Understand

We start by getting to know you, well. Often these conversations uncover things about you that you didn’t even know yourself! We kick off by helping you understand what is important about money to you. From there we identify your goals and help prioritise them based on the things you value most. Let’s face it: for most of us, life is about choices and we are here to help you organise yours.

After that, we need to know where you are at now. Don’t stress about this. We can help you uncover all the necessary details. We work with clients at all stages of life and from varied circumstances.

Between our first and second meetings, we will be working to gather your details; in our language, this is called ‘fact-finding’ – you may have brought information with you to our meeting or sent details in afterwards. There are details we need to get right to ensure we completely understand your current situation. One of the critical steps is determining your cashflow needs via a budget. This information will underpin financial and lending advice.

We will ask you some general health questions. The reason for this is to begin to understand what health issues may need to be factored in when designing strategies and researching products to help protect the achievement of your best possible life.

At this point, if we feel like we can be of assistance to you, we will ask you to sign a couple of forms to ensure we have the right to proceed with our process:

• an Authority to Access Information Form so that we can contact your current product providers directly on your behalf.
• A Client Acknowledgement Form which captures all acknowledgements and agreements that we need to formalise our working relationship and commence working together. As part of this you will be provided our Financial Services Guide and privacy information.
• If you are ready to proceed, we charge an engagement fee to conduct the investigation required for our next step. This fee will be deducted from your advice fee if you proceed to full advice.

Understand – Challenge: 2 to 4 weeks

Depending on how much information you provide and the time it takes to gather any remaining details, the time from our first ‘understand’ meeting to our next ‘challenge meeting’ should be approximately 2-4 weeks.

Next Step: Challenge