Blog

Life Insurance is Life Insurance Right?

August 2, 2017 By Jil O'Brien

Lots of our clients come through our doors with policies they bought online themselves. Others took out with their policy with their mortgage provider when buying a home. These are usually the clients who are less than impressed to learn what’s NOT covered by their Life Insurance policy.

If you’re not familiar with the fine print of your policy, it’s probably time to dig out the paperwork. Yeah, I know, no one has time for that stuff. Except for an Insurance Broker. That’s why it pays to get someone else to check the fine print for you.

And, if you do want to do the hard yards yourself, or you want a better understanding of what’s in your insurance contract, here’s our quick guide to the small print on Life Insurance policies.

The things that the insurer will not pay a claim for (known as exclusions) are listed in your policy document. This is the contract between you (the insured) and the insurer.

A bit of a rant about: Women and Kiwisaver

July 18, 2017 By Jil O'Brien

Women Business Owners need KiwiSaver — Vanessa: Local Business Owner and Client

I want to talk about women and retirement. If you’re a woman in NZ reading this – I want to talk to you about YOUR retirement and YOUR KiwiSaver.

Our Superannuation age will rise to 67 over the next 20 years. An ageing population means we are fast reaching the dire situation of having fewer people in work than we do not working. I think we can all agree that change is needed.

But is raising the age for Superannuation universally the answer?

My opinion is that raising the age to 67 will impact most negatively on those who have the least ability to save for their own retirement. I want to talk about the impact on women specifically. And the fact that they lose out hugely in terms of retirement wealth within the current system.

Motherhood is still not considered in GDP calculations. Those who carry out unpaid household work are classed as dependents. This undermines the economic contribution of women, who contribute most heavily to the upbringing and well-being of the next generation.

Consider that women are responsible for 65% of the unpaid work in NZ (this includes raising children and caring for sick or ageing family). Most tend to do this while they’re of working age. It’s clear that the odds are unfairly stacked when it comes to the ability to save for retirement.

The KiwiSaver disadvantage

Almost 85% of sole parents in NZ are women and many won’t have the extra funds to pay into their KiwiSaver, even if they are working.

It’s a sad reality that New Zealand’s retirement savings gender gap just keeps getting bigger. ANZ is the largest KiwiSaver scheme in NZ. They recently reported that the average balance of a woman in the scheme is 19 per cent lower than a man’s.

A year ago, women were 15 per cent behind.

When the gender pay gap is also added, you can clearly how women are disadvantaged in building their nest egg on multiple levels.

I believe that we can’t begin to address the gender inequality in the tools provided to save for retirement until we are prepared to fully recognise the contribution of unpaid work to society.

Don’t be an ostrich!

I meet lots of women who stick their heads in the sand when it comes to their retirement savings. Many are confident that they’ll have their partner’s fund to back them up later in life. We have a 50% divorce rate in NZ and I find it terrifying that so many women are pitching their retirement hopes on money which isn’t legally theirs.

My plea to NZ women:If you’re a woman and you’re not paying into your KiwiSaver, because you’re not employed or because you’re self-employed, please start. If you contribute $20 per week you will also receive the member tax credit of $521 per year. It’s a start. The system is unfair and unbalanced and it’s not getting better. I urge you to do whatever you can to plan for your own financial future, independently.

Rant over.

I’m really interested to hear your thoughts on this topic, you can join the conversation with us over on Facebook. And if you want more info on KiwiSaver please give me a shout.

Jil O’Brien is a Registered Financial Adviser. A copy of her disclosure statement is available on request. Information provided in this post is of a general nature only and does not constitute personal financial advice.

A Fresh Start; Welcome to our New Brand!

June 13, 2017 By Jason Armishaw

We’ve Rebranded!

You may have noticed a few changes to our Facebook and Instagram pages overnight!

You told us, we listened.

The main reason people have given for not getting their ‘financial stuff’ sorted is being too busy with life, work and family. In the past few years, we’ve lost count of the number of times we hear that it just takes too much time and energy to get a ‘Plan B’ sorted.

So, we decided to do things differently and found ways to make using our services faster and easier for our clients. We began to offer KiwiSaver and Insurance reviews over the phone and online, and we started to streamline our processes, cutting out paperwork and saving trees and time!

Eventually, we found that we’d moved so far away from the traditional image of financial advisers that we needed a brand to represent our new look.

We wanted our brand to represent the way we help our customers, by making ‘financial stuff’ easy, and to represent our love for New Zealand’s beauty.

Introducing Coast Advisers

Coast:
“To progress or succeed, without effort or difficulty.”

Adviser:
“An expert whose job is to give advice to another person, or to a group of people.”

We help busy families and business owners to go from fearing life’s ‘what-ifs’, to feel confident about their financial futures, by giving straightforward advice, professional support and custom solutions to make future-proofing easy!

As we move to more sustainable business practices and reducing the environmental impact of what we do, Coast Advisers is a great brand to represent our love of the beautiful country we live and serve our customers in.

It reflects our independence, integrity and unwavering focus on putting our customers first in all that we say and do.

Whether you’re an existing customer, or only just discovering what we can offer, we’d love to hear from you and find out what you think of our rebrand.