Looking for a Financial Planner Brisbane?
Choosing a financial planner is not like choosing a plumber. You are handing someone visibility over your income, your superannuation, your debts and your plans for the next thirty years — and the difference between good and poor advice compounds quietly for decades. It is worth taking the time to choose deliberately.
This guide covers what to check, what advice costs in Australia, and the questions worth asking before you commit to anyone. It is general information, not advice about your circumstances.
What a financial planner actually does
A financial planner helps you decide what to do with your money over time, and then implements those decisions. In practice that usually means some combination of superannuation and contribution strategy, retirement planning and Centrelink entitlements, personal insurance, investment and portfolio construction, cashflow and debt reduction, tax structuring, and estate planning.
What separates advice from information is that a licensed adviser must consider your specific objectives, financial situation and needs, and document their reasoning in a Statement of Advice. That obligation is what you are actually paying for.
First, check they are licensed
Every person legally allowed to give personal financial advice in Australia appears on ASIC’s Financial Advisers Register. It is free, public, and takes a minute to search.
The register shows you their qualifications, how long they have been advising, which licensee they operate under, what they are authorised to advise on, and — importantly — any bans or disciplinary action. If someone is not on it, they cannot lawfully give you personal advice. Check before the first meeting, not after.
Understand how they are paid
This is the question that most changes the advice you receive, and the one people are most reluctant to ask. There is nothing awkward about it: every adviser is required to disclose it in writing anyway.
Broadly, there are three models. Fee-for-service means you pay an agreed fee for the advice itself, regardless of what is recommended. Commission means the adviser is paid by a product provider — still permitted for life insurance, and disclosed to you. Asset-based fees charge a percentage of the money under management.
None of these is automatically wrong. What matters is that you know which applies, what it costs in dollars, and whether it creates any incentive to recommend one product over another. At Queensland Financial Group our strategic and investment advice is fee-for-service; insurance advice may involve commission, and either way the figures are disclosed before you decide anything.
What financial advice costs in Australia
Most advisers charge a fixed fee to prepare a Statement of Advice, then an optional ongoing fee if you want continuing service and annual reviews. The cost depends on complexity — a single question about contribution caps is not the same piece of work as restructuring a family’s affairs before a business sale.
Two things are worth knowing. The fee must be disclosed in writing before you commit, so you should never be surprised. And an initial meeting is generally free, which means you can meet two or three advisers and compare before spending anything.
Ask what their advice can actually cover
Not all advisers can recommend the same things. Some operate on an approved product list limited to a narrow range, and some — particularly advice offered through a superannuation fund — can only address that fund’s own products.
That is not necessarily a problem if your situation is simple. It becomes one when your position spans several places: insurance held outside super, a partner’s superannuation, an investment property, or a business. Ask directly what falls outside the scope of what they can advise on.
Questions worth asking in a first meeting
- What are your qualifications, and how long have you been advising?
- Who is your licensee, and what are you authorised to advise on?
- How are you paid, and what will this cost me in dollars?
- What is outside the scope of advice you can give me?
- Who will I actually deal with day to day?
- What happens if I want to stop the ongoing service?
- Can you show me what a Statement of Advice looks like?
A good adviser will answer all seven without hesitation. Reluctance on any of them is itself an answer.
Red flags
Be wary of pressure to decide quickly, or of advice given before anyone has asked properly about your circumstances. Be cautious of guaranteed returns — no legitimate adviser can promise investment performance. Treat vagueness about fees as a warning, and be sceptical of any recommendation that funnels everything into products associated with the adviser or their licensee.
One more: an adviser who never says “you probably don’t need this” is not being careful with you.
Do you actually need a financial planner?
Not everyone does. If your finances are straightforward, your super is in a reasonable fund, and you are comfortable with what you are doing, you may not need advice yet.
Advice tends to earn its keep when there is complexity or a decision that is hard to undo — approaching retirement, selling a business, receiving an inheritance, restructuring debt, blending finances after a relationship change, or working out whether your insurance would actually pay out when it mattered. Those are the moments where getting it wrong is expensive and getting it right compounds.
Financial planning in Brisbane
Queensland Financial Group has advised Brisbane families and business owners since 1989, from our office at Suite 2, Level 22, 345 Queen Street in the CBD. We work with people approaching retirement, business owners planning succession, and families sorting out insurance and estate planning — and we frequently work alongside a client’s existing accountant rather than replacing them.
If you would like to talk it through, the first meeting costs nothing and carries no obligation. You are welcome to bring the seven questions above and ask us every one of them.