail firm that offers better service than level agreements and standards. Because him wasting an hour of his time at 900 bucks an hour, would negate the entire savings that would come with moving to the industry fund. So we start talking about that dirt analysis.

And then finally, once we've rinsed it through, the full filter of everything will then come to you with a final recommendation. Our recommendation we'll have you know, do we recommend you do ABC, and here's why. Here's the downside, here are the risks to be aware of. But on balance, we recommend you do this because it'll improve your financial situation. So there is a bit of work that goes into that. And there's a background here. If you've ever read anything about financial planning, the big push has been to simplify the process and to create a more efficient sausage factory so that everything comes out the other end faster. I just don't think you can do that for personal advice. Yeah, it's not too grandiose. We see a little bit of overlap with the way doctors go about things. I don't want a doctor that's going to rush through things that just spit me out the same prescription is given the last five people. I want the prescription to match my personal circumstances. And that's how we approach our advice.

So the Prepare stage now that we've got the advice prepared. And just as a bit of context here, when we're working on a file Kim and I in particular, we bounce around strategic advice ideas on a file, note that we have, that file note generally runs to about five to six pages. This is just us exploring ideas, bouncing them around. Once we've done that we then that's the advice preparation file note, we'll then move into the statement of advice. Statement of advice, as I mentioned earlier, is a legally mandated document. The Corporations Act and ASIC have made it very clear what's required in one a really shouldn't be any more than 25 to 30 pages. I have seen some that are 150 pages, they're not great. But this document says, here’s where you are now. Well, here's our understanding of where you are now, here's our understanding of your current situation, here are your goals and objectives, here's our advice. Here's the cost of doing that advice. And here's the impact of replacing any products. So it should be a really usable, readable document, which is what we aspire to have.

You'll then receive that with a stack of supporting documents. And that includes product disclosure statements. So that's the full summary of the document. Now, they're supposed to be readable as well, they're often 130 pages of legalese. There's a problem there. But on the whole, you can get the sort of snapshots as you read through it. There are often comparison documents, there's things called target market determinations, everything is provided to you so you can make a fully informed decision.

The Statement of Advice that should be said is a document upon which we expect you to make a decision. So it's often not just that, here's this ignore it. It's here's this advice, how would you like to go about it? How would you like to proceed from here. And often historically, that was a point of some tension, because the person in my seat often only got paid if you went ahead with their advice. One thing I'm really proud of as an independent advisor is in the nicest way possible, I don't care if you go ahead with advice. I'm not I'm not incentivized to persuade you to do what I'm recommending. That advice needs to stand on its own merits. And if you feel that it's not suitable for you, after we've explained it and been through it all, it's completely your prerogative, you will not get your hard sell from us. Because as I said, we're not incentivized for you to do what we're recommending, it is purely in your own best interest.

Once we've done that, we're on to stage four. This is where we get to the advice point. So we've crossed the yellow line, we are now talking about advice. So everything from here on in during a formal client engagement is probably going to be seen as advisory. The reason that's important is it triggers a lot of the consumer protections that you have as a client. or prepare the advice you'll have a nice statement of advice. It's normally in a PDF that's about 15 or 20 pages long, what I will do is then record an explainer video going through the advice using loom. So it's pretty detailed, they average at about 15 to 20 minutes, I think if you ask him, it's 25 minutes once I get my mouth running. But I will go through a lot of detail because the idea of that video is for you to watch it before we meet. So you can be familiar with what we're recommending before we catch up. So that our advice meeting is all about exploring your questions and doubts and concerns, rather than me saying, "Oh, look, here's six pages of extremely detailed technical, back and forth and recommendations, you need to make a decision now." I want to give you enough runway to make an informed decision.

In the email that you get around that, again, that is distributed using File Invite, there'll be a link to book in a presentation meeting, which is where we sit down, and we go through the advice. It will be sent as email, but really is through file invite you also get all the supporting documents, and then the meeting will be booked.

Now, ideally, you will have watched the loom video once or twice before we've caught up. Because then we get to review the advice. And you can say, "Jordan, you wrote this bid. You said that in the video. Did it make sense? Can we go through that again?" or "We got this completely. You explained it to me." "Okay, great. You guys understood it. Let's move to the next thing. Any questions you might have." When you're ready, we'll then sign the implementation paperwork that Kim and her team would have prepared for you.

Again, you will be under no pressure to do that in the meeting. But I will have the paperwork in the meeting simply for a matter of convenience. And we'll talk about why that is in a second. But if you want to otherwise you take it home, you fill it out on your own time.

Once it's done so you've received the advice, you've made your decision about how you want to proceed, you will then fill out an Authority to Proceed. Well, we will fill it out with you. This is the final page in our Statement of Advice. And it's where you say "Yes, I would like to proceed or No, I don't want to proceed, or I want to proceed but with amendments." Let me write down the amendments. That is the document we use as your acceptance of our advice. So the unlikely event is a dispute or something down the track. We will refer back to this because this is ultimately you are saying go and do these things now for us.

We'll then work into the application form so if we're making any changes to any sort of financial products, we will talk about your insurance. So there'll be an application form required around that. That also involves a personal statement, which maybe we will fill out with you. Or we will arrange a tele underwriting meeting where the insurer will contact you and go through that form with you over the phone. That's a really great way to go about this. But at the moment, their wait times are about 28 to 30 days. So as less ideal.

DOD, there is a duty of disclosure that changed recently in the last few years. But at its simplest, it's your duty as an applicant to disclose anything that might be considered relevant to an insurer as they assess your needs for insurance. There's a lot of paperwork here, and not just the paperwork, but as your application goes in, there'll be further follow up stuff that we do.

If we recommend any changes around Super, we will also be recommending a new account that we seem investment changes form we need to do, these are different for each Superfund. So you know, there's a fund out there, I think I can name them. AwareSuper, they all require a hardcopy wet signature form. Whereas somebody like Macquarie will do it all online. So we work out the vagaries of the different funds.

There'll be a binding death benefit nomination form for you to complete. We can't really give you too much advice about that. So we factor that into a discussion around your will. And often if you're making contributions to super and we're recommending changes, there'll be a notice of intent to claim a tax deduction form.

If it's an investment account, a non-Superannuation investment account, again, new account form, will set up a direct debit authority to transfer the money from outside of the investment into the new account. And there's a recurring investment or monthly contribution, we'll set up a DVR around that as well. And then really, any other application forms.

So we're very familiar with the Age Pension application forms from Centrelink. We're becoming increasingly familiar with the mod PT forms around Centrelink. Annuities are something we're doing more of, you know, aged care stuff we can help with. So it's really in the application form to help implement the advice that we have recommended for you.

Again, we've got some options around this meeting, we can meet up in person, if you're already in our meeting, we can get all the paperwork signed there, and then and then I'll scan that through to Kim and the team, and then we'll get processed. That is the most convenient option. But I'm also very cognizant of the fact that be made to make a decision in that meeting can feel a bit pressured. So there are other options.

So we use filing, right, we have we tried to use Adobe sign where we can. Otherwise, Kim will prepare the document for you to sign prints at your end and sign it off. The other option is the old snail mail, we do that quite a bit just slower. Other than that, it's fine. We'll be doing it for 100 years.

When it's all done, and again, this could be a matter of days, it could be a matter of months. My longest case was a Centrelink Aged Pension application that took 11 months, we eventually got it across the line by contacting the local member of parliament, and they got the whip cracking. That was our longest one. So it's 11 months. So anything less than that. Commonly, it's probably two to three months for insurance, two to four weeks for Superannuation, one to three weeks for investments. And Centrelink could be anywhere up to six months really, you'll be getting confirmation email from Kim or from JoJo that will just say, here's what we've done. Here's some things you should know about. So you know, make sure you update your employees out with your new Superfund. If you ever need to make an insurance claim, contact us, here's our rate schedule, that kind of thing.

We would also like to know how we went, if there's anything we missed, anything we could have done better. And there'll be a link in there if you're so inclined to leave us a review. Obviously, they help us grow our business. And there's some discussion around the next steps. And the next steps we're talking about there. A large part of that will be the track module of the advice process. If you recall the financial freedom pyramid from quite a few slides ago, you may engage us to help you reach that yellow pinnacle of the pyramid, in which case realistically is probably a five-to-seven-year project of rolling different engagements and different projects to give you the best chance of getting to that point. You may also just say no, I just want to focus on one of the building blocks. I just want to look at my budget or I just want to look at my insurance. I know the whole story. I know everything you can do. But this is focused on that little bit. The reality is that after that's done, you probably don't really need us anymore. You can just come back to us when you're ready to do another segment of the chart, which is completely fine. So once we're done in that case, you've got our contact details. You're still on the mailing list, you still get invited to things that just come to us when you have any financial questions.

The other side of is when you're engaging us to help you build that pyramid or you want somebody to manage your insurances or you want somebody to stay on top of your investments, you will engage us for a recurring service engagement we will flag if we think this is the right thing for you or not. So for some people it is, for some people, frankly, it's not. So we'll have that honest discussion with you.

If you decide to engage us on this side, we'll get a new engagement letter prepared which will outline in detail the advice and services required for the next 11 months, why 11 months? 12 months triggers a different set of requirements and responsibilities under the Act that add a lot of time, effort and cost for no benefit to you or to us. So we work to maximum of 11 month engagements. And at the end of that engagement, you know that it's finished, so there's no rolling debit that will continue, which has been the issue in the past. We will break out different payment options. So some stuff you can pay for through super most stuff you have to pay for directly. We just got guidance from the ATO last week, though, that they are making a lot of these fees tax deductible. So that's quite exciting to see. So that'll be something we'll go through as well.

Now, again, that introductory offer would still apply in this case. So you wouldn't have any fees payable for those first at least through to the 30th of June 2024. And we'll include a kind of a service timeline of when we expect to be delivering each item on the engagement.

In terms of sort of an annual yearly cadence, we'll have at least one meeting a year. I know some firms offer three to four meetings a year. And I think in certain circumstances, that's very important. But for most people, once a year is probably enough, we'll do a lot of prep work beforehand, as well. You're going to new Fileinvite, update information, all that sort of thing. But in the back end, we will be maintaining, oversight and management of your finances.

So for instance, a big thing we're doing a lot of term deposits, interest rates have gone up at the current moment. So what we will often do is have at least two term deposits going for our account holders, when the balance is enough, a 6 month and a 12 month. And then let's get rolling on and off. So that's an ongoing management, just make sure that you maintain it, you're maximizing the interest on that defensive component.

Another option people are looking for is to have myself and my team on call, there's two different standards for that. So you can have us call nine to five Monday to Friday, for an extra kind of cost, you can extend that to 24/7. Which means that you know, we'll take your calls on Saturdays and Sunday, or I will, it is a significant increase in cost because it's a significant increase in commitment. But for some people that are really nervous or going through a lot of stuff that can be quite valuable.

That is that. there’re my details, send an email to Hello@advicegallery.com.au or send me a text message or give me a call.