Every adviser has written a Statement of Advice at the kitchen-table end of a long day. The recommendation's already made, the client's already nodding, and the document feels like paperwork for someone who isn't in the room — a reviewer, your licensee's file-checker, maybe a regulator. But here's the trick most of us learn the hard way: the document you write to keep a reviewer happy and the document that actually helps the client understand and remember your advice are the same document. They only feel like different jobs when you write them as different jobs.
The real audience for an SOA is your own future self — the version of you who pulls this file in three years because the client's circumstances changed, or a complaint landed, or you simply can't remember why you steered them away from that shiny direct-to-consumer policy. Write for that person and you tend to satisfy everyone else by accident. Here's how to structure an SOA that earns its keep on all three fronts.
Open with the client's situation, in their words
The strongest SOAs open by reflecting the client's world back to them: who they are, what they're trying to protect, what's changed, and what keeps them up at night. Not a generic risk lecture — their actual situation. A self-employed plasterer with a mortgage and two kids has a different problem to a salaried couple with no debt and a healthy KiwiSaver balance, and your opening should make it obvious you noticed.
This matters more than it looks. A reviewer wants to see that the advice flows from the client's circumstances, not from a product you happened to be holding. And the client, reading it months later, recognises themselves immediately — which buys their trust for everything that follows. If your fact-find and your SOA opening don't tell the same story, that's the first thing a sharp reviewer will notice.
Make the scope explicit — including what you left out
Scope is where good intentions quietly become complaints. You discussed life, trauma and income protection; the client could only afford the first two; you parked income protection for a later review. If that decision lives only in your head, you've created a gap with your name on it. So write it down, plainly: "We discussed income protection. Given your current budget you chose to prioritise life and trauma cover. We've noted income protection to revisit at your next review."
A clear scope section does two things at once. It protects you, because you've documented that the gap was a conscious, client-led choice rather than an oversight. And it serves the client, because it tells them honestly where they're still exposed — which is the whole point of getting advice from a human instead of a comparison website. A few things to cover off:
- What the advice covers — the products and needs in scope today
- What it deliberately doesn't cover, and why
- Anything the client declined against your recommendation
- What's been flagged to revisit, and roughly when
Show the reasoning, not just the recommendation
This is the section that separates a defensible SOA from a glorified product quote. Anyone can write "I recommend Insurer X's trauma cover, sum insured $200,000." The question a reviewer — and a future you — will ask is why. Why that insurer? Why that sum? Why trauma over more life cover? Why replace the existing policy instead of topping it up?
You don't need a thesis. You need a visible thread from the client's needs to the numbers. Say a client wants enough cover to clear the mortgage and give their partner breathing room — then the sum insured should trace back to the mortgage balance plus a buffer you can name, not a round number you liked the look of. Where you've recommended replacing an existing policy, spell out the comparison and any loss of benefits or new stand-down periods, because replacement advice is exactly where reviews get forensic. The test is simple: could a stranger reading only this document understand not just what you advised, but how you got there?
Be straight about cost, conflicts and how you get paid
Disclosure isn't a box at the bottom of the page; it's part of the advice. The client should be able to see, without squinting, what the cover costs, how you're remunerated, and anything that could reasonably be seen to pull your recommendation in a particular direction. Commission arrangements, any soft-dollar benefits, the fact that you deal with a certain panel of insurers — these belong in the document, in language a normal person understands, not buried in defined terms.
The instinct to soft-pedal this stuff is understandable and exactly backwards. Plain, upfront disclosure is what makes the rest of your advice credible. A client who feels you've been straight with them about money is far less likely to second-guess you later, and a reviewer who sees clean, prominent disclosure tends to relax about everything else. Treat conflicts as something you manage in the open, not something you hope nobody asks about. If you're unsure exactly what your disclosure obligations require, confirm it with your licensee or compliance adviser rather than guessing.
Write it so it survives the test of time
An SOA is a snapshot, but it lives for years. Date it clearly. Reference the version of the fact-find it's based on. Avoid phrases like "as we discussed" with no record of what was discussed — for review purposes, if it's not in the file, it didn't happen. The goal is a document that stands on its own when you're not there to narrate it, because at the moment it matters most, you won't be.
This is also where consistency does quiet, heavy lifting. If every SOA you produce follows the same skeleton — situation, scope, reasoning, costs and conflicts, next steps — a reviewer learns to find what they need fast, your clients get a predictable read, and you stop reinventing the structure every time. A good template carries the structure so your attention can go to the thinking. This is the kind of scaffolding AdviserDesk's SOA drafting is built for: it pulls the client's fact-find through into a consistent structure and produces a draft. But it's a draft you read, correct and own. The judgement — the why behind every recommendation — is yours, and it has to be.
None of this requires writing more. It requires writing the right things in a predictable order, once, properly. Get the structure right and the SOA stops being the chore at the end of the advice and becomes the proof of it — the document that, three years from now, lets your future self open the file and think: good, past me did the work. And where you need certainty on a specific disclosure or record-keeping obligation, check it with your licensee, your compliance adviser or the FMA rather than relying on a blog post — this one included.