Financial Choice Direct Portfolios
— the new digital investing journey starts here
My name is Russell Medcraft, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Financial Choice. I have been providing personal advice and guidance to my clients for over 40 years.
For those clients who do not require personal advice, Financial Choice has now developed a low cost and easy to use, online portfolio solution that allows you to select from one of our 5 professionally managed, investment portfolios.
Simply choose the portfolio that best suits your risk profile and time horizon and we’ll do the rest.
All of our portfolios are diversified and expertly managed by the Financial Choice Investment Team.
For Personal and Strategic Advice, please see below.
Personal and Strategic Advice
How our personal advice works
To begin the on-boarding process, we will send you a copy of our Financial Service Guide which outlines how we charge for the service and what advice our licence allows us to provide.
Once this has been sent, our Director of Sales and Client Engagement, Brooke Medcraft, will reach out to you to begin the process of gathering all your financial information and take you through our seven step process to develop your tailored financial plan.
From there, Brooke will document your goals and will work with Russell to put together a Statement of Advice to develop the strategies needed to put you in a better financial position.
About Us – the brains behind the business
Let me introduce you to our professional team and tell you a little about our history and qualifications.
Our team have all the necessary skills and qualifications to address all the complex issues faced with providing advice and servicing Self-Managed Super Funds.
Meet the Team
Russell Medcraft
Founder & CEO
CFP, Dip BS, Dip FP, Fellow of the SMSF association
Russell Medcraft is a pioneer of the Australian financial advice industry beginning his career in Melbourne in 1982. From a founding board member of the International Association of Financial Planning chapter in 1987 to national marketing manager for AMP investors in 1993.Russell set up Financial Choice in 1996 to address the needs of large corporates in employee superannuation. Russell Medcraft set up the online search facility findmysuper.com.au in 2000.
With the growth in SMSF’s Russell went on to establish the Self-managed Super Institute in 2004 for trustees of the SMSF market.
In 2018 Russell was a finalist in the Australian Fintech awards for the provision of digital financial advice heralding in a new era for financial services.
In 2022, Russell launched Financial Choice Direct, allowing investors of all sizes to now access the expertise and experience of the Financial Choice Direct Investment Team via their low cost and easily accessible online portfolio solution.
Brooke Medcraft
Director of Sales and Client Engagement
BCMS (UNSW)
Brooke Medcraft has joined Financial Choice in a client servicing role to develop and nurture our key client relationships. She is an experienced Sales Director working in high profile, senior sales management roles. Brooke’s ability to nurture relationships while negotiating strategies with senior executives has been the key to her past business success.
Brooke’s qualifications including a Bachelor of Communications & Business Studies from UNSW as Director – Sales & Client Engagement with Financial Choice dealing with various stages of people’s lives.
Vincent Ting
National Manager Operations and Advice
B Com (Actuarial and Accounting)
Grad Dip Financial Planning
With more than ten years of experience in the financial services industry, Vincent is passionate about financial planning, delivering exceptional service to clients and making a difference. He has extensive knowledge across superannuation (including Self-Managed super funds),insurance, estate planning and investments and plays a critical role in developing financial strategies for clients.
In addition to being a financial adviser, Vincent also is the National Operations Manager overseeing the services delivered to all clients. Vincent’s data analytics and CRM skills allow him to efficiently monitor activities across all levels to maintain service standards and compliance.
Vincent has a Bachelor of Commerce in Actuarial Studies and Accounting, and a Graduate Diploma in Financial Planning.
Emily Lee
National Manager Client Services
B Com (Economics and Finance)
Emily has over 25 years of Financial Services experience and has been with Financial Choice, a division of Best Interest Advice for 10 years. She has held roles as Account manager for Find My Super, Corporate Super Account Manager for Kelly Services, and more currently Financial Advice -Client Services Manager.
Emily has extensive experience in Superannuation, insurance, Trustee and Compliance Technical Services in Financial Planning with Commonwealth Financial Services and AMP before joining Financial Choice. Emily holds a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Economics and Finance from Western Sydney University.
She is passionate about delivering the best Customer Experience and leaving the client completely satisfied with the outcome. Emily manages the onboarding of new clients from account opening, insurance implementation and ongoing reviews. Emily will set up your online brokerage accounts to executing the trades on your investments. She is also the first point of contact for client enquires and continually informed our clients on the progress and status of applications and consolidations of super and contributions.
Jayson Felix
Chartered Accountant and Tax Specialist
Jayson is a valuable member of our team, and his area of
responsibility is in personal tax advice and the Self-Managed superannuation Audit.
Jayson is a qualified Chartered Accountant and a Registered Tax Agent with more than a decade of technical expertise and experience in Australian Taxation.
Jayson has extensive industry experience which includes clients in the IT, medical, legal, accounting and real estate sectors.
He started working in the accounting profession in Australia in 2009 and progressed to a senior accountant role in 2011 in an Australian Chartered firm.
Jayson is our specialist technical expert and the go to man when it comes complex taxation matters to do with Self-Managed super.
Making advice accessible and affordable to all Australians
Financial Choice’s 7 Step Plan
Step 1. Organise Your Money
Financial Choice will provide you with the essential components to start building a better view of your financial life so you can get better advice. By setting up your budgeting and savings goals in Step one you are now able to start to work with your financial planning expert to really make sure that you make the changes that will get you on track with your money. After you have sorted out your financial world and started to budget effectively we can now introduce you to a financial planner who will set in place the building blocks that will relieve you of the financial stresses that you experienced before you were introduced to Financial Choice.
This rule has been the building blocks for sound financial management for many years. It goes like this:
Life’s Essentials
No more than 50% of your take home pay should go to life’s essential items like shelter, food, heating and transportation.
In your budget these are itemised categories and are set up by your planner.
Financial Essentials
This is the 20% of your take home money you set aside to pay back debt, make additional contributions to your savings and retirement and credit card debt.
Lifestyle Essentials
Life is meant to be enjoyed so we can channel 30% of your take home pay into the Lifestyle part of your plan. This is stuff like your mobile phone, gym fees, kid’s parties, holidays, restaurants, shopping and other fun stuff.
Step 2. Get your bills paid on time
Your Financial Choice planner will set up a bill paying account or debit card to manage all your recurring bills and expenditure. This will make it easier to plan ahead and not worry about overlooking those bills if you are away from home.
Personal Budgeting and Bill paying service
Pay my bills – we will pair you with your trained money manager that will help you set up your budget and assist you in the difficult task of making sure that all your bills are paid on time and you stick to your budget. Your personal money manager will track all your bills, set up all your payment reminders, contact your Creditors if needed and negotiate difficult situations on your behalf.
Your wages get paid into an account in your name set up by Financial Choice. Your living expenses are transferred to your bank account that you currently use for everyday living.
Step 3. Your Net Worth
To really start to build a plan we need to understand what your Net worth really is. We can get an instant valuation of your family home and other properties that you have, your share portfolio, your managed funds, your superannuation funds and your bank accounts. We will also get the updated balance of your loans and debts to arrive at a current one page Assets and Liabilities summary.
This is now the beginning of your plan. We know your total financial picture of cash flow and assets.
Step 4. Build and Protect
Once you know where you are going you need to protect against potentially rough weather and obstacles that come up on the horizon that could steer you off course. Insurance to protect your income, life insurance to protect loved ones and general insurance to cover those assets. This is the critical step you need to take before you then move to accelerate your wealth. One big mistake could sink your plans for building real wealth.
Step 5. Integrated Electronic Tax Returns
Financial Choice will help you prepare your tax return. Your transactions automatically feed into your tax return so that you don’t have to keep a shoe box of receipts. We are also able to better predict how much your refund will be so that we can add it to your investments or help reduce debt. The tax return link is very important to enable you to keep up to date without any unpleasant surprises from the Tax man.
Our online Will service will help you get that part of your life organised so that your Estate Planning is complete. We also update the beneficiary details of your Superannuation fund.
Step 6. Maximise Your Investments
You new Financial Life is now taking shape and you can concentrate on making sure that both your strategy and the choice of investment and lending vehicles are matched to your long term aspirations. Advice on self-managed super to get greater control of your wealth is also provided here. We compare the cost of your current superannuation plan against the best fund available that offers low fees and better long term performance.
We compare in detail the fees you are paying on your managed funds, home loans, credit cards and make sure you are fully invested in the correct asset allocation to match your time frame and stage in life.
Step 7. Graduate to the Masterclass
Investing like the Ultra wealthy is more about getting the simple things right. How do the top 20 wealthiest individuals in the world invest? What’s their secret? How did they start? The answers might surprise you.
When you graduate to “Investing like a Pro” – you will follow the same investing principles that the top investors follow. It starts with having a global perspective on asset allocation, taking into account currency fluctuations, relative taxation structures and keeping to the plan no matter what.
This is where you need to enlist the services of the best in the business and have access to a panel of international experts that are at the top of their game.
This is where we tailor an investment portfolio to suit your risk profile and stage of life.