You’ve worked hard for your money.
Now let your money work for you.
Independent Advice
HMA is independently owned. Unlike a representative of a product provider such as an insurance company or bank, HMA can offer products from a wide range of financial service providers based on what is most beneficial for a client’s particular needs.
Why Seek Advice?
A qualified and experienced financial advisor offers you deep financial planning expertise that should make a significant difference to your long-term financial success.
Every person’s life circumstances are unique and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for financial advice. Clients often seek financial advice when making important life decisions that could significantly impact their current and future financial security. Information regarding financial planning and investments is often vast and conflicting, while rules, regulation and tax implications are complex and subject to regular legislative changes.
Working with an independent advisory practice presents an opportunity for a lifetime partnership where your financial outcomes are tied to the success of your advisor. An advisor will help you weather the ups and downs of market volatility and may prevent you from making decisions that are not in your long-term best interest.
Dana Anspach, www.thebalance.com
Many people often wonder: Is a financial advisor worth it? With so much free advice on the internet, why pay for the help? Vanguard, one of the world’s largest brokerage firms, has worked on this question for years. In a 2019 whitepaper, the firm says that the value of expert advice can boost returns by 3% per year. It calls this edge “the Advisor’s Alpha.” A study by Russell Investments, a large money management firm, agrees with Vanguard’s basic stance. Russell says a good advisor can increase your returns by 3.75%.
By Ray Sin, Samantha Lamas, and Michael Leung of Morningstar
With easy access to more information on the Internet, and a tendency to look to it for guidance, younger investors are more likely to form their own strong opinions about the “right” investment strategy, separate from their advisor, for good or for ill…Most investors do not seem to understand the impact their biases can have on their finances, nor do they have practical ways to counteract the effects. Without the guidance of a behavioral coach, many investors are at the mercy of their own emotions.
By Ray Sin, Samantha Lamas, and Michael Leung of Morningstar
As investors, we all have behavioral biases, such as overconfidence, confirmation bias, and loss aversion, that lead us astray when making financial decisions. Advisors, however, are in a unique and powerful position to help their clients overcome these.
Pieter Hugo, Prudential (now M&G Investments)
Let’s face it: many of us are reluctant to use a financial adviser to help us with our investments … We wonder if their input is really worth the fees …we want to know what their true value is. At Prudential we’ve often been asked if it’s possible to quantify the potential value that a financial adviser can add to their clients’ investments. The answer, according to Vanguard Group, the world’s largest unit trust provider with over US$5.1 trillion in assets, is about 3.0% p.a. – very significant value indeed.
Stephen Katzenellenbogen, published by www.Moneyweb.co.za
My sense is that there are two dominant hurdles that prevent people from employing an advisor. The first hurdle is the advice fee: is it worth the money? The second barrier is “Can I trust this person to give me decent advice that’s in my and my family’s best interest?” I guess there could be a third thought: “I can do this better myself”. However, unless financial markets, ‘financial’ legislation, ‘financial’ tax (personal, company, trust, estate, retirement, donation etc.) and financial planning are your profession or committed hobby, you may be better off consulting an expert, than risk making an unintended error. We have a saying in our office: an expert is someone who knows what they don’t know.
Financial Planning Process
ONE
Engage
An introductory conversation to understand your needs. We’ll inform you about our services and how we could potentially add value to your financial situation.
TWO
Collect Information
We’ll ask you for relevant personal and financial information e.g. age, marriage status, income information, existing investments. This information is treated as confidential. Please see our privacy policy for more information.
THREE
Analyse Information & Develop Recommendation
We’ll discuss our findings and recommendation with you. Together, we agree next steps based on which components of the recommendation you wish to pursue.
FOUR
Implement Agreed Next Steps
This may require you to provide us with certain documentation e.g. a copy of your ID, which we can certify for you should you present us with the original. This is when you officially become an HMA client, welcome to the family. This is most likely when you will start to incur advisory fees as a percentage of your investment, charged by the administration company on our behalf.
FIVE
Ongoing Review
Periodic communication and meetings to report on progress. A long-term partnership to track success and adjust your strategy as needed.
Fees
Financial advisory fees are often misunderstood, and it can be difficult to compare apples-with-apples when comparing fees across different service providers.
As a first principle, it is important to be aware that using a financial advisor is not necessarily more expensive than going directly to a product provider. Advisors can negotiate preferential rates with product providers, meaning that you can effectively get expert advice and your product of choice at a similar rate to procuring a product directly with a provider without advice.
Secondly, it’s important to understand the difference between initial fees and ongoing fees. An initial fee is a once-off lump sum charged when you agree to buy a product, whereas an ongoing fee is charged as a small percentage of your investment. Clients can be misled when a service provider or their representative quotes an ongoing fee without being fully transparent about an initial fee. At HMA, we do not charge initial fees on investments as we believe that this fee structure is a historical remnant of an industry where product representatives were incentivised by their employers (often large companies) to “sell” policies to clients. Our business is structured based on ongoing fees, meaning that our long-term success is tied to the success of our clients.
Lastly, there are typically 3 types of fees involved in any investment process.