50 Essential Wealth Management Thought Leaders in ANZ

Last updated: June 2026

Introduction

Australia and New Zealand are home to fifty thought leaders who are actively shaping how wealth is built, protected, and transferred across both countries in 2026. They are financial planners, investment strategists, superannuation fund executives, retirement educators, independent researchers, and financial journalists. They work in boutique practices and billion-dollar institutions, in Auckland laneways and Sydney high-rises and Brisbane suburbs. What they share is a willingness to think in public, to name what is not working, and to build what comes next.

As of June 2026, the ANZ wealth management landscape is navigating one of the most consequential periods in its history. Total superannuation assets in Australia reached $4.3 trillion as at June 2025, according to data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, with contributions climbing 14.1 percent to $210.2 billion in the same period. That represents a confirmed historical result: a system delivering at scale. Alongside that scale sits a trust challenge that the profession is still working through. A confirmed result from the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) shows that 94 percent of Australians who have a financial adviser trust that adviser to act in their best interests. Yet fewer than one in five Australians actually uses a paid financial adviser. The gap between what good advice delivers and how many people access it is the defining challenge of the profession in both countries right now.

The voices in this guide are working on that gap from different angles. Some are making advice more accessible, more transparent, and better priced. Some are building investment platforms that democratise access to institutional-grade products. Some are researching how the post-retirement phase can work better for millions of Australians and New Zealanders approaching it without adequate support. Some are simply writing and speaking with enough clarity that people who would never have engaged with financial concepts before are now paying attention.

This guide was compiled on the basis of three criteria: genuine current contribution, active public presence, and disciplinary and geographic diversity. Every person included has been actively publishing, speaking, building, or advocating in the ANZ wealth management space within the last twelve months. The list deliberately moved past the handful of names that appear on every list to surface voices who deserve to be just as well known.

For leadership teams inside ANZ wealth management firms looking to improve how their people communicate, make decisions, and hold each other accountable, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), works with financial services organisations globally. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Wealth Management Matters in ANZ

The case for following wealth management thought leaders in Australia and New Zealand is not abstract. The decisions being made right now about how the profession structures itself, prices its services, governs its investments, and serves its clients will shape the financial outcomes of millions of people for decades. Ignoring those decisions is not a neutral position.

Australia's wealth management industry is navigating the downstream consequences of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry (2019), which fundamentally changed how advice is delivered, regulated, and paid for. The number of licensed financial advisers in Australia fell from approximately 28,000 in 2018 to around 15,000 by mid-2025, according to data from the FAAA. That contraction has created both a shortage of accessible advice and an opportunity for the practitioners who remained to rebuild the profession on stronger foundations. The advisers on this list are the ones doing that rebuilding most visibly.

In New Zealand, the Financial Markets Authority's licensing reforms brought in from 2021 and fully embedded by 2023 transformed who could call themselves a financial adviser and what obligations came with it. Those reforms created a more professional and more accountable advice sector in a country where KiwiSaver now holds over $100 billion in retirement savings on behalf of more than three million New Zealanders, according to Financial Markets Authority data. Knowing which voices are shaping that sector matters to anyone who works in it or depends on it.

For financial services leadership teams navigating these structural shifts, Jonno White works with wealth management firms, investment organisations, and financial advisory practices to build the communication frameworks and accountability structures that allow strategy to reach execution. To learn more, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

This list was built from multiple discovery paths: the 2025 FS Power50 as voted by the Australian financial advice community, the 2025 Barron's Top 150 Financial Advisers as published in The Australian, IFA Excellence Award winners and finalists, Women in Finance award recognitions, FAAA industry citations, media profiles, and direct LinkedIn activity checks for every candidate. Every person included is actively posting, publishing, or speaking in the wealth management space as of 2026. Geographic diversity across Australia and New Zealand, gender diversity, and disciplinary spread across advice, investment management, superannuation, research, media, and financial technology were all applied as selection criteria.

Category 1: The Independent Advice Disruptors

The most consequential shift in ANZ wealth management over the past decade has been the steady erosion of the vertically integrated, product-tied advisory model and its replacement by genuinely independent, client-first practices. The people in this category are building those independent practices, making the business case for fee transparency, and showing that advice structured around client interests rather than product commissions is both more ethical and more commercially sustainable. They represent the direction the entire profession is travelling.

1. Ben Nash

The founder of Pivot Wealth is Australia's most followed financial adviser on TikTok and one of the country's most recognisable practitioner-communicators. His Mo Money podcast and YouTube channel have given financial literacy a presence in the feeds of a generation of high-income earners who previously found the topic impenetrable. His FS Power50 listing for six consecutive years through 2025 reflects a level of sustained peer recognition that goes well beyond social media reach.

Nash is the author of three books, including Virgin Millionaire and Get Unstuck, both drawing on his work helping clients build investment portfolios from earned income rather than inherited advantage. His particular contribution is making the mechanics of investing accessible to younger professionals who are starting from scratch. His facilitation of the National Rugby League's financial literacy programme extends that mission into sporting communities with historically poor financial outcomes.

2. Olivia Maragna

A co-founder of Aspire Retire Financial Services in Brisbane, Maragna holds designations as a Chartered Accountant, Certified Financial Planner, and SMSF Specialist Adviser, which she earned simultaneously at 28, becoming the youngest Australian to hold all three. Her 2012 AFA Adviser of the Year win marked the first time a woman had taken the award in its decade-long history, and it signalled something about both her calibre and the trajectory of the profession she was helping to reshape.

Her fee-for-service model, built from the founding of Aspire Retire in 2003, was structurally ahead of where the profession landed post-Royal Commission. She is a regular commentator in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and Brisbane Times on tax and planning issues, and an active public voice on women and money. Multiple Barron's listings confirm the commercial standing of her practice alongside the public profile she has built.

3. Glen Hare

The co-founder of Fox and Hare Financial Advice in Sydney is one of the profession's most visible voices on advice for people in their 20s and 30s, a demographic that mainstream wealth management has historically underserved. FS Power50 recognition in 2025 reflects both the quality of his advice practice and the reach of his public content, which consistently explains why financial planning matters to people who have not yet accumulated enough to attract traditional advisers.

His particular contribution is demonstrating that excellent financial advice for younger clients is commercially viable without an assets-under-management model. Fox and Hare's approach, which combines genuine financial planning with accessible education, is a practical answer to the gap between the 15,000 licensed advisers remaining in Australia and the millions of Australians who need guidance but cannot access or afford traditional advisory relationships.

4. Neil Kendall

The principal of Tupicoffs in Brisbane represents one of Australia's longest-standing experiments in genuinely independent, fee-only financial planning. Tupicoffs charges clients for advice and nothing else, taking no commissions and holding no product relationships. The Barron's Top 150 ranking in 2025 confirms that independence and commercial success are not mutually exclusive.

Kendall's contribution is structural rather than just ethical. By maintaining a practice that has never depended on product revenue, he demonstrates that the vertically integrated model was a commercial choice, not an inevitable one. His public commentary on the profession consistently makes that point with data and specificity, and his longevity in the independent advice space gives him credibility that newer entrants to the fee-only model cannot yet match.

5. Jordan Vaka

The founder of PlanningSolo in Brisbane has built one of the ANZ profession's most interesting practices around financial literacy and accessible advice for people who want to learn as well as be guided. FS Power50 recognition in 2025 reflects the genuine community he has built around financial education, which extends well beyond his client base.

His commitment to explaining financial concepts in plain language, combined with his advocacy for the value of professional advice at every wealth level, addresses one of the profession's most persistent problems: the assumption that advice is only for the already-wealthy. His work specifically targets the financial literacy gap that keeps capable earners from making good decisions about their money until it is too late to matter.

6. Nathan Fradley

The founder of Fradley Advice in Western Australia is a practitioner whose public presence consistently demonstrates the value of advice that goes well beyond investment selection to include the full range of financial planning decisions that shape people's lives. FS Power50 recognition in 2025 reflects the professional standing he has earned through both his client outcomes and his contribution to the advice community.

His content engages seriously with the structural challenges facing the profession, including the cost of compliance, the shrinking adviser population, and the gap between what advisers can charge and what advice actually costs to deliver well. His willingness to name those challenges publicly gives him a credibility with other practitioners that purely client-facing content cannot produce.

7. Liam Shorte

A financial adviser at Sonas Wealth and one of Australia's most widely respected SMSF specialists, Shorte has built a public profile on the specific planning challenges of self-managed super fund trustees, a group managing a combined pool of over $900 billion in Australia according to APRA data as at December 2025. FS Power50 recognition for multiple years reflects both the technical depth of his work and his willingness to share it publicly.

His LinkedIn content is among the most technically specific in the Australian advice landscape, regularly engaging with legislative changes, contribution strategy decisions, and investment governance questions that SMSF trustees face. His ability to explain genuinely complex compliance and strategy questions in accessible terms fills a gap that most SMSF trustees experience as isolation: they hold significant assets but rarely encounter a practitioner who can explain both the technical answer and the reasoning behind it.

8. James Wrigley

The financial adviser at First Financial in Sydney has built one of Australia's most actively watched educational channels on YouTube, making him one of the few advisers in the country whose content reach genuinely competes with non-adviser financial educators for the attention of younger investors. FS Power50 recognition in 2025 confirms the professional standing that underpins his public presence.

His particular contribution is the combination of genuine advice credentials with content that feels accessible rather than defensive. Most adviser-produced content still reflects the compliance mindset of post-Royal Commission practice: cautious, heavily qualified, and reluctant to make strong recommendations in public. Wrigley's content demonstrates that an adviser can be genuinely useful in public without the hedges that make most adviser content unreadable.

Category 2: The Private Wealth Leaders

Australia and New Zealand have a growing population of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, and the advisory practices serving them have become increasingly sophisticated, independent, and internationally connected. The people in this category are running some of the most respected private wealth practices in both countries. They manage significant assets, advise family offices, and represent the institutionalisation of independent wealth management that is one of the most important structural shifts in ANZ financial services.

9. Charlie Viola

The executive chair and founding partner of Viola Private Wealth launched his firm in 2024 after a career that earned him consistent Barron's recognition at Pitcher Partners, where he spent decades building one of Australia's most regarded private wealth practices. His position at number seven on the Barron's Top 150 Financial Advisers list in 2025 reflects the commercial standing of his new independent venture, confirmed within its first year of operation.

Viola's public commentary in 2025 and 2026 has focused on the growing role of alternative assets, including private credit and infrastructure, in high-net-worth portfolios, and on the structural advantages that genuinely independent firms have in serving clients whose interests genuinely require advice unconstrained by institutional relationships. His July 2025 interview with the Global Investment Institute on asset allocation and private market strategy offered one of the most practically specific public conversations available from an Australian private wealth practitioner.

10. Mathew Cassidy

The number-one ranked adviser on the 2025 Barron's Top 150 Financial Advisers list, the first time that position has changed hands since 2020, Cassidy is a senior private wealth adviser at Partners Wealth Group. His ascent to the top of Barron's ranking reflects what that methodology measures: the scale and sophistication of assets under advice, the quality of the practice, and the depth of client relationships.

His approach to private wealth management, built around intergenerational planning, tax-aware investment strategy, and genuine family governance conversations, reflects where the HNW advisory market is heading. As Australia's high-net-worth population grows, and the wealth transfer from one generation to the next accelerates, the ability to advise families rather than just individual clients is increasingly what separates leading private wealth practices from average ones.

11. Scott Carmichael

The managing director of Escala Partners, a Sydney-based independent wealth management firm, has been a consistent presence near the top of the Barron's Top 150 list for multiple years, confirming the standing of a practice that has built its reputation on quality of investment governance and genuine client alignment. His number three ranking in 2025 reflects both the scale of Escala's practice and the quality of its investment framework.

Escala's model, which combines institutional-grade investment research with personalised advisory relationships, represents one of the clearest Australian examples of what the independent advisory market can look like when it is built around the client rather than around distribution relationships. Carmichael's willingness to maintain genuine independence from product manufacturers in a market where that independence is commercially costly is the structural foundation of the firm's credibility.

12. Kellie Davidson

The top-ranked female adviser on the 2025 Barron's Top 150 list, Davidson is a private wealth adviser at Pitcher Partners. Her position reflects the genuine excellence of her practice, not merely her gender. The observation in the Barron's editorial that the list has grown from 10 percent women at launch to 14 percent in 2025 reflects slow progress that practitioners like Davidson are making visible.

Her work in the private wealth sector, focused on complex tax-aware investment strategies and comprehensive estate planning for HNW clients, demonstrates the full depth of what private wealth management can be when it is approached as a whole-of-financial-life service rather than an investment management function with some planning added around it.

13. Will Hamilton

The managing partner of Hamilton Wealth Partners has appeared on the Barron's Top 150 Financial Advisers list for nine consecutive years, a run that reflects consistent client outcomes and practice quality rather than a single good year. His 2025 ranking confirms that the track record continues.

His practice focuses on comprehensive private wealth management for high-net-worth individuals and families, with particular depth in estate planning, intergenerational wealth transfer, and family governance. Nine consecutive Barron's appearances in a list where methodology is rigorous and positions shift regularly is evidence of sustained excellence across market cycles.

14. Hugh Robertson

The managing director of Centaur Financial Services in Brisbane is one of Queensland's most recognised private wealth advisers, having held a consistent Barron's Top 150 position since first appearing as a new entrant to that list in 2022. His number 45 position in 2025 and simultaneous FS Power50 recognition confirm a dual standing that reflects both advisory quality and professional community contribution.

His public commentary on the investment implications of the great wealth transfer and on the specific planning challenges facing clients moving from accumulation to retirement income fills a practical gap in the ANZ advice conversation. Queensland's wealth management market is often overshadowed by Sydney and Melbourne in industry coverage; Robertson's presence and credibility in that market matters for the geographic spread of quality advice.

15. Paul Nicol

The managing partner of GFM Wealth Advisory has appeared on the Barron's Top 150 list in each of the nine years it has been published, earning a number 38 position in 2025 and recognition as a multiple-year veteran of a list where enduring presence is one of the most meaningful signals of quality. His 2025 FS Power50 recognition adds a peer-community dimension to the commercial standing that Barron's methodology measures.

GFM Wealth Advisory's transparent, fee-for-service model and its track record across market cycles makes Nicol one of the clearest examples in ANZ of what a long-term, client-aligned private wealth advisory practice looks like. His appearance as both a Barron's veteran and a FS Power50 selection across multiple years signals that commercial success and professional community impact are not competing priorities.

Category 3: The Investment Strategists and Researchers

Understanding what is happening in global and ANZ investment markets, and what it means for how portfolios should be constructed, is one of the most practically important things a wealth management professional can do for their clients. The people in this category are doing that work at the highest level: running chief investment offices, producing original research, and communicating complex market dynamics in ways that practitioners and informed clients can use.

16. Scott Haslem

The chief investment officer at LGT Wealth Management in Sydney, and the host of The Astute Investor podcast, Haslem brings more than 25 years of market experience to his current role, including over a decade as the top-rated chief economist for Australia and New Zealand at UBS. His regular podcast conversations with leading macro strategists and investment managers represent some of the most substantive public investment commentary available in ANZ.

His 2025 and 2026 episodes of The Astute Investor covered asset allocation in an AI-driven capital expenditure cycle, private markets access for private wealth clients, and macro positioning in a period of significant geopolitical shift. These conversations, drawing on his deep institutional relationships and genuine market expertise, set a standard for the quality of public investment commentary in ANZ that most practitioners and journalists cannot approach.

17. Jacqueline Fernley

The founding partner and chief investment officer of arcpoint OCIO, launched in late 2025, is one of the most significant new voices in Australian investment management. Fernley left Mason Stevens after four years as chief investment officer, where she oversaw around $9 billion in assets, to build a dedicated outsourced CIO service for adviser-led practices, family offices, and foundations. The firm secured three Sydney-based mandates within months of launch, confirming immediate commercial validation.

Her public commentary in 2025 and 2026 has focused on the structural shift in adviser-led practices toward dedicated investment governance as portfolio complexity expands beyond equities and bonds into private markets, digital assets, and ETFs. She has noted publicly that the most useful voices in the profession are the practitioners who write in public while running real client books, naming what is not working, and building what comes next.

18. David Bell

The executive director of The Conexus Institute, an independent research body focused on the Australian superannuation and retirement sector, Bell has built the institute into one of the most productive sources of original research on retirement income design, superannuation fund performance, and the governance of the post-retirement phase. His research is practically grounded in the institutional reality of how Australian super funds operate while maintaining the intellectual independence that policy-relevant research requires.

His 2025 work on retirement income strategy and superannuation fund accountability contributed to the framing of APRA's ongoing performance test regime and to industry conversations about what good member outcomes actually require. In a sector where original research is rare and commercially motivated analysis is common, Bell's institutional independence and commitment to publishing findings that challenge the status quo give his work an unusual credibility.

19. Michael Drew

A professor of finance at Griffith University in Brisbane, Drew is one of Australia's most prolific academic researchers on superannuation fund performance, portfolio construction, and retirement income design. His work bridges the gap between rigorous academic methodology and practical application in a way that few finance academics achieve, making his research genuinely useful to the practitioners and policymakers who need to act on it.

His public engagement with the superannuation industry, through conference presentations, media commentary, and direct policy input, reflects a career-long commitment to ensuring that research findings reach the people making investment and governance decisions for millions of Australians. His specific focus on what long-term performance actually requires from super fund investment frameworks has influenced how the industry thinks about its own accountability.

20. Amanda Fong

A private wealth adviser at Escala Partners in Sydney, Fong has earned a consistent place in the Barron's Top 150 ranking, confirming the quality of her investment governance work within one of Australia's leading independent wealth management practices. Her number 52 position in 2025 reflects the depth of her work with sophisticated private clients navigating complex asset allocation decisions.

Her practice focuses on the investment dimension of comprehensive private wealth advice, including portfolio construction across traditional and alternative asset classes and the specific challenges of managing wealth through major market dislocations. Her presence within Escala's investment-focused culture, combined with the public platform that Barron's recognition provides, makes her a useful reference point for practitioners thinking about what high-quality investment governance looks like in an independent private wealth context.

Category 4: The Superannuation and Retirement Leaders

Superannuation is the structural foundation of wealth management in Australia and, through KiwiSaver, an increasingly significant vehicle in New Zealand. The people in this category are leading the largest retirement savings pools in both countries, educating millions of Australians and New Zealanders about what retirement actually requires, and researching how the post-retirement phase can be redesigned to serve members better.

21. Paul Schroder

The chief executive of AustralianSuper, Australia's largest superannuation fund with over $400 billion in assets under management on behalf of 3.6 million members as of 2025, Schroder leads an institution that manages more retirement savings than any other fund in the country. His public commentary on the responsibilities of large super funds to their members, on the role of stewardship and active ownership in long-term investing, and on the relationship between fund scale and member outcomes reflects a genuine understanding of what running a trillion-class institution requires.

His announcement in December 2025 of the retirement of chief investment officer Mark Delaney after 25 years, and the subsequent global search that concluded with the appointment of Shaun Manuell in May 2026, offered a rare public window into the investment governance and leadership succession processes of Australia's largest institutional investor. His transparency in crediting Delaney's contribution, noting that around $190 billion in member returns were generated under Delaney's leadership, reflects an openness about institutional performance that the super sector does not always model.

22. Deanne Stewart

The chief executive of Aware Super, Australia's third-largest superannuation fund with $200 billion under management and 1.15 million members, Stewart has built a reputation for clear public communication about the strategic priorities of large super funds and for genuine advocacy on gender equity in retirement outcomes. Her leadership of the $30 billion merger with TelstraSuper in 2025 and 2026 represents one of the most complex integration projects in the recent history of the Australian super sector.

Her public positions on the gender retirement gap, and the role of super funds in addressing the structural inequality that leaves women with significantly less retirement savings than men on average, have brought an important equity lens to conversations that usually focus on investment returns and governance. As the super sector consolidates toward fewer, larger funds, Stewart's voice on what those funds owe their members matters.

23. David Anderson

The chief executive of Australian Retirement Trust, the second-largest superannuation fund in Australia with over $300 billion in assets and 2.4 million members, Anderson leads an institution formed from the 2022 merger of QSuper and Sunsuper, itself one of the most significant consolidation events in Australian super history. His public engagement with the strategic direction of large super funds, including the fund's stated aim to invest over $1 trillion in international markets over the coming decade, reflects an understanding of the global portfolio construction challenges that mega-fund scale creates.

His commentary on the role of super funds in long-term stewardship of Australian infrastructure and in the transition to a more diversified post-retirement income strategy for members represents some of the most substantive public thinking available from the leadership of Australia's largest financial institutions.

24. Bec Wilson

The founder of the Epic Retirement Institute and the author of three books on retirement and midlife, including How to Have an Epic Retirement, which has been Australia's number-one selling retirement book in each of 2023, 2024, and 2025, Wilson has built the most publicly accessible platform for retirement education in ANZ. Her weekly columns in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Money section, her Prime Time podcast, and her Epic Retirement Tick research collaboration with Chant West collectively reach hundreds of thousands of pre-retirees who would not engage with formal financial advice.

Her 2025 launch of the Epic Retirement Tick, a framework for evaluating whether super funds are ready to support members through the retirement income phase, directly challenged the sector to improve its member-facing retirement services and generated national media coverage. Her newest book, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife, reached number four on the overall Australian non-fiction bestseller list in its first week of release.

25. Sam Stubbs

The co-founder and chief executive of Simplicity in New Zealand has built one of the country's fastest-growing KiwiSaver and investment providers since founding the not-for-profit fund in 2016. Simplicity's explicit mission, to put member interests first through low-cost index investing and a commitment to passing savings directly to members rather than shareholders, makes it structurally unusual in a market where most KiwiSaver providers are for-profit.

Stubbs's public commentary on the New Zealand financial system, including his frequent columns on investment trends, the structural disadvantages of actively managed funds, and the role of KiwiSaver in long-term wealth accumulation for New Zealanders, makes him one of the clearest and most accessible investment voices in the country. His willingness to publicly challenge the fund management industry's fee structures from a position of running one of the country's most commercially successful alternatives gives that commentary genuine weight.

26. Dean Anderson

The founder and chief executive of Kernel Wealth in Auckland has built New Zealand's fastest-growing investment management platform, offering a range of index funds through a digital-first platform designed to make index investing accessible to Kiwis at every wealth level. His career path, from the NZX's Smartshares business to founding Kernel in 2019, reflects a deliberate choice to apply institutional investment expertise to the challenge of retail access.

Anderson's public writing on financial literacy, long-term investing, and the compounding value of starting early has connected with tens of thousands of New Zealand investors who would not have engaged with traditional managed fund providers. His consistent LinkedIn content on the psychological and practical dimensions of good investing fills a genuine gap in the NZ public conversation about money, and the commercial growth of Kernel confirms that the gap he identified was real.

Category 5: The Women Changing the Profession

Less than 18 percent of licensed financial advisers in Australia are women, according to FAAA data from 2025, and the representation of women in leadership roles within wealth management firms remains well below the broader professional services sector. The people in this category are not on this list as representatives of gender diversity. They are on this list because they are doing some of the most commercially significant and structurally important work in ANZ wealth management right now, and because naming them explicitly is part of how the profession's gender imbalance gets corrected.

27. Dawn Thomas

A senior wealth adviser at The Wealth Designers in Melbourne, Thomas won the IFA Industry Thought Leader of the Year award in 2023, one of the most significant individual recognitions in the Australian financial advice profession. Her FS Power50 recognition in 2025 confirms that the peer community's assessment of her influence has endured.

Her work, which combines technical excellence in financial planning with a genuine commitment to educating clients about the planning decisions they face, reflects the approach that post-Royal Commission advice practice is moving toward. The Wealth Designers' dual representation on the FS Power50 in 2025, with Thomas and colleague Cara Graham both included, is an unusual achievement that reflects the practice's genuine standing in the advice community.

28. Amanda Cassar

A financial adviser and director at Wealth Planning Partners in Queensland, Cassar has been recognised in the FS Power50 for multiple years, confirming a sustained level of professional community impact rather than a single-year achievement. Her public commentary on the profession's future, on the business case for advice that starts from client goals rather than product selection, and on what the profession needs to do to rebuild trust, makes her one of the most useful voices on the structural dimensions of practice quality.

Her advocacy work, including her contributions to industry working groups and professional associations on professional standards and ethics, reflects a commitment to the profession's development that extends well beyond her own practice. The dual recognition as both a FS Power50 adviser and a consistent contributor to industry reform conversations gives her a credibility that neither achievement alone would produce.

29. Jenny Brown

The founder and director of JBS Financial Strategists in Queensland, Brown has maintained a FS Power50 presence that reflects both long-term practice quality and consistent professional community contribution. Her advisory practice focuses on comprehensive financial planning for individuals and families, and her public presence reflects an ongoing commitment to the proposition that good financial planning changes lives.

Her contribution to the advice profession includes mentoring newer advisers, particularly women entering the profession, and her advocacy for what genuinely client-centred advice can look like in practice. In a profession still working through the reputational consequences of the Royal Commission, practitioners like Brown who have built clean, client-aligned practices over long periods are among the most important reference points available.

30. Rebecca Pritchard

A senior financial planner and shareholder at Rising Tide Financial Services in Melbourne, Pritchard has earned FS Power50 recognition and built a practice focused specifically on millennial clients, professional couples with young families, and recently separated women. Her decision to specialise in those demographics reflects both commercial judgment and genuine alignment with the planning challenges those groups face.

Her public content, which regularly addresses the practical financial planning questions facing people in their 30s navigating first homes, childcare costs, career transitions, and relationship changes, fills a specific gap in the ANZ advice landscape. Most public financial content is targeted either at retirees or at very young people starting their savings journey; Pritchard's focus on the middle years, when financial decisions have the most long-term impact, is both distinctive and needed.

31. Shannon Smit

The founding director of Smart Private Wealth and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Smit is recognised for her work combining accounting precision with empathetic financial planning for clients who need both. Her 2025 Australian Accounting Awards Innovator of the Year recognition and Count Financial Business Leader of the Year award reflect the dual professional standing she has built across financial advice and accounting.

Her specific contribution is the integration of technical accounting rigour into financial planning practice, an approach that benefits clients navigating complex tax structures, business transitions, and estate planning decisions where accounting and advice expertise genuinely intersect. Her national recognition through multiple award bodies confirms the standing of her work across professional communities that rarely overlap.

32. Cara Graham

A principal wealth adviser at The Wealth Designers in Melbourne and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Graham's recognition alongside colleague Dawn Thomas in the same FS Power50 list reflects the genuine strength of The Wealth Designers as a practice built around professional contribution as well as client outcomes.

Her work focuses on comprehensive financial planning for clients navigating significant life transitions, including career changes, family formation, and inheritance. Her public presence reflects a commitment to making the planning process feel genuinely collaborative rather than transactional, and her FS Power50 recognition confirms that the advice community recognises the quality of that approach.

33. Sarah Abood

The chief executive of the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA), the peak body representing financial advisers formed from the 2023 merger of the AFA and the FPA, Abood is one of the most important institutional voices in the Australian advice landscape. Her public commentary on regulatory reform, professional standards, and the business case for advice shapes how the profession engages with government, media, and the public.

Her leadership of the FAAA at a critical moment in the profession's reform trajectory, including the launch of the Advice Academy in November 2025 to build a pipeline of new advisers, and sustained advocacy for adviser education reforms through 2026, makes her contributions to the public conversation about the profession's future among the most consequential available. She brings more than 25 years of experience in financial services to the role, including nine years as CEO of a self-licensed financial planning firm.

34. Deline Jacovides

The founder of Mazi Wealth in Melbourne and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Jacovides has built a practice that brings together financial planning expertise with a particular focus on women's financial independence and multicultural client communities. Her public presence reflects a genuine understanding of the specific planning challenges faced by clients who do not see themselves reflected in mainstream financial advice.

Her contribution is the demonstration that a boutique advisory practice can be built around specific client communities without compromising the quality of advice those clients receive. In a profession still dominated by practices built around the demographics of an earlier era, Jacovides' work provides both a commercial proof point and a practical model for the more diverse profession the next generation of clients will require.

35. Amie Baker

A principal financial adviser at Rekab Advice and the national chair of the FAAA's Inspire community, Baker has been recognised through multiple award programmes including IFA Excellence Awards and Women in Finance recognitions. Her role in FAAA Inspire, specifically oriented toward supporting women entering and progressing in the advice profession, extends her impact well beyond her own client practice.

Baker holds the distinction of being the only woman ever to win the IFA Investment Adviser of the Year award, a specific technical recognition that confirms the depth of investment expertise underpinning her broader public presence. Her dual standing as a technical practitioner and a profession-wide advocate for women in advice gives her a credibility across both dimensions that is unusual and important.

Category 6: The New Zealand Voices

New Zealand's wealth management landscape is distinct from Australia's in several important ways: the central role of KiwiSaver as both a retirement vehicle and an investment gateway for millions of New Zealanders, the influence of the Financial Markets Authority's licensing reform, and the intimate scale of a professional community where reputation travels fast and relationships matter. The people in this category are among the most influential voices shaping how New Zealanders build and manage wealth.

36. Darcy Ungaro

A financial adviser at Radical Investment in Auckland and the host of The Everyday Investor and NZ Investor podcasts, Ungaro has built one of New Zealand's most widely followed personal finance platforms from two decades of advisory practice and a willingness to engage publicly with the structural questions most advisers avoid. His decision in 2025 to bring his advisory practice and podcast platform together at Radical Investment, a fee-only firm, reflects a consistent commitment to advice that is structurally aligned with client interests.

His public engagement with Bitcoin, precious metals, and non-traditional assets within KiwiSaver and investment portfolios brings an ANZ advisory perspective to conversations that are usually conducted entirely by international commentators. His willingness to take positions, explain his reasoning, and accept challenge from his audience makes his content functionally different from the compliance-hedged adviser output that dominates most of the market.

37. Martin Hawes

New Zealand's most widely read personal finance author, with 25 books to his credit including Family Trusts, which has sold over 120,000 copies, Hawes built a career as an authorised financial adviser before transitioning to full-time writing, speaking, and media work. His books cover long-term life planning, maximising financial potential across the earning years, and navigating the products and players of the NZ financial system.

His willingness to write clearly, without jargon, for readers who are not financial specialists, has introduced hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders to financial concepts and disciplines they would not have engaged with otherwise. In a country where financial literacy has consistently ranked as a significant gap in public education, the accessibility of his writing gives it a social impact that more technically sophisticated work rarely achieves.

38. Ben Brinkerhoff

The head of advice at Consilium in Auckland, one of New Zealand's leading independent advisory support networks working with approximately 150 to 200 advice firms, Brinkerhoff is one of the clearest voices in the NZ profession on what excellent advisory practice looks like at the institutional level. His role involves helping advisory firms across New Zealand improve their advice quality, business models, and client outcomes.

His public commentary on the future of financial advice in New Zealand addresses structural questions about how the profession can reach the majority of New Zealanders who need genuine financial guidance but do not currently have access to it. His perspective from within the advisory support ecosystem gives him insight into the practice-level challenges that are invisible to advisers working in isolation.

39. Cara Williams

An adviser and founder at The Hazel Way and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Williams has built an advice practice focused on making genuine financial planning accessible to a broader range of clients. Her public presence reflects the same commitment to simplifying financial concepts without dumbing them down that characterises the best practitioner-communicators.

Her contribution is both to her clients and to the broader conversation about what accessible advice can look like when it is built from first principles rather than inherited from an industry model that assumed a wealthy, older, predominantly male client base. The Hazel Way name itself signals an approach to advice built around clarity and purpose.

Category 7: The Financial Educators and Media Voices

Public trust in wealth management is partly a function of the quality of the public information environment. When financial concepts are explained badly, or not explained at all, people make worse decisions. The people in this category are doing the work of financial education and financial journalism at the highest level in ANZ, reaching audiences that no adviser practice could reach on its own.

40. James Kirby

The associate editor and wealth journalist at The Australian, host of the Money Puzzle podcast, and the originator of the Barron's Top Financial Advisers ranking in Australia, Kirby is the most widely read financial journalist covering the ANZ wealth management sector. His columns reach a national audience of investors and practitioners who rely on his analysis to understand what is happening in advice, superannuation, investment markets, and financial regulation.

His work on the 2025 Barron's Top 150 list, and his editorial framing of the shifts at the top of the ranking including the first change in the number-one position since 2020, reflects both his institutional knowledge of the profession and his genuine interest in how the quality of advice is evolving. His directorship of Ecstra, the financial literacy foundation, from January 2025, adds a practical dimension to his commentary on access and affordability that pure journalism alone does not provide.

41. Scott Pape

The Barefoot Investor is the most commercially successful personal finance brand in Australian history. Pape's 2016 book The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need has sold over 1 million copies in Australia alone, making it one of the bestselling Australian books of any category over the past decade. His email service, The Barefoot Blueprint, reaches hundreds of thousands of subscribers weekly.

The contribution of the Barefoot Investor franchise to financial literacy in Australia is genuinely measurable: survey data consistently shows that readers of his work make better financial decisions, save more, and engage with superannuation more deliberately than comparable non-readers. His ability to make financial discipline accessible and emotionally resonant to people who have never engaged with financial advice before fills a gap that neither the formal advice profession nor financial journalism has been able to fill consistently.

42. Natasha Panagis

A technical wealth management specialist with over 20 years of experience, Panagis has built a career as one of Australia's most sought-after conference presenters and technical educators across superannuation, SMSF, retirement planning, taxation, estate planning, and aged care. Her appearances at major industry events including the IFPA 2026 Conference confirm an ongoing demand for her ability to distill and communicate complex regulatory and planning frameworks in ways that financial professionals can immediately apply.

Her particular contribution is the translation of technical complexity into practical adviser education at a moment when the regulatory environment is changing faster than many practitioners can track independently. As the advice reform agenda continued to reshape licensing, education, and compliance requirements through 2025 and 2026, Panagis provided one of the most practically grounded continuing education services available to the profession.

Category 8: The Independent Thinkers and Emerging Voices

The most interesting conversations in any profession are often happening at its edges. The people in this category are building practices, platforms, and frameworks in areas of ANZ wealth management that are moving from peripheral to central. Some are challenging the fee structures that have defined the profession for decades. Others are making financial advice genuinely accessible to communities that the mainstream profession still underserves. All of them are worth following.

43. Morgan Hayward

A financial adviser at Lume Wealth and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Hayward is one of the profession's most visible advocates for advice that genuinely serves clients at every stage of their financial lives, including the earlier stages where the financial decisions that matter most are being made before most people have accumulated enough to attract traditional advisers.

Her public content reflects a consistent commitment to making financial planning feel relevant and achievable rather than aspirational and remote. In a profession still working to rebuild trust after the Royal Commission, practitioners who can make advice feel accessible to people who have historically been excluded from it are doing some of the most important commercial and social work in the sector.

44. Jennifer Goldsworthy

The director of Goldsworthy Private Wealth and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Goldsworthy has built a boutique private wealth practice focused on comprehensive, genuinely independent advice for high-net-worth clients. Her practice model, which combines detailed financial planning with investment governance and estate structuring, reflects the direction the private wealth sector is moving as clients become more sophisticated and more demanding about what they receive for their advisory fees.

Her consistent FS Power50 recognition reflects peer judgment about the quality of her contribution to the profession, including her advocacy for high professional standards and her willingness to engage with the structural questions about independence and client alignment that the industry is still working through.

45. Ellie Fordham

An adviser and FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Fordham has built one of the most deliberately designed younger-focused advice practices in Australia. Her work specifically targets clients in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s who are building wealth for the first time and need guidance that meets them where they are, not where the profession historically wanted them to be.

Her contribution is the commercial demonstration that this demographic is not simply a pipeline for future HNW clients but a group with real planning needs right now that the profession has largely ignored. Her practice model and the content she produces around it provide one of the clearest working examples in ANZ of what genuinely accessible, fee-based advice for younger Australians can look like.

46. Aaron Kane

The director of EK Financial Group in Queensland and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Kane has built a practice known for its commitment to comprehensive, genuinely client-centred financial planning. His community engagement, including financial literacy work that extends beyond his client base, reflects the kind of practitioner contribution that the FS Power50 process is designed to recognise alongside pure client outcomes.

His work in regional and suburban Queensland advisory markets, combined with his public advocacy for the value of advice for clients at all wealth levels, positions him as a useful voice on how the profession can extend its reach beyond the HNW concentrations in Sydney and Melbourne that dominate most of the industry's public narrative.

47. Andrew Dunbar

A co-founder and adviser at Apt Wealth Partners in Melbourne, Dunbar's consistent Barron's Top 150 presence, including a number two ranking in 2025, reflects a practice built around rigorous investment governance and comprehensive private wealth advice that has earned sustained commercial success without institutional backing.

His approach, which combines a genuine research capability with personalised private wealth advisory relationships, is one of the clearest examples in ANZ of the independent private wealth model at its most commercially developed. Multiple Barron's appearances confirm that the practice quality behind the ranking is real and sustained.

48. Tim Townsend

A director at Private Wealth Partners in Melbourne and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Townsend has built a practice that combines private wealth advisory depth with a genuine community engagement approach that extends well beyond the client base of most comparable practices.

His FS Power50 recognition reflects the peer community's judgment that his professional contribution extends to the broader advice community, including his mentoring work and his public engagement with the structural questions about practice sustainability that many advisers face as the profession consolidates.

49. Michael Bova

The principal of Family Wealth Advisory in Sydney and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Bova has built a practice explicitly focused on the intersection of family dynamics and financial planning. His work addresses the reality that for HNW families, the most important planning challenges are not investment selection but family communication, governance, and values alignment.

His FS Power50 recognition reflects the peer judgment that this approach has both commercial merit and professional community value, contributing to the broadening of how the profession thinks about what wealth management actually requires for the clients it serves.

50. Esther Althaus

A financial adviser at Perspective Financial Services and a FS Power50 inductee in 2025, Althaus brings both technical depth and a genuine client-centred approach to the profession's hardest conversations. Her public presence and peer recognition reflect a consistent commitment to the proposition that excellent financial planning requires emotional intelligence as well as technical competence.

Her contribution to the profession includes her advocacy for the kind of holistic, goals-based financial planning that the advice reform agenda is designed to enable, and her public engagement with the profession's ongoing work to rebuild the trust that the Royal Commission revealed had been damaged across the sector as a whole.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several practitioners and voices deserve acknowledgment here even though they did not make the final 50.

Thabojan Rasiah, co-founder and CEO of Rasiah Private Wealth Management, is a fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia and has been named in the Top 50 Advisers in Australia by Wealth Professional and among the 50 Most Influential Financial Advisers by Financial Standard. His fee-based, commission-free model and his regular media appearances make him a significant voice in the Melbourne advice community. The list's already strong Victorian representation was the primary reason for his absence.

Troy Theobald at RFS Advice in Queensland holds both a Barron's Top 150 position and FS Power50 recognition, a dual standing that reflects genuine excellence across both commercial and community dimensions of the profession. Multiple Barron's and FS Power50 appearances make him one of the profession's most recognised practitioners. The editorial choice to prioritise investment management, superannuation, and New Zealand voices influenced the decision not to include a further Queensland-based financial planning practitioner.

John Cachia at Thriving Wealth has built one of the more remarkable public profiles in the Australian advice profession, combining extensive award recognition from IFA and Australian Wealth Management Awards with a willingness to publish content that challenges the profession to hold itself to higher standards. His consistent FS Power50 presence across multiple years reflects genuine community standing. The disciplinary balance of the final list influenced the editorial choice.

Common Mistakes When Engaging with Wealth Management Thought Leaders

The first mistake is treating thought leadership as passive consumption. Following Scott Haslem's Astute Investor podcast, reading Bec Wilson's weekly Fairfax column, and downloading Ben Nash's books are all genuinely useful activities. None of them replaces the harder work of taking a specific insight and applying it to a real decision. The practitioner who finishes a podcast episode and immediately identifies one thing they are going to do differently extracts ten times the value of the one who simply adds another episode to the backlog.

The second mistake is following only voices who confirm existing views. The most valuable thought leadership is often uncomfortable. Neil Kendall's independent fee-only practice challenges advisers who have never seriously examined whether their compensation structure is aligned with client interests. Sam Stubbs's not-for-profit KiwiSaver model challenges New Zealand fund managers who have never seriously compared their fee levels with the member outcomes they produce. Dean Anderson's Kernel Wealth challenges the assumption that index investing at institutional quality requires institutional minimum investments. If every voice you follow agrees with your current approach, you are not doing thought leadership properly.

The third mistake is confusing follower count with signal quality. Ben Nash has a large TikTok following and a genuine practitioner credential; both matter and neither alone is sufficient. Some of the most practically useful content on ANZ wealth management comes from practitioners with five to twenty thousand followers who are posting their real thinking rather than optimising for reach. Jacqueline Fernley's LinkedIn posts on investment governance and OCIO strategy reach a specific practitioner audience rather than a mass consumer one; their value is in their specificity.

The fourth mistake is treating the ANZ conversation as inferior to the global conversation. The US wealth management market is larger and more loudly documented, but the Australian and New Zealand conversations are in several ways more advanced. Australia's universal superannuation system, the Royal Commission reforms, the move toward comprehensive fee-for-service advice, and the specific challenges of the post-retirement phase in an ageing population are all being worked through at the policy and practice level in ways that will eventually influence every developed-market advice profession. Following the ANZ voices is a front-row seat to some of the most important professional reform work happening in wealth management globally.

The fifth mistake is ignoring the New Zealand voices. Sam Stubbs, Dean Anderson, Darcy Ungaro, Martin Hawes, and Ben Brinkerhoff are not on this list as geographic tokens. They are on this list because New Zealand is running several of the most interesting experiments in wealth management practice and investor education in the world right now. The NZ conversation is not a smaller version of the Australian conversation; it is a distinct one with its own dynamics and its own leaders worth following.

Implementation Guide: How to Use This List

Start with intention. Do not try to follow all 50 people simultaneously. That path leads to information overload and passive consumption. Identify the one area of your wealth management practice, business, or knowledge that most needs development, and follow the people on this list who are most directly addressing it.

If you are a financial planning practitioner working through how to make your practice genuinely independent and fee-transparent, start with Neil Kendall, Amanda Cassar, and Olivia Maragna. These are the practitioners who have done the work over the longest period and can tell you what that journey actually looks like. If you are thinking about how to serve younger clients well, start with Ben Nash, Glen Hare, and Ellie Fordham. If you are trying to understand the investment side of wealth management at an institutional level, start with Scott Haslem, Jacqueline Fernley, and David Bell.

For practitioners in New Zealand specifically, Sam Stubbs, Dean Anderson, and Darcy Ungaro represent the clearest public voices on the structural differences between the NZ and Australian wealth management landscapes, and on the specific planning and investment challenges that Kiwis face that global frameworks do not fully address.

Go deep before going wide. Read back catalogues. Engage with LinkedIn posts through specific, substantive comments rather than reactions. The people on this list are active enough that genuine engagement gets noticed, and the professional relationships that can grow from consistent, thoughtful engagement with the right thought leaders in your specific area of focus are among the most valuable in the profession.

Use events as accelerators. The Private Wealth Australia Forum, the FAAA national conference, the Conexus Financial Super Chair Forum, and the IFPA annual conference all bring together practitioners from this list and the communities they have built. Attending events where you know specific voices on this list will be speaking changes how you read and engage with their content afterward.

Set a quarterly rotation for which voices you follow most intensively. Follow deeply for one quarter, then rotate to a different subset. This approach prevents the fatigue that comes from trying to absorb too many streams simultaneously, and ensures you are consistently encountering new thinking.

For wealth management leadership teams seeking external support on the human dimensions of strategy execution, Jonno White works with financial services organisations including advisory practices, investment firms, and super funds to build the communication structures, accountability frameworks, and decision-making processes that allow leadership teams to translate strategic intent into operational reality. He is the author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (230+ episodes), and a Certified Working Genius Facilitator. International travel is far more affordable than most organisations expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to start a conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is wealth management and how does it work in Australia?

Wealth management in Australia is a comprehensive advisory service that combines financial planning, investment management, superannuation strategy, tax planning, estate planning, and risk management into an integrated offering for individuals and families. It is typically delivered by licensed financial advisers operating under an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL), by private banking divisions of major financial institutions, and by independent wealth management firms. The unique feature of Australian wealth management is the central role of the superannuation system, which means that retirement savings strategy is almost always the largest single component of a comprehensive wealth plan.

Who are the most influential financial advisers in Australia in 2026?

The most recognised measures of adviser influence in Australia are the Barron's Top 150 Financial Advisers list, published annually in The Australian in partnership with the US publication, and the FS Power50, compiled by Financial Standard through peer voting. Both lists use different methodologies: Barron's measures assets under advice, revenue quality, and practice standards, while the FS Power50 is a peer-voted recognition of community influence and professional contribution. The 2025 Barron's number-one is Mathew Cassidy of Partners Wealth Group, and the 2025 FS Power50 includes fifty advisers across all states. Both lists are populated by many of the practitioners in this guide.

What is the difference between a financial planner and a wealth manager in Australia?

In Australia, the distinction is largely practical rather than regulatory. All financial planners and wealth managers who provide personal financial advice must hold an AFSL or be an authorised representative of an AFSL holder. The term financial planner typically refers to practitioners who provide comprehensive financial planning advice across superannuation, insurance, cashflow, and investment. The term wealth manager is typically applied to practitioners whose primary focus is investment management and portfolio construction for high-net-worth clients. In practice, the best practices in both categories now deliver comprehensive, goals-based advice that makes the distinction less important than the quality of the adviser.

How do I find a leadership facilitator for my wealth management team? Jonno White works specifically with financial services leadership teams, including wealth management firms, investment advisory practices, and superannuation fund leadership. His executive team offsites and leadership workshops help advisory firm teams improve how they communicate, make decisions, and hold each other accountable. To discuss your team's specific needs, email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect, and virtual facilitation is also available.

What is the difference between the Barron's Top 150 and the FS Power50?

The Barron's Top 150 Financial Advisers list, published annually in The Australian, uses a quantitative methodology measuring assets under advice, revenue quality, and business standards. It skews heavily toward private wealth advisers managing large pools of high-net-worth assets and is dominated by practices at major institutions and large independent firms. The FS Power50 is peer-voted and measures influence, professional community contribution, and the broader impact of an adviser's work on the profession. It tends to include more independent practitioners, more diverse voices, and more practitioners specifically known for advocacy and education rather than asset scale. Both lists together provide a more complete picture of leadership in the profession than either alone.

How is superannuation changing in Australia in 2026?

The Australian superannuation system reached $4.3 trillion in total assets as at June 2025, according to APRA data, making it one of the largest pension systems globally relative to GDP. Key changes through 2025 and 2026 include the implementation of Payday Super, requiring employers to make super guarantee payments with each pay cycle rather than quarterly, and the ongoing APRA performance test which assessed 563 products in 2025 with all 52 MySuper products passing for the second consecutive year. The super guarantee rate remains at 12 percent from 1 July 2025. The sector is also navigating significant consolidation toward mega-funds with over $100 billion in assets and growing regulatory scrutiny over fund expenditure and the best financial interests duty.

How is wealth management different in New Zealand compared to Australia?

New Zealand's wealth management landscape is shaped primarily by KiwiSaver, the government-mandated retirement savings scheme launched in 2007 that now holds over $100 billion in retirement savings for more than three million New Zealanders. Unlike Australia's compulsory employer superannuation system, KiwiSaver involves opt-out rather than auto-enrolment, and contribution rates are lower. The New Zealand advice profession was restructured by the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Act which came into full effect in 2021, replacing earlier regimes with a single Financial Advice Provider licensing model. New Zealand also has a smaller advice profession than Australia, with relationships and reputation playing a larger role in how practitioners and their work are known.

Final Thoughts

The fifty people in this guide are doing the most important work in ANZ wealth management right now. They are making advice more accessible, more transparent, and more genuinely aligned with client interests. They are managing hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement savings for millions of Australians and New Zealanders. They are educating investors who would otherwise make worse decisions. They are building the platforms and practices that the next generation of the profession will inherit.

The wealth management profession in Australia and New Zealand is in the middle of a transition that will take another decade to complete. The Royal Commission's consequences are still being worked through. The super system's move toward a genuine retirement income focus is still underway. The question of how to make quality financial advice accessible to the majority of Australians and New Zealanders who need it but cannot currently afford or access it is still genuinely open.

The voices in this guide are the people most likely to determine how those questions get answered. Following them is not an academic exercise. It is a competitive advantage for anyone who works in or depends on the wealth management sector in ANZ.

If your organisation is navigating any of the leadership, communication, or team performance challenges that accompany the structural shifts this profession is going through, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries), works with financial services leadership teams globally. Many organisations find that flying Jonno in costs less than engaging local providers. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA): Total superannuation assets $4.3 trillion as at June 2025; contributions $210.2 billion; 563 products assessed in 2025 superannuation performance test.

Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA): 94 percent of advised clients trust their adviser to act in their best interests; approximately 15,000 licensed financial advisers in Australia as at mid-2025.

Financial Markets Authority (New Zealand): KiwiSaver total assets over $100 billion; more than three million members.

Financial Standard: 2025 FS Power50 (peer-voted list of Australia's 50 most influential financial advisers); 11,000+ votes in the 2025 process.

The Australian / Barron's: 2025 Barron's Top 150 Financial Advisers; Mathew Cassidy of Partners Wealth Group ranked number one.

AustralianSuper: $400 billion in assets under management as at December 2025; 3.6 million members.

Next Read: 35 Essential Thought Leaders in Wealth Management

The global conversation about wealth management is being shaped by a distinct set of voices from the United States, Canada, and internationally, whose work in financial planning education, wealthtech, and investment research has influenced how practitioners and investors think about money well beyond their home markets. This global companion list includes the most actively publishing, speaking, and building figures in wealth management internationally for 2026.

For more on thought leadership in global wealth management, check out my blog post '35 Essential Thought Leaders in Wealth Management' at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-wealth-management.