What makes a good financial planner?

My previous article (blog; thought piece; incoherent ramblings) looked at the value of a financial planner, drawing primarily on Vanguard’s Adviser Alpha research.  What it didn’t address was that the research was based on working with a good financial planner, and from that, the question of what makes a good financial planner.

I think we would have to take as read that a good financial planner had the technical expertise and experience to be able to do the job properly.  Without that then they aren’t really a financial planner.  They may be someone who is able to advise on particular areas of financial advice, or be authorised by a company  to sell financial products, but if they are to be your financial planner then you have the right to expect them to be better than that.  You don’t need to have a degree or even a Fellowship; nor do you have to have 20 years’ experience; however, if you have 20 years’ experience and only the basic level of qualification, or all the Fellowships going but are only two years’ out of University, you may not yet be where you need to be.

A good financial planner ……..

Having discussed this question with a number of clients the answers I got were:

• A good financial planner listens;
• A good financial planner takes time to understand what is important to me;
• A good financial planner understands what I need from them;
• A good financial planner is more interested in me than my money;
• A good financial planner has my interests before their own in the work they do with me;
• A good financial planner makes me feel like they have heard me;
• A good financial planner makes the complex, simple;

and, the one that everybody mentioned

• A good financial planner is someone that I can trust;

My thoughts as a financial planner

After almost 25 years working as a financial planner, none of this surprises me.  The only one that I would add is that any financial planner that you work with needs to be someone that you won’t avoid meeting.  You don’t have to like them necessarily, but you do need to be comfortable seeing them regularly.  I have seen instances where, because of a personality clash with one of a couple, the clients ended up putting off meetings with their financial planner.  The end result was a plan that was left to wither on the vine and the benefits of using a financial planner lost.

As I often say to potential clients when we first meet, if at the end of the meeting you feel that you couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me for any longer, then it doesn’t matter how qualified or experienced I may be, or how much I appear to understand what you need and be able to deliver it, it isn’t going to work.