There must be something seriously flawed with the banks' home loans risk algorithm. I recently encountered a situation where a self employed business person tried to apply for a bond on a new property. They have an excellent credit record and have ru
When a client of mine visited me may years ago, he picked up a pen and piece of paper to make a note and immediately challenged me about whether I was an independent financial planner or whether I worked for the company whose pen and pad he had picke
I was recently approached by someone for help with her Sanlam RA's - they are the bad, old traditional life RA's with opaque fees, poor returns and hefty penalties if you make any changes before the term ends. It seems that Sanlam has found a way aro
Not sure what happened this past weekend but I received 2 emailed questions (from unconnected clients) about executors fees this morning. Seems the discussion has been around the quantum of the fee and how much the traditional executors (banks, trust
This is another offering from Std Bank that gets a big thumbs down from us. The radio ad sounds promising: • Access up to 40% at any time • Great interest rate of up to 7.4% However, you only get 7.4% on an investment of R5m or more that you are p
A client of mine presented a potential dilemma to me. He has a living annuity through Liberty Life but also has the bulk of his living annuity funds on a LISP platform. He was wanting to move the Liberty one to the LISP and consolidate his investment
What if SA is where Zimbabwe was ±20-25 years ago? With the benefit of hindsight, what would the average Zimbabwean do differently? Would they have stopped investing into their pension funds and bought more foreign currency? Would they have emigrated
There are essentially 2 emotions that drive human behaviour when it comes to money: fear and greed. Both of them can result in investors behaving irrationally and this can result is significant financial losses if we are not careful. For many South
Despite all the money that the banks spend advertising their savings products and all the claims to have no fees or commissions, I would not put a cent into any of their money market or savings products. If you want a money market account then you ne
Hardly a day goes by when we are not bombarded by some product provider pushing their latest, fanciest, cleverest product our way. It's time that we stopped and answered the question - would we use it? If it's not good enough for us to use then it's
•Asset Allocation Strategy
•Investment Research and Selection
•Local and Offshore Investing
•Tax Efficient Planning
