Give financial planners a break and let them focus on the client

Financial planner bashing has become a national sport. The financial advice industry has battled consumer and media perceptions that advisers are a bunch of cowboys flogging products to line their …

The twilight of China’s population and the dawn of its retirement industry

Most of the developed world has enjoyed a population growth dividend lasting for five or six decades in preparation for dealing with an ageing population. But China has enjoyed only …

Bursting the filter bubble to escape a ‘weatherless world’

From its earliest days, digital technology has sought to help us sift through the information overload to discover relevance. While this promised to broaden our horizons it has in fact …

Self-managed super funds: to 2020 and beyond

Since emerging in the late 1990s, the self-managed super fund (SMSF) sector in Australia has shown uninterrupted growth. According to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), as at 31 March 2019, …

How a love for fly-fishing may point the way for global economies

Buried deep in the PhD thesis submitted by Milton Friedman in the late summer of 1940 (note 1) are a couple of jokes, which I really love. The first joke …

Why a picture is worth 1000 words in developing effective research insights

The use of visual images in research is not new, but the way they are used continues to evolve and grow. Visual images help to generate research data and provide …

Complaints up, skilled staff down: the challenges of residential aged care

Australia’s residential care providers are in a challenging environment. While some providers are making healthy profits, smaller providers are struggling to survive. This survival-of-the-fittest approach was exposed by ABC’s recent …

If clients aren’t hearing your voice, who are they listening to?

Since the start of this year the reputation of financial planning has been battered by the Royal Commission. Control of the messages about the very real and significant benefits of …

Education and the Royal Commission push financial advice into uncharted territory

It’s been five months since the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry ended its hearings into financial advice. Although nobody is sure exactly how …

Royal Commission: six principles, three key issues, and eight pointers for advisers

The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry interim report, released on September 28, addresses the critical issues of how the level and extent of …

The first step for surviving the storm that too many advisers have not taken

Preliminary findings of the Professional Planner/CoreData Future of Advice Survey show that a useful first step a significant number of advice businesses could take to help them negotiate the uncertainty of …

To make a big change start small, start now, and start with yourself

At CoreData we have recently embarked on a discipline of filling in timesheets correctly and submitting them by close of business on Friday every week. It’s a small but important …

In super we trust, but is this the calm before the storm?

The numbers are in and there’s good news for industry super funds. According to CoreData research there’s been no damage to consumer trust from the Royal Commission’s superannuation hearings. The …

Five ways SMSF providers can deal with the death of homo economicus

The self-managed super fund (SMSF) market is reaching its maturation phase. The challenge facing participants in the market now is how to identify where new growth opportunities lie. So how …

What catching footballs taught me about business intelligence

Recently I had the honour of playing as goalkeeper for a team in the 2018 ASEAN Futsal Club Championship in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where we placed second, the best result of …