It is the goal of the lazy financial planner to put you into average products because if they can, they don’t have to do anything else ever again. It is a risk-free "no worries" investment, for the adviser. Average products also come with the added bonus of rendering the planner utterly blameless for your performance under the “it wasn’t my fault, it was the market” defence. They cannot be sued for their uselessness. But they are still somehow driving BMWs.

Meanwhile, there are value-adding fund managers such as Wilson, Paradice, Cooper, Thorney, SG Hiscock, Colonial First State, Acorn, Bennelong, Alleron, Ellerston, Selector, Platypus, Cyan and, of course, Marcus Today, busting their guts to better the market. Fund managers whose sole purpose it is to add value through stock selection. We should be paid, we’re active not idle, we’re working for clients not exploiting them. We do not hold every stock, we do not remain fully invested come hell or bear market and we do not celebrate if we deliver the average. We want to smash the average and we are living and breathing our performance, day and night for your benefit. We do not sleep under the warm blanket of “hold everything” investment and we do not celebrate “not being sued”.

Meanwhile the many billions of the $2.6 trillion in superannuation money remains stuck on a platform in a bunch of generic managed funds recommended by a financial adviser who is collecting, through that structure, just about every fee imaginable. And if that is you, they thank you.

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I contend, instead, that if you are paying fees you are paying for a value-add. In managed funds that means you are paying for performance and in financial advice that means paying for a financial adviser offering value-adding strategic and structural advice in tax, super, aged care, estate planning, divorce, inheritance, retirement and administration. Then maybe, but only if you want them to, it's optional, investment advice that adds value as well, not advice that invests you in the ‘average’. You can do that yourself online for $19.99 a trade in one listed investment company, or for free on one managed fund website.