Financial Planning for Bank, Insurance and Telco Corporate Staff

We’re invested in your long-term success. What we do is personal, and we take it personally.

Your financial decisions connect, so we consider the parts of your financial life that are relevant to the advice you need:

• Property & Investing
• Career & Income
• Tax Strategy
• Insurance & Protecting Your Family
• Super & SMSF
• Wealth & Investments
• Life Events & Changes
• Business & Wealth
• Legacy & Future Wealth
• Retirement Planning

This is how we help you make decisions today with your longer-term goals in view.

Everybody’s situation is different, so we listen first, understand what matters to you and explain your options clearly before we make a recommendation.

Yes. Our financial advice and strategies can help you prepare before anything changes. That could mean mapping what depends on your employer, from pay and any bonus to staff shares, staff rates and cover through work, then working out how long your money would last. If you hold a staff rate, we can test your budget at a standard rate, and your lender or insurer can explain its terms.

Income protection is generally for illness or injury rather than losing a job, so we can help you understand what it would and wouldn’t do for you, and what may change with any cover if you leave. If your job does end, our redundancy advice can help with what comes next.

Your accountant and financial adviser bring different expertise to the same decisions. Your accountant can advise on tax reporting, structures and consequences; we help you plan how cashflow, debt, super, investments and protection work towards your goals. We can coordinate before important decisions.

What an accountant does

• Prepares and lodges tax returns, BAS and financial statements
• Advises on tax structures such as companies, trusts and partnerships
• Manages bookkeeping, payroll and ATO compliance
• Provides tax advice on the consequences of a transaction

What a financial adviser does

• Sets a long term strategy across retirement, investing and cash flow
• Builds wealth from early in a working life, starting with cash flow, a first home and super
• Recommends specific super funds, investments and personal insurance
• Operates under an Australian Financial Services Licence, which is required to give personal advice on financial products
• Handles retirement planning, Centrelink and aged care strategy, and estate planning considerations

Professional roles and authorisations matter. We provide financial advice within our authorisations and work with your accountant for specialist tax advice and lodgements.

Where they work together

• Tax position. Your accountant confirms your marginal rate, deductions and carried forward losses, which shapes decisions on super contributions, investment structures and the timing of asset sales.
• Business and entity structures. Your accountant advises on the structure itself and your financial adviser works within it for investments, insurance and succession planning.
• Cash flow. Your accountant’s figures can help us understand what’s available for debt repayment, protection and longer-term goals.
• Before key decisions. We can coordinate with your accountant on contributions, asset sales and other material choices in time to consider relevant tax consequences.

The terms that apply to you decide, so it helps to map each one and ask who can confirm it:

• Pay and any bonus: your contract, award or enterprise agreement and any bonus plan rules
• Staff shares: the plan’s rules decide what’s kept if you leave, so ask the plan administrator or a solicitor
• Staff rates: your employer, lender or insurer can explain the terms
• Cover through work: your employer or fund, before your last day

For tax, the ATO says ceasing employment doesn’t by itself trigger tax on employee share scheme interests held under a deferral scheme, and an accountant can confirm your position. We can bring the answers into one plan with you.

The ATO describes three layers for a genuine redundancy payment. It’s tax-free up to a limit depending on your years of service, concessionally taxed as an employment termination payment above that limit, and taxed at the top marginal rate above certain caps.

Unused annual leave and long service leave paid out when you leave aren’t part of the genuine redundancy payment, and the tax-free part applies only if you’re dismissed before Age Pension age.

Choosing to resign isn’t a genuine redundancy. Putting your hand up in a voluntary round is different, and whether it counts turns partly on your employer making the final decision, so an accountant can confirm its treatment and your figures. We can plan with you what the money after tax could do.

Fair Work says redundancy pay entitlements come from the National Employment Standards, an award or an enterprise agreement, and the amount depends on your continuous service. Its Notice and Redundancy Calculator works through the award and National Employment Standards amounts, and Moneysmart suggests asking your employer what you’re entitled to.

Fair Work says it can’t decide if a redundancy is genuine and suggests considering legal advice. The tax test for a genuine redundancy is separate, and an accountant can confirm how your payment is treated. Once you have your figures, we can work through your budget and goals with you.

It can, because those prices sit inside your household budget. Your employer or the provider sets any staff terms, so it’s worth asking for yours and what they say about leaving.

We can test your budget with you at standard prices, so you can see which costs you could keep comfortably. A home loan can be the largest of these, and a broker can talk through any loan.

Start with what you’d like it to do, because a bonus may change from year to year. Spending that relies on it is harder to keep up in a lower year, so everyday costs usually sit better on salary.

From there, it’s your decision. It could top up a cash buffer, reduce a debt, add to super within the caps or go towards a goal of your own. An accountant can estimate any tax still to come, and we can set out the options with you before it’s paid.

Staff offers can be a genuine benefit, and your employer or the provider can explain how they work. A financial adviser looks at the whole picture with you: your goals, cashflow, super, cover and what depends on your job, with any staff offer as one part of it.

That can help you see how your plans would read if your work changed, and how each decision affects the others. A broker can talk through any home loan, and an insurer decides on any application.

Yes. We can look with you at when you’d like to finish, and what would change if a role ended sooner than you’d planned. A redundancy payment close to the end of a career can shift those dates, so it’s worth seeing how it could fit beside super and savings.

If you hold staff shares, we can also look at how much of your retirement rests on one company, with tax for an accountant. You can read more about our retirement advice.

We’re a national service, so you can meet with us by phone or video from anywhere in Australia. We also have offices in three cities:

• Sydney: offices in Sydney CBD, Parramatta, Seven Hills, Ingleburn and Narellan, servicing areas including the City of Sydney, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, North Shore, Northern Beaches, Sutherland Shire, Blacktown, Liverpool, Campbelltown and all surrounding suburbs.
• Melbourne: our St Kilda Road office, servicing areas including the City of Melbourne, Port Phillip, Boroondara, Monash, Casey, Wyndham and all surrounding suburbs.
• Brisbane: our Eagle Street office, servicing areas including Brisbane City, Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Logan, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and all surrounding suburbs.

Yes. An analyst in a first corporate role, a team leader or someone with years of staff shares can all start with us, from wherever things are now.

There’s no cost for the initial conversation. Any advice after that is a paid service, with its scope and fee agreed with you in writing first.

It helps to bring recent payslips, a statement from your super fund, any insurance details, any share plan statements and details of any loans. We can meet in person or online.