Many of you will have seen the recent arrival of the online personal finance resource, MoneyHub I sincerely hope you have been on to their site and checked it out. It’s a really important resource to have here in New Zealand, a small country with a lot of financial institutions and advisers competing for your investment. 

At FDG, we pride ourselves on providing financial advice. We take each person’s situation and then assist them in finding the right financial solutions. It’s a bespoke, tailored to each individual. Services like MoneyHub, Interest and Consumer provide excellent comparative data and education, but they cannot provide advice for an individual and nor do they want to. As it says on their home page: The information on this website does not constitute financial advice in any form. 

For the DIY financial experts out there, they will use this information to form their own thoughts and invest accordingly. But many others lack the time or inclination to analyse the data or make decisions that have far-reaching consequences.

In a recent interview with Interest website, here’s what Director, Chris Walsh, owner of MoneyHub had to say.

I’ve always had an interest in consumer rights and the freedom of resources. My parents subscribed to Consumer when I was younger, as well as Which? Magazine (the UK equivalent), which I read cover to cover. Price comparison websites are a natural extension of these publications, and I believe consumer finance products are complicated and largely incomparable for the average New Zealander. If my interests are in making financial information transparent, and I’m good at it, why not share the knowledge? I felt it was time New Zealand had a resource which was trusted to deliver plain English explanations of insurance, credit card, banking and other financial products and services.

We would have to agree, consumer finance products are complicated and often incomparable. It’s why our Advisers spend years familiarizing themselves with all the products so that they can provide the best advice. Sites like MoneyHub enable New Zealanders to do their own homework, which helps us in the long run because we end up discussing finances with better-informed customers. In turn, this means that more often than not customers better appreciate our service, recognising and agreeing with the advice given, off the back of their own research.

So what website resources are there?

There’s interest.co.nz which publishes many useful articles and is similar to MoneyHub but much more news fed than data-driven. It provides great financial news stories from week to week, but sometimes also goes for headlines rather than independent data-driven insights and comparisons. 

Consumer is a great resource, but not available to all given that it’s finding are held behind a paywall. Its a shame as the content they publish is normally well-proven and insight-rich.

Get Informed.

If you’re thinking of talking to a financial adviser, do some homework before and after your meeting. Don’t take our word for it from the first moment. Better to do some research and build confidence in the advice you’re being given through your own findings. You will feel better about your decision making and have even more confidence in our adviser if you embark on your own research too.