I attended a refresher workshop for CFP® Professionals hosted by the Centre for Financial Planning Law (UOFS) on Friday. This is part of the continuing education that Certified Financial Planners are required to do in order to maintain their CFP® status.  One of the interesting things from the workshop was to learn that Financial Planning only started as a career in 1969 when 12 people got together to establish the profession in the USA....

I recently attended a Financial Services Board workshop on the FAIS Act (Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services). FAIS is big on putting consumer interests first and on making sure that consumers get appropriate advice. Despite the legislation there are still many instances of investors getting bad advice and being ripped off – this is partly due to the way that advisors are remunerated and partly due to the fact that the...

I recently read an article where the person was writing about how to choose a financial planner/advisor…some of what he said made absolute sense. Such as, asking for references from existing clients and checking that they are in fact registered with the Financial Services Board. But then, I am afraid, he lost all credibility when he suggested that you should “ask the advisor for a free review of your position and some ideas on...

So it looks like the “fuss” is all over and the equity market is set to run even further…I guess it is at times like these that you need to make sure you are “in for the ride” and not sitting on the sidelines watching it all go by. But it is also important that investors do a little “stock take” (pun intended) and understand/remember the following…afterall, has anyone seen the fat lady sing yet? Investing ...

According to the latest report from the Pension Fund Adjudicator, there are currently about 14900 unresolved cases (complaints) that they are still dealing with and this is on top of the 8275 cases that they have resolved this year. The Financial Services Board is also struggling with a significant backlog in their case loads and are unable to meet their own turnaround times (especially in the Section 14 transfer department). What is clear...

There is an old song where the lyrics went something like this “the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, but still they come!” At least the odds were better than the chance of you winning the lotto in SA where your odds are one in 13 983 816 (or 0.000000072%)*. Let’s put this in perspective: if there are 2 draws per week (104 per year) then you would need to play the lotto every draw for 134459 years to have...