The Moneymax adviser was one of about 100 advisers who signed up to provide an hour of free advice as part of the Institute of Financial Advisers-run programme last week; she also ran four seminars during the week.

Koh said the low take-up of the free offer (only 30 enquiries were fielded throughout the entire week) was partly due to a lack of promotion by advisers themselves.

“Advisers need to get off their chuffs and promote the fact there’s free advice during the week,” she said. 

“If people were looking for it as a way to bring people into their business it’s up to advisers to promote it themselves not for others to do it for them.”

Koh only had one query during the week, which she said was property-related with a family wanting to pitch in to buy a home for their retired parents, who are still renting.

“If you’re in a situation where you’ve got to pay rent or a mortgage in retirement, you’re knackered,” she said.

Jordi Garcia of New Zealand Financial Planning was another who took part in the initiative, helping a “distraught” woman in her late 50s/early 60s who was looking at using equity from her house to pull some money out and pay for her daily costs, including caring for her sick daughter.

Garcia said if it hadn’t been for the offer of free advice she wouldn’t have approached a financial adviser at all. 

“When I looked at her situation it was partly of her own doing; it turned out in her case her mother had left her a sizeable inheritance 15 years ago and she decided she wasn’t going to work again and she used it all up.

“If she had got financial advice 15 years ago she wouldn’t have been in the situation she was in.  People don’t really look long-term and think 10 years down the track.”