Fitzpatricks Advice Partners has been helping Australians build, protect and transition wealth since 1994. A team of dedicated advisers, united by a shared philosophy.
Fitzpatricks Advice Partners has been helping Australians build, protect and transition wealth since 1994. A team of dedicated advisers, united by a shared philosophy.
Fitzpatricks Advice Partners has been helping Australians build, protect and transition wealth since 1994. A team of dedicated advisers, united by a shared philosophy.
The Hunter Region’s private wealth has seen rapid growth. Fitzpatricks Advice Partners works with clients at exactly this level of complexity.
A discretionary trust, a self-managed super fund (SMSF), business equity, a succession plan and an evolving estate do not sit in separate conversations here, they are held together by one Lead Adviser who coordinates across all of it, bringing in the right specialists at the right time. That is where Fitzpatricks Advice Partners makes a difference.
Our advisers are known for having the in-depth conversations that many families find hard to start: family dynamics, succession, legacy and the purpose behind wealth. You have one person responsible for keeping every moving part aligned, coordinating the specialists your situation requires and ensuring every element of your strategy works together. With a deliberately low client-to-adviser ratio, your adviser has the time to truly understand your circumstances, priorities and ambitions.
Our Newcastle clients include medical specialists and GPs at John Hunter Hospital and private practices across Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, and healthcare professionals managing both practice income and long-term personal wealth. We work with senior executives, Hunter Valley business owners and established partners in professional services navigating complex financial arrangements. Across the region, we increasingly work with pre-retirees who have accumulated significant property equity over the past decade and are approaching a major transition without a coordinated plan in place.
If your financial life has grown in complexity, this is where we can help.
Our Newcastle team brings deep technical expertise and a client-first approach to every relationship.
Each of the following services is delivered through the Lead Adviser model: one senior Fitzpatricks Advice Partners adviser who understands the full picture of your financial life and coordinates across the specialists you need.
Newcastle and Hunter Region clients in mining, resources and healthcare frequently hold concentrated equity exposure through employer share schemes, superannuation and direct ASX investments. Wealth at this level is rarely held in a single structure. Investment decisions need to align with trusts, superannuation, business interests and long-term family objectives.
At Fitzpatricks Advice Partners, portfolio strategy begins with a clear understanding of who you are: your goals, your genuine capacity for risk and what your portfolio needs to do alongside your broader wealth. From that foundation, we build and oversee a portfolio through a curated panel of specialist investment managers, each subject to ongoing research. Investment strategy is never considered in isolation. Each investment decision connects to your tax position, estate plan and wealth structuring.
The Hunter Region has a mature, diverse small and medium enterprise (SME) sector across trades, construction, professional services, healthcare, hospitality and tourism. Many of these businesses have been building quietly for 20 to 30 years and now sit at the centre of their owners’ financial lives. Fitzpatricks Advice Partners coordinates the legal, tax and investment dimensions of a business exit through one Lead Adviser, working alongside your solicitor, accountant and business broker so every decision reflects the same plan. For most owners, that is a three to five year process, not a six-month exercise.
Read more about business succession and wealth transfer
Hunter Region families with long-established businesses, substantial property portfolios across Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and the Hunter Valley, and significant superannuation balances are increasingly participants in the national $3.5 trillion generational wealth transfer, with many now facing decisions about how wealth should pass to the next generation. A Lead Adviser who knows the whole family, including the adult children, provides a continuity of relationship that is difficult to replicate.
The discussions that matter most at this level are rarely about legal mechanics. They are about values, what each generation is expected to steward, how decisions will be made when the family is under pressure, and what the wealth is ultimately for. These are the issues most families defer the longest. At Fitzpatricks Advice Partners, we are practised at leading them, and at translating what emerges into governance frameworks, Family Charters and Family Council arrangements that give those agreements structure and permanence.
Newcastle's construction, engineering, healthcare and professional services business owners carry real personal liability exposure through directorships, professional indemnity obligations and personal guarantees. At this level of complexity, a decision about a trust structure may have consequences for your binding death benefit nominations, your income splitting arrangements and how assets pass between generations. Your Lead Adviser coordinates the legal, financial and governance dimensions through a single ongoing relationship.
Read more about wealth structuring and family governance
For Newcastle and Hunter Region families who have reached the point where managing wealth across multiple entities, advisers and generations is itself a full-time challenge, a virtual family office structure brings coherence across every dimension. Fitzpatricks Advice Partners acts as the central coordinating point across every adviser in your life. Clients describe it as having a family CFO: someone with accountability for keeping every part of the strategy connected, coordinating specialists and ensuring every decision remains aligned.
Read more about emerging family office servicesAt Fitzpatricks Advice Partners, the relationship begins not with your portfolio, but with your goals and the life you want your wealth to support. Your Lead Adviser holds every dimension of your financial life in view, from investment strategy and wealth structuring to estate planning and business succession. They coordinate the right specialists at the right time and ensure every decision remains aligned with your family's objectives.
Our longest-standing clients describe the Lead Adviser relationship as a family CFO: someone who brings clarity, coordination and accountability to complex financial affairs, ensuring every adviser and every strategy is working towards the same outcome.
Many of these owners are approaching or past retirement age without a succession plan in place. In our experience, succession planning rarely starts early enough.
By the time a potential buyer makes contact, a business partner signals they want to exit, or a health event forces a decision, the planning window has already narrowed considerably. Effective succession planning requires three to five years of considered work: an exit on your own terms, capital gains tax managed, key people retained, estate planning aligned and the next chapter properly thought through.
The most common outcome of a rushed business exit is a lower sale price, unresolved capital gains tax (CGT) exposure, leadership vacuums and, in family businesses, conflict that was never anticipated. The business that took three decades to build deserves more than a six-month window to sell. The planning starts before a decision is made, not after.
Fitzpatricks Advice Partners approaches succession planning with your whole situation in mind: the succession plan must align with the client's investment strategy, estate plan, superannuation structure and long-term wealth goals. That integrated approach complements the valuable work performed by accountants and solicitors, while ensuring investment strategy, estate planning, superannuation and succession planning remain connected.
Your goals, your concerns, and what you want your wealth to achieve for you and your family. Our advisers know how to ask the right questions to uncover what matters most, often surfacing opportunities and challenges you may not have considered. There is no selling and no obligation. What you share remains confidential.
From that conversation, your Lead Adviser builds a complete picture of your financial and family situation before any recommendations are made. A strategy is then developed that coordinates across investment, tax, estate planning and structures. Once in place, it is reviewed as life changes. Whether it is a business sale, a family event or a market shift, your Lead Adviser stays ahead of what is changing and ensures the plan stays aligned with your goals and your family's situation.
Newcastle has grown well beyond its coal mining roots into one of Australia’s largest regional economies, worth $22.72 billion and still expanding. The broader Hunter region is home to more than 680,000 people, with neighbouring Maitland and Cessnock among the fastest-growing council areas in the state, and property values have close to doubled over the past decade, pushing median house prices toward $850,000.
That growth has reshaped the local workforce too. Healthcare, education and professional services have overtaken mining as the city’s largest employers, a shift underlined by projects like the $835 million John Hunter Health and Innovation Precinct and the University of Newcastle’s community of around 37,000 students. Add a fast-growing defence and advanced manufacturing sector, anchored by RAAF Base Williamtown (home to Australia’s F-35A fighter fleet) and Kongsberg’s new $850 million missile manufacturing facility, alongside the Hunter Valley’s wine and tourism economy and an energy transition taking shape across green hydrogen, wind and solar, and you have a region that’s grown more professionally and financially sophisticated than ever before.
Fitzpatricks Advice Partners works with clients across Newcastle CBD, The Junction, Charlestown, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, the Hunter Valley and Port Stephens. In-person meetings are available across the region, with video appointments for clients further afield.