Anne Street Partner Reviews
WPS Financial Group Reviews

Let this be some insight into what they do to ensure future clients and staff do not become involved. Or at least a guide to decide for yourself.

It begins with your details (paid for and gathered from a variety of sources)[although you may be told its from a survey you completed] being loaded into a database for graduates and new employees being told to “get on the phones and call.”
They have a target of 2 bookings to be made per day - each. (if you get 10 a week you get a small cash bonus)

A booking is essentially to call someone and book them in for an appointment to see a financial adviser for a cost and obligation free " financial health check". They call from 11am until 8pm monday to thurs and work Fri and Sat.
The callers are trained to DISTURB and evoke a response from you to accept the appointment as your life may crumble at your feet if you don’t.

They will question your financial position to “qualify” you to fit into their criteria. Essentially the criteria is to see if you have capacity to carry more investment debt.

If you agree your name will then be progressed to what’s called the confirmation team. This team is designed to extract further information from you and excite you about the appointment AND to further disturb you so if you choose to cancel you will be flat-broke tomorrow.

It will take a starting employee to get to this team in about 6-8 months depending on how many advisers are dropping off to pursue legitimate careers. You are nothing but cannon fodder. Salary is expected to peak at $38k at this stage.

We then get to the point a client manager rings your doorbell. You have agreed to a meeting and now you are going to sit down to complete a CDQ with the adviser. This is specifically designed to further disturb you on all facets of your finances. The Client Manager (CM) has had a script and disturb questions drilled so far into his (there will never be a female adviser as the office is filled with a pack of wolves) head that he hears them for years after making him cringe every time he does.

The CM does not know anything except to disturb you and make you commit to pay for a plan and will say and do anything to secure it because their job and bonus depends on it.

As a CM you can work up to 16 hours per day (starting at 830am and getting home at 12am) [70 hours per week is not uncommon] and if you do not get a bought plan ($650 for the financial plan) [on top of $3,500 for them to implement it] you are worthless and on the brink of losing your crappy job which you get paid approx $42-50k (incl bonus) You need to maintain at least a 50% conversion rate (1 BPL (bought plan) for every 2 people you sit with)

The CM has NO idea if they can be of benefit or not even after you pay for it on the spot because it will only be the paraplanner that knows what can be done. You are entering a blind agreement where you are told at face value many things can be done – where that may not be the case.

Feel free to test this by asking the CM exactly what strategies they intend to look at.

From the first call to this point there is no real intention to provide you with a honourable service except for every team on the pipe to get their target and essentially to get a BPL. Only at this stage will it progress to a paraplanner to provide you with a financial plan that is 99% of the time going to suggest you purchase an investment property (one of theirs) at approx $300-350k. And if that is not the case – they have plans to get you to this point.

I’m not going to question the advice provided except for the intent. And now you have the information to question it too.

they are incredibly dodgy. they always recommend investment properties even if it isnt the most appropriate option for their customer, because the company receives $30 000 commission from the company they are owned by. lots of people have lost money because the property was way overpriced. I worked for almost half a year in their call centre and Im ashamed to have worked for those lowlives who promise you the world but keep you cold calling people at dinner for 2-3 times longer than they promised you, while giving you a crappy salary, but I desperately needed experience. They changed their name to Anne Street Partners to get away from their dodgy past

i have been with anne street partners (wps) for a couple of years. look they have been fine with us. they are very affordable. i can understand they have had a checkered past, but what put at ease was having a look at the key people on the internet.

we have purchased an investment property from them, which has increased, probably not as much as expected, but that doesnt surprise me in todays enviroment. we were shown that its a long term investment.

they have helped a couple, who had know idea where they were heading, get onto a nice path to retirement. my adviser shannon is uni qualified and works long hours, and so have no quams with him getting a cut out of helping us out. people need to realise these people need to realise these people need to get rewarded for their effort.

and in regards to the cold calling job, at least they are giving people a job. my neice gradualted in journalism and cannot get a job and is working at a pub.

Suprised to see so many bad words about this comapny, they have provided excellent service to me, very happy :) yay!

I can only agree with the negative comments others have made about this mob. I made the mistake of taking their advice a few years ago, and as a result I am now about $200,000 in the red. They have no real interst in helping their clients, and their only concern is the big fat commissions they receive. WPS (now known as Anne Street Partners)should be avoided at all costs.

Thanks for all the comments. I kept getting missed calls from this number. Now I know it was nothing important. At least the number comes up so I know to ignore it! Still sucks that they keep calling!

Let me guess, you bought the burpengary property too. people beware, check the property around the area that anne street partner recommends to you. we didn't do our research and got burn for it.

My husband and I are past clients of WPS Financial Group. We had no idea about investing for our future, so after receiving a phone call from them we decided to make an appointment, as we had been thinking about seeing someone. We were given 2 options, one was an investment property and the other a share portfolio. They definately made the Investment property sound the more attractive. We have now had the property for 10 years, and it is still worth less than we paid for it. We have retired now and tried to sell the property and pay out the loan. We could not sell it as we would still owe $50,000 on our mortgage. The property was way overpriced when we bought it. It was off the plan in a gated estate in Queensland. It was not explained in great detail about the ongoing costs, like body corporate fees, even though it was house and land package, but because it is in gated community with swimming pool etc, it has to be body corporate. So this drains our cash flow, with these fees plus council rates and water.
Also we never called them back after a few years, and they never asked us to come in for a review. So if Anne Street Partners are doing the same thing STAY AWAY!!!!

hi i am with a similar company, I have not brought a investment property yet, but i do want to get one in the future. Can you tell me which city or suburb you have brought your investment property in? which has declined in value that much ( or which was over valued in the first place so i can keep this in mind, if this is the same areas they recommend to me).
I thought with a SMSF you would be able to purchase a property of your choice, if this is not the case then i may of made the wrong decision.

Be very careful. Their business model is to sell property and presumably they get kick backs from the developers. They do not do due diligence to test these negative gearing purchases are sustainable for the client. And the Ombudsman is a toothless tiger.

We have been with WPS and Anne Street Partners for sometime. We purchased 2 properties on their advice which was ratified by their Finacial Planning Approval Commnitee (which they empasise!)
Property 1. Purchase price $ 340,000 plus stamp duty so a total borrowing of $375,000. Last valuation in December 2014 $275,00 this fater 7 years.
Property 2. Purchase price $ 333,000 toatl borrowings $ 343,000. Property valuation June 2015 $260,000 to $280,000.
SOUND INVESTMENT AND FINANCIAL PLANNING ADVICE - I THINK NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've paid them $700 and have had several meetings with them, They haven't tried to sell me any property (yet) I like them so-far.

If the current staff are anything like their predecessors at WPS, they have no feelings at all. Their bad advice has cost me a small fortune, with the situation worsening daily.

Obviously, they got rid of you due bad grammar.
#freeeducationforall

WPS /Anne Street Partners are dodgy. We have been with this company for some time and things were great until we purchased one of their investment properties. Firstly we were told WPS would property manage our rental. After 2 months of mismanaging our property, and no tenants we changed to a local real estate agent and had tenants within 2 weeks of the change. We purchased an over priced house from them that is poorly built. Despite regularly contacting them about these building issues and builders reluctantly "fixing" the problems, not everything is resolved. Now our advisor is talking about purchasing another investment property and self managed super funds. Which is no doubt also translated to "purchase another investment property". WTF?? One positive thing I can say is since having a local real estate manage our investment property we are getting approx $30 a week more than the other houses in the street who are managed by Soda House (WPS/Anne Street Partners- real estate team). Why are we still customers? We aren't really. Just trying to sort out the mess with our investment property. We certainly don't take anymore "financial advice" from them.

PLEASE STAY AWAY
Like other former employee comments posted here I urge you to stay well away from this company.
Look at the logic here, it will cost around $4k to create financial advice and IMPLEMENT a holistic plan. The fee from a regular paraplanning firm would be roughly equivalent. So where does the profit come from then? As mentioned previously, where finances are handled and signed off by oblivious clients, WPS will recommend a property which is inflated by around 40-80k. When I became an advisor I asked what the job of an advisor at WPS was all about. I was told this, "The job of an advisor is to explain to clients why the value of their property has gone down in the last couple of years and talk to them about market fluctuation". Once the reality of the model set in I left.

P.S Future Assist, a clone of WPS ha been set up so avoid them too.

I have just received a missed call, thank goodness for you guys! Now I will call them back and let it rip!!

We also have been sucked into another mortgage of $306,000 we cannot repay. The house is now worth $50 000 less than what it was. We cannot sell it as the same houses in the estate that are for sale have been up for sale for over 2 years. Its breaking us financially and I wish we had never heard of WPS. They are always changing staff and we have never had the same Adviser for more than 2 months each time. Who knows what number we are up to now. We have decided not to have much to do with them. Yes we paid $3000 or so for their financial advise.

Youre right about that, I was quite an upset worker however there's no discounting the experience I gained, their harassment tactics inside the workplace were unacceptable though, they treat their employees like animals

That's not very nice, they have feelings...