The trust that was formed out of the dissolution of the Professional Advisers Association NZ has unveiled a new digital platform aimed at providing transparency to the financial advice community as well as attracting applications to its grants.

The PAA Legacy Trust is largely made up of funds from the sale of a number of holiday homes owned by the PAA after the holiday home scheme ceased to be viable and the members approved its sale.

Its website states that, the broad purpose of the trust is to support a range of organisations, individuals and charities with grants towards promoting and facilitating the education of financial advisers and the benefits of financial advice for New Zealanders.

Independent chair and trustee, Trevor Slater told Good Returns that the trust’s web presence aims to achieve two things.

“Firstly to give everybody all the information about what the PAA Legacy Trust does. All the financials are on there, all the minutes are on there, there will be no case for non-transparency.”

“Secondly we want to promote the trust, and encourage people who qualify for a grant to come forward, and to tell those people how to go about it.”

In 2020 the trust made its first two grants. Firstly to Financial Advice NZ to fund a research project to explore the awareness and value of financial advice. The report that was achieved was called “Trust in Advice”. Secondly, a trust grant funded the upgrade of the independent life insurance guide life-info.org.nz. 

Looking towards 2021 Slater says, “We are looking for applications that will benefit the prosperity of financial advice in New Zealand. The more innovative, the more outside of the usual, those are the types of things we are looking at.”

“We just want to see people with good ideas. There’s plenty of advisers and adviser lobbies out there who have probably got some great ideas, we would really like to hear from them.”

For more information, see the PAA Legacy Trust website HERE.