South East Queensland is in the middle of a long retirement shift. Around one in five Brisbane residents is now aged 60 or over, and the cohort is growing faster than the national average. That's visible in the suburbs most affected: Redland Bay, Victoria Point, Samford Valley, the Logan corridor, and the Sunshine Coast ribbon all carry strong retiree demographics. Advice demand is concentrated around these areas.

The other factor is the property-linked wealth. The Brisbane median home now sits around $920,000 (Domain, 2026), and many long-term owners have equity well above $1.5 million tied up in a house they bought 25 years ago. That changes retirement maths. A lot of advice conversations in Brisbane in 2026 are really about how to convert home equity into retirement cashflow without blowing the Age Pension.

Underneath all of this is the post-Royal Commission advice market. The 2019 reforms culled the industry hard. Adviser numbers in Australia dropped from around 28,000 to about 15,400 between 2019 and 2025. The ones left are, on average, better qualified and more tightly regulated. But the pricing went up to match, and the market is now stratified in ways it wasn't a decade ago.

Where advice earns its keep

The 2032 Olympics is shifting infrastructure planning. For people holding investment property in the Olympic corridor, the advice question is whether to sell into the build-up or hold through. That's a specialised conversation, and not every adviser handles it well.

Before any first meeting, do these four things. They take about ten minutes combined. Any adviser who fails one of them isn't worth a coffee chat.

Checking the register takes less time than reading this guide. Search the adviser's name on the Financial Advisers Register at Moneysmart. It is free to search, and the entry shows where the adviser has worked, their qualifications and training, their professional memberships, what products they can advise on, and whether they have been banned, suspended or subject to disciplinary orders. Read it against what their website claims. If the person is not on the register at all, they cannot give personal financial advice, and the conversation is over.

Some guides coach you to quiz an adviser about ownership and conflicts. The register answers most of it faster: see which licensee sits behind the advice, then ask the adviser directly how the firm is paid for the products it recommends. Any good adviser answers that in one sentence. We are happy to be checked the same way: Great Advice advisers are authorised representatives of Akumin Financial Planning (AFSL 232706), and both of our advisers' register entries are public.

Where advice earns its keep

The ASIC Register is the most important of the four. Every licensed financial adviser in Australia appears there. It lists their qualifications, their current licensee, prior licensees, and any disciplinary history. If someone says they're a financial adviser and they're not on the register, walk away. That's a legal problem, not an oversight.

Once you've narrowed to two or three advisers, the first meeting (usually free, typically 45 to 60 minutes) tells you the rest. These are the questions worth asking.

Two documents belong in this meeting. Theirs: the Financial Services Guide. The firm must give you one, or publish the same information on its website, before the advice conversation starts, and it names the licensee, the services, how the firm is paid, and how complaints are handled. Yours: rough numbers for super, debts and income. You do not need a shoebox of statements, but an adviser can only be specific if you are.

Where advice earns its keep

The eight questions do a second job: how someone answers tells you as much as what they answer. Clear, direct answers to direct questions are the habit you are buying. If the answers wander in the first meeting, they will wander when it matters.

Four common fee models are operating in Brisbane right now. Each has trade-offs.

The Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms banned commissions on new super and investment advice from 1 July 2013, and the grandfathered commissions on older arrangements ended on 1 January 2021. Ask how an adviser is paid and check the answer against their Financial Services Guide. Life-insurance commissions remain legal and capped under the LIF reforms at 60% upfront and 20% ongoing.

Brisbane ranges sit close to the national picture. For the full national breakdown, including what pushes a quote to the top of a range and the questions that expose hidden costs, see our guide to financial adviser fees in Australia.

Where advice earns its keep

Advice fees are tax deductible in many cases where the advice relates to ongoing income generation or existing investments. That's a question for your accountant, but it materially changes the net cost.

If any of these show up in a first meeting, cut it short and leave.

• Product pitches before the scoping conversation. Advice starts with strategy. Product recommendations are the last step, not the first.
• Vague or evasive fee disclosure. "We'll work it out later" or "it depends on the products we recommend" is a problem.
• Property spruikers dressed as advisers. SEQ has an ongoing issue with operators who bundle "advice" with off-the-plan apartment sales. If property acquisition is the suggested core solution in a retirement planning conversation, something's off.
• No Statement of Advice before implementation. By law, a personal advice recommendation must be accompanied by an SOA. An adviser who wants to rearrange your super without issuing one is operating outside the regulatory framework.
• Pressure to sign in the first meeting. Genuine advice takes days to document. Anyone pushing for an immediate signature is selling a product, not giving advice.
• Reluctance to explain fund restrictions. Every authorised representative is bound by their licensee's Approved Product List. A good adviser is transparent about what that list contains and whether it limits advice on your specific position.

Where advice earns its keep

A clean test: real advice starts with your position and objectives, and only lands on products at the end. If a specific asset, particularly property, is presented as the answer in the first meeting, the process has run backwards from a sale. Ask how the person is paid for what they are recommending, and whether they are licensed to advise on it. If either answer is vague, leave.

Most Brisbane advisers are generalists. For most situations, that's fine. A competent generalist who handles retirement planning, super, insurance, and Age Pension strategy can easily outperform a narrow specialist on standard cases.

Specialist advice genuinely matters in a few situations. Self-managed super funds (SMSFs) need an adviser who handles them weekly, not occasionally. Complex estate planning across generations, particularly with overseas assets, benefits from a specialist. Aged-care transitions where home equity, pension, and care fees interact are another specialist category. If one of those describes your situation, ask directly how much of the adviser's practice is in that niche. If it's less than 25%, you're probably better with a pure specialist.

If you are choosing an adviser for retirement, the filter is sharper. Retirement advice is its own discipline: drawing down instead of accumulating, sequencing withdrawals between super and other assets, and modelling Age Pension entitlements alongside both. Ask what share of the adviser's current clients are retired or within five years of it. Ask to see a worked retirement plan with the names removed. And ask how they charge once the plan moves to drawdown, because ongoing fees matter more when the money has to last. Whether you need advice at all before retiring is its own question with a timing window attached: our guide on seeing an adviser before you retire covers when that window opens, and our retirement planning page shows what the work looks like in practice.

Where advice earns its keep

Generalists are not the problem. Mismatch is. An adviser who spends most weeks on mortgage structuring or insurance can be excellent and still the wrong fit for a drawdown plan. The reverse holds too. The question is not whether someone is good, it is whether your situation is the work they do most.

The bar has been rebuilt twice in a decade, and the difference is easiest to see side by side.

The bar did not move by itself. Advisers already in the industry had until 1 January 2026 to meet the qualifications standard, and the ones who could not clear it left. Long-standing advisers with at least ten years of authorised experience and a clean record could instead qualify through the experienced-provider pathway, and every adviser practising today has passed the same national exam.

The register shows the qualification an adviser actually holds, which is worth checking against the letters on the business card. One more thing about titles: financial adviser and financial planner are the same restricted term in law. Both may only be used by someone authorised to give personal advice and meeting the professional standards, so read the register entry, not the job title.

Where advice earns its keep

Qualifications clear the floor. They do not pick your adviser. The exam does not test whether someone listens, returns calls, or explains a drawdown plan in plain English. Use the register to rule people out, then use the first meeting to rule someone in.

When an adviser gives you personal advice, the law requires them to act in your best interests. The advice must also be documented: you should receive a written advice document, currently called a Statement of Advice, setting out what is recommended, why it suits your circumstances, and what it costs. Keep every document you are given. They are what a complaint stands on.

If something does go wrong, the path is fixed, it runs in one direction, and it costs you nothing:

Put the complaint to the firm in writing first; under ASIC's dispute resolution rules it must respond within 30 days. Not resolved? AFCA takes it from there, free for consumers, and every advice licensee must be a member: lodge at afca.org.au. And if a failed firm cannot pay what AFCA awards, the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort backstops personal advice complaints.

Where advice earns its keep

In more than sixteen years I have seen very few disputes that started with a well-run first meeting. Almost every complaint traces back to a corner cut at the start: no licence check, no fee in writing, advice that arrived before the questions did. The protections exist, but the four checks mean you rarely need them.

Build the shortlist from three sources: people you trust who are already retired and well advised, the register search you have already run, and professional directories that verify their listings. Then hold every candidate to the same sheet:

Already with an adviser and thinking of moving? You are not locked in. An ongoing fee arrangement needs your consent to keep running, and you can end it. A new adviser handles the transfer conversation, so you never have to argue your way out. What you should not do is stay put out of politeness while paying an ongoing fee for advice you no longer use.

Whether paying for advice is worth it at all is a fair question with real numbers attached. The fee guide above sets out what advice costs nationally, and the pre-retirement guide earlier in this piece works through what it returns. And if you want to see how this guide's checks look from the other side of the table, our choosing an adviser page walks through exactly what we show new clients, unprompted.

Where advice earns its keep

People agonise over this choice and then decide on rapport alone. Rapport matters, but it is the last line of the sheet, not the first. The adviser who made you feel most comfortable and the adviser whose numbers held up under your questions are usually the same person. When they are not, trust the sheet.