Thursday, November 05, 2009

Fuzzy numbers

The NZ Herald has a couple of stories highlighting the lacklustre performance, blurry accounting and sometimes downright wrong advice that many NZ small investors have to contend with. Consumer NZ has described many financial advisors as shoddy, while Massey banking wonk David Tripe has called Westpac's financial statements "scurrilous, nonsensical data".
Consumer NZ chief executive Sue Chetwin said only three out of 17 advisers produced plans that were rated "good" by the expert panel. The remaining 14 were rated as "disappointing" or were "rejected"...

Issues found by the investigation included poor analysis, unclear costs, advisers portraying themselves as independent when they were not, high costs and bad products.
You can almost see why property investment is so popular in NZ. At least it's a hands on tangible investment. A fool and his money may be soon parted. But more dangerous is the fool with someone else's money. Come on Securities Commission, pull finger.