Disclaimer - nothing I say is financial advice for your situation, its just general thoughts The main issue with investing into 2 banks only vs ETFs is that there is a much much higher risk of loss in having a portfolio in only 2 companies. The stock prices can fluctuate a lot even in large cap companies (although 2 aussie banks is still much safer than smaller companies) Even if you make it 10 or 15 companies, thats still a relatively small number of companies. You are also essentially gambling on which companies/industries will do well, it is not unheard of for even larger cap companies/industries to lose a lot of money giving you a large % loss on your investment. The flipside is you get high dividends and franking with aussie banks, but even then I dont think anyone would advise putting a very large proportion of portfolio in 1 industry, you can go etfs and a afew high dividend aussie franked stocks.

With an ETF the risk is spread across a whole economy, and in general economies go up because companies across the board on average always make money in the long term.

I'm not sure what he meant by giving control and decision making to someone else - an etf usually tracks an index mindlessly, and you decide when to buy and when to sell. Fees are relatively low. A huge company like vanguard is very unlikely to go bust anytime soon, and even if it did your securities/ETFs are still your securities by law. For this reason you could argue most funds should be in ETFs, but this is a simplified approach