Unfortunately for financial planners, whenever the media gets hold of a story like the dodgy Commonwealth Bank financial planners or the Storm Financial Services disaster, the entire financial planning industry suffers. As well there’s a serious flow on effect – people become suspicious of all financial planners and avoid getting professional financial advice, which can cost them dearly in the long term.
While the behaviour of a few financial planners has caused great harm to a number of CBA clients and now to the Bank its self, the point needs to be made that the vast majority of CBA financial planners and in fact all financial planners are honest and sincere in their efforts to assist their clients. The relatively few dishonest or incompetent ones have a huge impact on the rest of them.
The almost inevitable result of this latest CBA scandal is that more regulations will be placed on the Financial Planning Industry, on top of the mountain of regulations already in place. If history is any guide, the small percentage of dishonest financial planners will either ignore the new rules or find a way to work around them while the rest of the industry will have to spend more time, effort and money complying. The unfortunate reality that politicians and regulators generally fail to grasp is that they can’t legislate to make people honest.
Because the retirement planning rules and regulations are so complex, most people need some expert financial advice to come up with a financial strategy which finds a good balance between superannuation options, taxation issues, wealth creation and protection, pension issues and estate planning. It’s really no place for amateurs and getting it wrong can be very expensive. So spending some time and money with a good financial planner is a sensible idea.
So how do you find a good financial planner?
In our retirement planning book “The Rest of Your Life – How to make it as good as you want”, we have a chapter titled “Finding a financial planner who will make you richer, not poorer”. It gives you some good advice on what to look for and what to avoid when selecting a financial planner. There’s also lots of information on issues like – Handling the transition to your new lifestyle, your health, your important relationships, your emotional challenges, family issues, working in retirement, volunteering and much more.
For more information on the book, click here.