Choosing the right planner is an important step.  Here are our answers to some commonly asked questions to help you decide if we’re the right financial planner for you.

If you’d like to know more, then contact us, we’re happy to help.  For more information about Optimo’s licence and ownership, see the About Us page.

What type of people does Optimo advise?

Optimo Financial provides high quality financial planning for a range of people including:

• Singles, Couples, Families;
• ADF members and their families;
• People approaching retirement
• People at a transitional point in their life. E.g. marriage/divorce, changes in employment or income, a new challenge or opportunity (e.g. buying a house)

Unlike some other financial planning companies, we are happy to help you arrange your financial affairs to your best advantage, even if you don’t have a lot of money to invest because it is tied up in property or superannuation.  If you have a reasonable amount of assets, we believe that our advice can add value and peace of mind and is well worth the cost of the plan.

We are happy to have an initial meeting to discuss your financial affairs and see if we can offer you good value advice relative to the size of your assets.  However, for people with a smaller amount of assets, the cost of the financial advice may not be very economical and it is likely that your financial affairs at this stage in your life would be relatively simple to manage.  To help you get started taking control of your own financial affairs, check out the Document & Links page for a list of free resources.

What types of services does Optimo offer?

Optimo Financial is licensed to offer financial advice on superannuation, insurance, shares, managed funds and basic banking products such as fixed interest accounts.  We provide you with a document called a Statement of Advice (SoA) which details a strategy to help you with your wealth creation.  To create the SOA we are interested in finding out about you, your family, your attitude towards risk and debt, the significance of estate planning, tax planning and adopting a long term approach to your financial affairs.  We look at a whole range of aspects of your financial affairs and look at tax legislation, government benefits and other financial products that will help you reach your financial goals and optimise your financial situation.

Some particular aspects of our strategies may include:

• Retirement planning – we aim to maximise your superannuation by looking at tax minimisation, salary sacrifice, government benefits and products that best fit your requirements.
• Paying off debts
• Geared property or margin loans – but only if suited to the investor's risk profile
• Budgeting
• Insurance – making sure that anyone who depends on you will be looked after no matter what happens.

What is in Optimo’s Financial Services Guide?

Our Financial Services Guide (FSG) contains information about Optimo Financial, the products and services we are authorized to provide to you, how Optimo (and other relevant parties) are paid and who to contact if you have a complaint.  If you arrange to have a meeting with us, we will go through this guide with you to make sure you understand it.

A copy of our FSG is available for download from our Documents page.

How does Optimo choose the products it recommends?

Optimo Financial’s planners are advisers, not sales people.  When we recommend a product, it’s because we believe that it’s the best product to help you reach your financial goals.

To choose the products we recommend we are required by ASIC regulation to have an approved product list (APL).  The APL consists of an extensive list of financial products (such as superannuation funds, investment funds and insurance) that we have meticulously researched and which we believe offer high quality and good value products.  As we are an independent company, there are no restrictions on what products we research and add to our APL.  As a matter of principle, we only choose products that don’t pay commissions to advisers like us, because this guarantees that you, the client, can be sure that we are offering independent advice and you pay lower fees.

How does Optimo create its financial strategies?

Optimo Financial creates its financial strategies using a program we developed ourselves called Pathfinder®, which uses powerful mathematical optimization to make the most out of your financial situation.  After a lot of rigorous testing and positive feedback from within the financial planning industry, we believe that Pathfinder® is not only able to produce better strategies than traditional financial planning methods (which may just be done in a spreadsheet by a process of trial and error), but that it is also faster, which means that we are able to provide higher quality advice for a competitive price.  We’re so confident that our software offers superior results that we use it for our own and our family’s financial plans.

What is Optimisation?

Optimisation lies at the heart of our strategy development software, Optimo Pathfinder®.  If you have a simple goal and no constraints, your strategy is simple; just march to your goal.  If you are fenced in with constraints, such as in the picture below, you need to be systematic about reaching your goal.

 

But just imagine the complexity of trying to do your best within all the rules relating to taxation, super, the pension and other vehicles such as trusts.

That’s where optimisation becomes so powerful.  Using powerful mathematical techniques and modern computing power, we can find the best way to meet your goal.   And we can demonstrate why our strategy is better than others.

What is Optimo’s fee structure?

We charge fee for service only; we will tell you up-front the total dollar cost of the advice before you agree to proceed with our services.  There are no hidden fees or charges and we don’t accept commissions from product suppliers.

For more information on our fees, see the Services and Pricing page.

How are Optimo’s advisers paid?

Our planners do not take up-front of trailing commissions and are not paid bonuses or rewarded based on the products they recommend, so there is no conflict of interest between how the advisers are paid and the advice they give you.  We charge on a strict fee-for-service basis and our advisers are paid a salary and receive bonuses based on the service they provide to clients.  They also don’t take on-going fees unless you sign up for our on-going service.  You can be sure that if they recommend a product it’s in your best interests.