Firstly, we work for our clients, not an institution.

Originally our colleagues and we were part of Pembroke Financial Planners that became Godfrey Pembroke that was eventually bought by MLC, which in turn was bought by the National Australia Bank. During this transition, in our opinion, the emphasis changed noticeably from one of client best interests to one of shareholder (institutional) best interest.

In our office we extended the range of financial services and adopted the trading name of Lifestyle Financial Solutions to better reflect our philosophy and services.

Next, to ensure you are confident that we do work in your best interests we are a fee-for-service Practice. You pay us an agreed fee and we rebate to you as additional investment units, any commission we would normally receive from initial entry fees. This means we are not influenced by initial commissions so our recommendations should be in your best interests. As an additional savings to you, our fee is normally tax deducible as it includes our Client Service Program for each 12 months.

Our Service Guarantee that if our admin causes you to loose money we will refund it to you immediately, tells you that we are fair dinkum. We are not aware of anyone else that puts this in writing. Naturally, we cannot influence financial markets, but we do care about our standards of service and your level of delight.

We manage around $80m on behalf of 165 active clients – that’s an average $480,000 per active client. These people are entitled to a high calibre Client Service Program. In doing this we average 2.5 personal contacts per client per year whereas the industry average is 0.5 contacts. This is a much smaller client number than the industry average but reflects the level of service and care we take for you as an individual. We send four newsletters to clients per year, have two Client briefings and one Money Expo as educational sessions, we conduct an ongoing program of evening educational sessions on various financial market topics to help clients understand where their money is invested, we conduct a half yearly portfolio valuation report with recommendations and a yearly formal review, we respond to changes in personal circumstances to review client strategies and, provide hazard warning and special opportunity advice as things happen.

We don’t try to be all things to all people so have developed specialised services for working professionals and self funded retirees. Whilst we have a policy that we will help everyone who comes in, we offer specific services and have proven expertise in doing so –
see the section on what our clients say about us.

When you buy a car or house or any material thing, you have a certain “expectation” of performance. When you are buying a “service” that relates to your very important money, we recognise that you may not know what to expect and are taking quite a leap of faith. We take our role seriously and will always behave in an honest and ethical manner in all our dealings with you. This is indeed borne out by what our clients say about us, to the point where they even offer you their contact details to confirm. We will set a level of expectation with you from the beginning and throughout our relationship.

Ours would be a long term relationship, almost a family environment. It is therefore, built on mutual trust and preparedness to talk straight, good or bad – because sometimes financial markets will disappoint and we are not going to tell you untruths just to get you off the phone.

Then of course, we will instil a high level of confidence and peace of mind in you through personal contact, education, sound approach to understanding your real lifestyle needs and our industry leading approach to investment assessment and portfolio construction that should enhance performance, reduce volatility, extend any period of poor performance and help you to achieve your “first choice lifestyle”.