The leading adviser businesses tend to be corporates, not groups or co-ops – but they nearly always involve more capital than one person can raise: so external shareholders are usually a must.

Quite high. This is another way of asking, in effect, how big is the market for life insurance? We’ve done some work on this and here are the numbers:

A little while ago we gave a summary of the data which shows that most advisers work for a business with lots of other advisers in it (for example, more than five thousand work in teams of 20 or more advisers).

Financial advisers in Australia are not often delighted with the work of ASIC, but one such moment occurred recently, when ASIC released a paper highlighting examples of what is and what is not acceptable from a ‘finfluencer’.

Russell Hutchinson has looked the government's proposed income insurance scheme and says, right now, there are more questions than answers.

So, all this news about digital advice may be a bit depressing. You could talk yourself into the idea that you can’t compete – but please, don’t. 

It is sometimes hard to appreciate that the battle being waged against cancer is slowly, but surely being won.

Russell Hutchinson looks at the government's proposed income insurance scheme and what it means for advisers.

If it hadn’t been for a cold call, this claimant would have received a tiny fraction of their claim.

Recently I wrote about the protection gap – for advisers, the issue isn’t that consumers are generally choosing no cover, although undoubtedly a few fish slip the net.

The protection gap is the preferred name for the difference between what a client should have and what they actually own.

In Australia, thousands of financial advisers have left the sector after new regulations have forced qualified advisers to take new exams and follow highly detailed and prescriptive requirements.

All the focus on Covid-19 has overshadowed the more mundane ways that hundreds of New Zealanders die each year.

Apparently 'hole in one' insurance is a thing. I didn’t realise until I helped sponsor an event a little while back where the organisers were offering $1 million if you hit a hole in one.

If you care about protecting policyholders, you should look at the current consultations being run by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) and Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).