DFS Advisory Services is a solution-based advisory practice, offering our clients personalised advice around their individual wealth needs. We nurture client relationships through an unwavering dedication to service, priding ourselves on providing client-centric financial advice under a transparent fee-for-service model.

A passionate proponent of accountability through transparency, DFS Advisory Services separates structural fees from portfolio fees, to help clients better understand how the advice we provide, creates value for them. By leveraging our award-winning proprietary investment research and risk-based approach, DFS Advisory Services gives clients superior knowledge to help them make more informed decisions about their financial future.

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We understand that confidence comes from clarity, which is why we are passionate about communicating with our clients on equal terms. We actively engage our clients with regular communications, presented in a way that everyone understands, appreciates and values. DFS Advisory Services breaks from the traditional one-to-one advice model, offering clients access to a highly specialised advisory team, all committed to helping you achieve your financial goals. Our attention to detail and commitment to proactive planning, helps DFS Advisory Services create deeper, more meaningful engagements with our clients.

The foundation of a relationship is formed by laying small building blocks of trust. We embrace this at DFS and encourage all our team members to focus on doing the small things which make the biggest difference to clients. Only by consistently doing this over time, are we able to build strong engagement with clients.

“DFS Advisory Services provides a fee-for-service advice model. Our fees are time-based, separating planning advice from portfolio advice to create higher levels of accountability through transparency.”

Patricia Chan – CEO

DFS Advisory Services uses an objective framework to help clients identify the optimised solution for their unique situation. This starts by building an overarching picture of a client’s needs and preferences and designing a plan that can yield superior risk-adjusted outcomes. We hold ourselves to the highest account, providing clients with unparalleled levels of transparency, with all they need to benchmark portfolio risk, fees and our performance.

We understand that providing transparency, accountability and value are the cornerstone of a trusted client-advisor relationship. Also, our team-based approach ensures that when you call, there is always someone available to answer your query.

To ensure advice is provided in the client’s best interest, we have invested in our own proprietary research, technologies and processes, engaging with independent external experts to ensure we stay at the forefront of our industry. This uncompromising dedication to ethical practice is the foundation of our service, giving DFS a distinct edge over the competition.

Well before the Hayne Royal Commission, the financial services industry had been faced with the need for increasingly high standards around financial advice and the need for that advice to be not conflicted. DFS is amongst relatively few firms who moved ahead many years ago to ensure that it exceeded all ethical expectations around non-biased or non-conflicted investment advice, fee and cost transparency, comprehensive services across all classes of investment and deep professional skills and knowledge in all of the fields of knowledge required. Unfortunately, the recent Royal Commission exposed, among other things, the continuing operation of financial advisory services operating as an extension of firms manufacturing investment funds and vehicles – and therefore conflicted in their willingness and ability to provide fully independent advice to clients.

For us, DFS stands amongst relatively few firms in the full and independent advice space. We nor DFS were impacted by the Hayne report.

Value is subjective. At DFS, we recognise that there is a spectrum of client types and varying levels of service each may seek from DFS. Rather than approach our client relationship with a one-size-fits-all service approach, our starting point rests with you and what you need.

DFS Advisory Services adopts a fee-for-service advice model. Our fees are based on a service matrix which takes into account time-based factors as well as other factors such as the complexity of the advice and the extent to which the client wishes to delegate the implementation work and the ongoing management oversight to DFS.

Our modular fee matrix is therefore designed to cater to a varying combination of service requirements (advice vs portfolio) and appropriate levels of DFS involvement (ranging from a need-to-know basis to full concierge/family office service).

At DFS, separating planning advice from portfolio advice creates higher levels of accountability through transparency. Our decoupled approach allows our clients to compare the cost of advice and portfolio performance on an apples-to-apples basis.

This note is to record our appreciation of your assistance to us over the years in the establishment and management of our SMSF. We engaged you early in 2000 following our retirements so it is an 18 year advisory relationship you have with us. One only maintains such a relationship if it is working very well for both parties. We acknowledge the professionalism that you and Patricia provide but additionally and importantly you also clearly focus on the particulars of our individual situation when advising us and acting on our behalf. We also appreciate the responsiveness of your staff, especially Adele, to our requests for assistance. Your new assistant, Steve, whom you have recently brought with yourself to our SMSF advice is also clearly developing in the DFS tradition. We look forward to a successful continuation of the relationship.