Good and Bad Financial Advisers
Mar 26th, 2007 by complex001
Do you have a good or a bad financial adviser? There are no hard and fast rules but here are a couple of things to look out for.
The adviser needs to be independent and not just tied to one insurance company. Many advisers can simply advise on the products sold by one company thereby dramatically reducing the options available to you. No matter how good the company is they are unlikely to have the best products in the market. Also beware the adviser who may be able to advise on half a dozen companies. The same issue applies but they may try and hide the fact that they cant access the whole market.
A good guide to how reputable the firm is would be if they have any close links with accountants and solicitors. Accountants are unlikely to align themselves to a firm that doesn’t do a good job, as they are likely to lose clients.
Finally avoid the adviser who says he or she can do everything. Financial advice has become a lot more complex and specialised and no adviser can be knowledgeable on everything. Ideally your adviser would have experts in the firm that could be brought in if specialist advice was required on areas such as Inheritance Tax Planning or Pension transfers etc.