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20 August 2026
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‘Suitability’ of financial advice is something unlikely to be addressed by the Royal Commission, but its adoption and regulation is crucial to the improvement of the wealth management industry.
Good financial advice requires finding out a lot about an investor, in the same way a good relationship involves more than a few online questions.
It makes sense for investors to seek quality financial advice, but sorting through the pool of advisers to find the best can be tough. Don't rely on industry regulation to do the checking for you.
While ASIC reviews the feedback on its robo advice policies, the US regulator makes it clear it requires the same standard of care from robo advisers as it expects from human advisers.
Robo-advisers will make their impact in wealth management, but that doesn’t guarantee their success. Like any business, there will be major challenges to overcome as they attempt to disrupt financial advice.
The fear of sequence risk drives investors to take equity and risky asset exposures out of their retirement portfolios, but is this such a good idea? Looking back over the last 40 years provides some perspective.
Treasury’s latest CGT reform draft delivers a win for testamentary trusts and deceased estates, exempting estate-derived gains from the 30% floor. However, questions on death and divorce rollovers remain unresolved.
Average super balances are one of the most misleading benchmarks. They ignore your goals, spending and future needs, creating a false sense of security. Here is how I calculate exactly where I need to be at every decade.
Most people spend decades planning how to retire. Far fewer plan for what comes next. The biggest retirement challenge isn't always financial, and it often catches even the most prepared retirees completely off guard.
Most Australian portfolios are concentrated in large caps, with relatively little exposure to smaller companies. But what if the biggest risk isn't the economy, interest rates or valuations? For many, the risk is hidden in plain sight.
Many investors remain concentrated in shares, cash and property. Despite their popularity among institutional investors, real assets remain underrepresented in many SMSF portfolios. Could they be the missing piece?
Investors spend decades learning how to stay invested, yet few have a plan for getting out. When a financial goal has a hard deadline, a worked example shows why a fixed derisking schedule should outrank buy-and-hold discipline.
Why have active managers struggled as passive investing has surged? Research suggests that flows into index funds and ETFs are creating structural headwinds, penalising the stock-picking strategies that once generated alpha.