Fairhaven Wealth provides financial planning services. It was founded in 2017 by Sonnie Bailey (AFA LLB BCom MEntr DipFincPlan). When you work with Fairhaven Wealth, you work with Sonnie.
We're fiercely independent. We aren't affiliated with any financial product issuers or brokerage service providers. Nor do we have any financial incentive to reccomend a particular type of product or investment strategy. For example, there is no financial incentive for us to recommend financial assets such as shares or managed funds over property over debt-repayment, or the like.
We're structured so our interests are aligned with yours. Sonnie has set up this business so his incentives are 100% aligned with providing advice to clients that he would give to friends or family members.
We're all about seeing the bigger picture. We don't see the world through the lens of certain types of investments or products (such as loans or insurance). We're not about getting you to borrow more. Our role is to provide advice that's in your best interests, and that is aligned with your values and priorities, and what "wealth" really means to you.
Our ethos
Sonnie publishes regularly on his blog, NZ Wealth & Risk. where he publishes a new article every Friday at 8am. Through hundreds of articles, you can get a good sense of the ethos that informs Fairhaven Wealth. Sonnie has also published several books, including WEALTH: Simple Tips for Savvy Kiwis (available for free if you sign up to the NZ Wealth & Risk mailing list, or contact Sonnie directly), and Luck (available on Amazon Kindle).
For an overview of Sonnie's "manifesto" when it comes to wealth and risk, you may be interested in this article.
Our story
Prior to establishing Fairhaven Wealth, Sonnie worked extensively in the financial services industry, including as a financial services lawyer and professional standards manager. He also worked as a personal lawyer, providing estate planning and trust advice, and working in a professional trustee capacity.
Over the years, Sonnie had the opportunity to review thousands of financial advice files prepared by hundreds of financial advisers. He also had the opportunity to speak with dozens of advisers in detail about how they operated their advice businesses and processes. He saw the best and worst advice on the market.
From these experiences, Sonnie developed strong opinions about the sort of business and service models that were aligned with client interests and enabled advisers to provide high quality advice that were in the business interests of clients.
Sonnie started Fairhaven Wealth because he wanted to create a business that would allow him to provide the type of financial planning he would want to receive. He took the lessons from the best advice businesses he encountered and established his own business – adding additional characteristics, such as an advice-only, fixed-fee model that was exceptionally rare in the New Zealand financial market. His intuitions have been proven correct, as demonstrated by the success of Fairhaven Wealth and the many kind words of happy clients.
Sonnie is a member of Financial Advice New Zealand and the Financial Dispute Resolution Service (FDRS). He is a member of Financial Advice New Zealand's risk advisory committee which provides advice to the organisation's CEO and board. Sonnie also participates in an elder law special interest group committee, arranging CPD events for lawyers. He has been a member of the Institute of Directors (IoD), the Institute of Financial Advisers (IFA), the Law Institute of Victoria (LIV), the New Zealand Law Society (NZLS), and the Australian Association of Financial Advisers (AFA).
We provide a different model to most other financial planning businesses
We distinguish between advice from the implementation of that advice. Instead of implementing our advice on your behalf, we provide advice you can implement yourself. In most cases, implementing our advice is very easy to do, and there is little to no benefit in us acting as a middle-man.
Related to this is that we charge fixed fees, and we are clear about what we charge. When you research financial planners, you'll notice that this isn't common. When you make enquiries, you'll start to realise that most financial planning businesses charge in a more opaque manner – usually charging clients on the basis of a percentage of their portfolio, on an ongoing basis, rather than on a one-off basis as we do.
On the face of it, our up-front fees may not be as cheap as other financial planning businesses offer. However, many advice businesses effectively use their initial planning service as a loss leader to try to lock you in to an ongoing service model. (In which case, implementing advice, by insisting that they manage your portfolio on your behalf, is a good way of capturing you into an ongoing service and fee model.) For most clients, engaging Fairhaven Wealth is much cheaper than engaging a traditional financial planning business, once you factor in the ongoing costs and product-related expenses you will incur.
Our philosophy is that we want to be as transparent as possible. We offer ongoing services, but we provide these services on an as-needed basis, and charge based on the work involved, rather than via an opaque manner of charging as a percentage of your investment portfolio. Our view is that this traditional model anaethetises clients so they don't quite appreciate how much they pay for the service, while also creating subtle incentives that may not be in clients' best interests.
We are proud of our business model. It's not suitable for everyone. But it's suitable for savvy Kiwis who want to stay in control of their financial affairs.
We provide the ideal type of service for some Kiwis, but not for everyone
For a certain type of Kiwi, our services are ideal. But we're upfront: for many Kiwis we're not.
If all you want is specific advice about lending, or specific insurance advice, we are not for you. Our advice in relation to lending and insurance is more strategic in nature – specifically, about whether lending is appropriate for you or not, and what risks you need to manage, and how you might be able to manage these risks (such as via certain types of insurance). We do not provide mortgage or insurance broking services.
We don't provide budgeting services in any narrow sense. Our strength and value proposition does not relate to budgeting or day-to-day cash management.
If you want to throw the keys to your financial life to someone else, then we're not for you. We work with Kiwis who want to stay engaged with their financial affairs. We see our role as advisers only – it's the role of our clients to make decisions. Our job is to help you make more informed decisions, and part of this is telling you what we think you should do, including the reasons and risks associated with our recommendations. Ultimately, however, it's your money and your life.