Ben Kingsley – Founding Director
Qualified Property Investment Advisor (QPIA) - PIPA Accredited Program - Deakin Prime
Certificate IV Mortgage Lending, MFAA Member, Assoc. Diploma of Business – Tourism & Travel
As the founding Director of the successful company Integrated Pathways Pty Ltd, trading as Empower Wealth – I wanted to set up a business that specialised in Property Investment Education, Finance and Sophisticated Money Management Strategies and Services.
Prior to moving into the financial services industry, I had a successful career within the Hotel / Resort Tourism sector. Holding positions as the Australian and New Zealand Sales Manager for Hamilton Island and also the National Sales & Marketing Manager for Voyages Hotels & Resorts, which included Longitude 131 & Ayers Rock Resorts to name a couple of properties within the portfolio.
I opened a Mortgage Choice franchise in the Melbourne suburbs back in 2004, and then moved into a larger franchise operation in the inner City in mid 2005, before leaving the franchise to set up Empower Wealth – A business that didn’t just do basic mortgages, but offered strategic guidance in regards to loan structuring and investment strategy teachings.
Investing & Property Investing Experience:
On the property side of things, I have over 15 years of experience in purchasing residential property investments, buying my first property when I was just 23. Furthermore, I have provided educational workshops to thousands of potential property buyers, as we as help hundreds of people and companies invest into millions of dollars worth of residential property for both owner occupied or investment purposes, since becoming a finance broker back in 2004.
I am a keen researcher on the drivers of capital growth for localised locations and specific styles or residential property, with also good yield opportunities. History shows me that I have been able to identify properties in both Sydney and Melbourne that have ‘outperformed’ against the general market in relation to capital appreciation.
I have a real interest in controlling my family's future financial wellbeing, as we work towards our dreams and goals.
In taking this ‘Active’ approach many years ago l realised early on that I needed to become financially educated. During the past 20 years I have investigated, read, attended educational events, associated with professional people with similar goals in an overall attempt to ensure that I was sufficiently financially ready to empower our own wealth to a higher level and also that of my clients, with less time to undertake this themselves.
Along this journey I have invested heavily in shares, investigated options, and alternative investments, along with residential property. After 10 years of mixed results in share and the other investments, I learnt residential property was the safest, less stressing and somewhat easier way to create wealth over the long term. So the majority of my past 5 years of investing has been very much weighted towards this asset class.
However, don’t be fooled, there are still some poor investments out there in residential property and plenty of so called experts and great “marketers” selling investments that will not provide for good to great returns over the longer term. This is one of the main reasons Empower Wealth has developed (and continues to develop) workshops on Finance and Residential Property Investing.
For the record, I’m certainly not advocating that residential property is the only way to wealth, because such talk is nonsense and any so called promoter of property, should not being trying to sell you their offerings with this sort of rhetoric. Put simply, I think everybody can achieve financial wellbeing and through my learning’s and experience of practicing what I preach in the residential property & finance fields, I am extremely confident that I, along with my experienced team members, can add value to those clients who want to benefit from our knowledge from the professional education and services we provide.
My goal is to simply provide my clients and potential property investors with better skills to ensure they achieve a better than average return for this investments and have a better fundamental understanding of how money and finance work, so they too can achieve their financial independence and to also ensure they don’t get railroaded into any get rich quick investment shames!.
Hobbies / Interests:
Outside of my passion for property and investing, I am a very keen traveller. I love visiting new and off the main tourist track places all over the world.
I’m a keen follower of most sports including Aussie Rules – our indigenous game! Happy to spend time playing Basketball, Volleyball and the odd round of golf.
Favourite Book:
Long walk to Freedom – (The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela)
Favourite Movie:
Shawshank Redemption
Favourite Music:
Happy with almost all forms of music, although very limited attention span for rap, hip hop or opera. Preferred mostly home grown talent, from Paul Kelly to Jet to Missy Higgins……
Favourite Food:
(Steak and Chips) – The simple pleasures! Although I am also very partial to anything my wife cooks.
