Choosing a Financial Advisor
Your choice of a financial advisor should be the result of sound research. You must locate appropriate candidates, understand their credentials, check references, and conduct interviews in which you ask the right questions. It can be a daunting task. So daunting, in fact, that many otherwise savvy people have cut corners – opting instead to rely on recommendations from family and friends, chance meetings, or advertisements. Sadly, this has left many people unsatisfied with their advisors and dubious of the value of financial services in general. However, trust that spending the time to hire the right financial advisor will make all the difference in turning a plan for your financial future into permanent wealth and comfort.
The first step in choosing a financial advisor is to identify your needs -- most importantly, a professional must be able to provide the specific information and unique advice that you require. And you must find a professional that can perform the services you desire given your personal constraints such as location, net worth, portfolio size, etc.
Identifying professionals that meet these basic criteria can be very difficult. Individuals often rely on crude search methods such as personal recommendations or even the Yellow Pages. Neither of these methods are ideal: professionals recommended to you, though they were obviously well-suited to the recommender, are not likely to also be a perfect fit for your unique financial situation, and the Yellow Pages can be even less effective because their ability to provide detailed information about individual advisors is severely limited.
We have sought to ease the initial search challenge by providing WiserAdvisor; it is a matching service that can help you to quickly and easily find a short list of financial professionals ideally suited to serve you. You can provide some information about your personal and financial circumstances, and WiserAdvisor will find advisors that are ideally suited to serve you. It will display personal and professional information about each of the advisors matched to your needs; you can view the advisor’s picture, services, years of experience, educational background, professional qualifications, types of investments handled, mission statement, etc. You should use this information to determine which of these advisors from the short list that you would like to be contacted by. In short, by using WiserAdvisor (it is free and confidential), you will quickly and efficiently narrow your field of choices to the few best options.
At this point, it is important to determine the best fit from a few choices with a thorough interview process. Briefly, things to know about your financial professional include:
- Investing strategy
- Profiles of existing clients
- Average account size
- Sample financial plan
- Risk tendencies
- Fees and commissions
- Favored investment vehicles
- Existence of liability insurance
- Availability of references
- Any disciplinary actions
During the interviewing process, remember above all that you should feel comfortable with the professional that you choose. You want someone that you have confidence in; after all, this is your money that we're talking about. No matter what his or her title is, your professional should seem like the right choice to you.
Now that you have an idea of which advisor would be right for you, use InvestorGuide's WiserAdvisor service to find a good match.
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