Former Kiwi Wealth boss turns to advice
Former Kiwi Wealth chief executive Rhiannon McKinnon is hoping her new advice business will help New Zealanders who want completely independent assistance.
Wednesday, May 6th 2026, 7:57AM
McKinnon has recently founded Cass Advice, initially targeting KiwiSaver.
“I’ve been thinking about financial advice for years, ever since I left Kiwi Wealth,” she said, “and how to close the advice gap that the FMA is so keen for us to do.”
She said she had always thought the way to deliver unconflicted advice was to offer a user-pays model but it had not been the way of the New Zealand market.
But in the middle of last year she started to wonder, with the proliferation of AI tools, whether the cost could be brought down to the level where the price point could be low enough that New Zealand consumers might be able to afford to pay for it.
“And therefore get entirely unconflicted advice … a lot of it is financial planning I’m looking at rather than financial advice if you care about the distinction, there’s a pretty thin line between the two, to be honest, particualrly with the regulatory settings.”
McKinnon said she completed a Fintech Ignite programme at Creative HQ between August and October last year which was designed for people with an idea they wanted to flesh out.
“I did a bit of customer research, upskilled a lot on my AI skills, I'm not professing to be an expert, there were all sorts of incredible 20-year-olds in there who were millions of miles ahead of me. But it did upskill me, got me using a lot of the tools more regularly and realising what you could do … sitting in that environment for a few weeks was helpful. And then I went away and sat on it again.”
She was already a CFA but did not have a qualification to allow her to offer retail advice in New Zealand, so completed one through Open Polytechnic.
“I started to piece together a licence application and decided just to go for a FAP-one licence, which licences only me, so I could start to work out whether some of these ideas I have would work in real life.”
She said she was aiming to have the sort of conversations with clients where she might tell them what their asset allocation should be, without any recommendation as to the funds they chose.
“I've got no need to sell them anything and just say, you ought to be in a growth fund, or you should be in these sorts of things, have you thought about changing your asset allocation and helping them model through what it looks like for them in later life. So that's, that's the idea around Cass Advice.”
She said while AI tools would help, clients would still be speaking to a human adviser.
“I've sort of reinserted myself as a human in the process. But at the same time, after I launched Cass Advice, I thought it still will cost you a few thousand dollars to speak to me, for me to spend 10 to 15 hours with you and onboard you properly and understand everything.
“So I thought how can you really bring down a question to something even smaller, so that you can make it really like this is just about KiwiSaver and are your settings correct? And let me help you model your life in a way that seems realistic, because I think a lot of the online calculators, obviously are simplistic, but they don't really model many people's real lives, because they basically say you're going to be on this income until you're 65. And yeah, I just don't think that's realistic.
“So I've been playing around with that and trying to launch something to see if I can get something at a price point that's even lower, that people can kind of come in, fill in the form I’ve created through propriety methods, but using AI to help me, and then sort of driving it through. So it's generated by AI, but I'm reviewing it, I'm signing it off, and I'm spending 15 minutes with you to, you know, make sure that you understand it, any questions that you have, and see if I can get that to a point that people find that helpful.”
A full engagement would cost a few thousand dollars but a KiwiSaver reality check would cost abotu $249, she said.
She said people were used to receiving advice free but she thought there were a number of potential clients who were worried about what independence they were giving up in exchange for that.
“I've got to work out if it's scalable as well. So it's real sort of MVP-type stuff. testing the market to see if people are interested. And I am getting some bites. It’ll be interesting to see whether you're aware that where it goes.”
She said the model was not designed as a criticism of the existing advice sector.
“It's really about thinking about that advice gap. Something like the reality check on the KiwiSaver side gets closer and closer to what I'm really trying to do, which is create something that is genuinely affordable for people.”
Other modules could follow, such as for people stating out who wanted to get on the right track financially.
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