Australians are becoming more and more familiar with their personal financial affairs. There can often be future economic and financial uncertainty. There is also the knowledge, that unfortunately, many of us will need the use of personal insurances in the future. Therefore MBO clients are increasingly turning to our Financial Planning team to assist them with their financial planning requirements.

MBO Financial Group advises our clients to take control of their finances and focus on the goals that matter to them the most. With the help of our Financial Planning Advisors John Brereton, Paul Looney and Leanne O’Connor, our clients are provided with a practical financial plan that is custom-made to fit them and help them achieve their long term financial goals.  There are a number of important steps to ensure that we get it right for our clients, these steps are detailed as follows:

1. Getting to know you
   In order to prepare a relevant and effective financial plan for you we firstly explore your current financial situation and identify where you are now and where you want to be in the future. 

   We then discuss and identify your attitude to investing. With this established we will then discuss the probability of meeting your long term goals, identify any obstacles to them being achieved and also discuss, most importantly, the costs of your financial plan.

2. Broad ideas and strategies
   Based on what we know about you and your goals, we'll then discuss with you some broad investment strategies and go over your options based on your investment preferences. This step allows us to confirm if we're on the right track to creating a plan tailored specifically to you.

   Our strategies for you may include direct shares, share trading, managed funds, property trusts, personal or self managed superannuation funds, cash management trusts, term deposits, farm management deposits, review of your current investments/superannuation policies and importantly life insurance, trauma insurance and income protection insurance.

3. Presenting our recommendations
   This stage is where we formally present our recommended strategy to you in what we call a Statement of Advice (SOA). Your SOA will detail everything we know about you, any assumptions we've made, every aspect of our recommendations and a plan for how we will implement your strategy. Here you'll have the opportunity to discuss the strategy in detail to ensure that you understand and are comfortable with it.
    
4. Putting your plan in motion
   Once we're totally satisfied that you're comfortable with our recommendations and that you're fully aware of what we'll be putting in place, you’ll then be in a position to give us the authority to implement the agreed strategy on your behalf.
    
5. Regular reviews
   As with any plan, we need to keep track of how things are progressing along the way to see if anything needs to change. Regular reviews are critical to the success of any financial plan as they allow us to check on any changes to your financial situation, and to track the progress of your strategy and determine if we need to revise any part of our plan of attack. Depending on your financial plan, reviews normally take place every six to twelve months.