Comparing products

Once you've decided what sort of investments suit your plans, use this checklist to help you to tick off all the important factors you need to consider to make final decisions.

If you're using a financial adviser use the list to check your own understanding of the recommended product.

You can rank the investment products you're considering and the company or organisation associated with that product, say on a scale of 1-5 for each topic. 1 = fails to meet requirement, 5 = fully meets requirement. You may need to mark some products "unsuitable" or "not applicable".

Make sure you're comparing similar products. For example, two or three balanced managed funds from different suppliers. There's no point doing a detailed comparison of products with completely different characteristics like say, a long-term, high growth, diversified fund with an investment in Government Stock.

Download Comparison Checklist (PDF, 55KB)