Quite often the first contact we have with a client starts with discussion about a particular product and sometimes a particular product provider, before they have communicated their circumstances and objectives to us. It’s not a good way to start a relationship because;
1) if all we talk about during our call is products then in our view we have just demonstrated to you that we are the type of adviser who focuses on the sale of financial products (we’re not)
and
2) if you want a good outcome then the last thing you need is an adviser who just wants to sell you a product. Anyone can arrange a financial product for you. The value is in good advice.
If you are going to have a good experience you should be asking yourself the following questions;
Can this person help me? Do they have the qualifications and experience?
Does he care about me? Do they try to help clients to achieve their financial and life objectives or are they just trying to sell as many financial products as possible?
Can I trust him? If push comes to shove will my long term interests or his short term interests get priority?
Another reason we can’t validly talk about products in our first call
Is a Personal Pension the best product for you? We don’t know. First we would have to determine if you are even eligible for one so we need to know your personal circumstances? We could easily waste our first conversation talking at length about a product which you aren’t eligible for or which isn’t practical for you given your circumstances. We would need to know what you want to achieve so we could consider if anything else that is available to you would be more suitable for the purpose in mind. We’ll consider all the options and recommend the product we believe to be most suitable and if (as we recommend) you want to adopt a target led approach we’ll do the numbers for you and lastly, we’ll research the features and benefits made available by the various providers and recommend one based on our discussions with you around what you value.
- Personal circumstances & objectives
- Plan (including the numbers)
- Product
- Provider (last, and least important)
If you approach us for advice we will suggest a 15 minute chat (via Zoom or similar) so that we can tell you what kind of work we do, how we do it, what qualifications and experience we have and what kind of clients we can help.
If you decide to proceed we will ask you to complete a financial factfind which asks about your circumstances and what you want to achieve, and if you have an existing product we will need to obtain details about that from the product provider. Then we’ll provide you with advice. You should ask as many questions as you need to about this advice until you feel comfortable.
This is target based financial planning. It focuses on you. The opposite to this is product push, which focuses on the sale of financial products for commission.
- Product
- Product
- Product
- Oh by the way, did we tell you about this product
We focus on you and the financial and life objectives which you want to achieve.
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