Should I sell my endowment?

Update: Mon, 23/06/2008 - 09:05

A Moneywise reader asks whether or not it is a good time to sell a 25-year endowment policy. Financial planning expert Mark Pearson offers his advice. Read more

Dumb advice

The most important question you should ask an adviser is the least commonly discussed. I often find myself in front of a new client asking if there is anything else they would like to know about me before I proceed to ask their inside leg measurement. When they fail yet again to ask me what my qualifications are, I proceed to tell them. No one in their right mind employs an architect without checking that he is qualified to practice and registered with RIBA. If we didn’t ask we could end up with a very shoddy looking house that leaked.

Are you getting the advice you're paying for?

From a simple economic point of view, fees would seem like the better option to commission. This is partly because different companies offer different rates of commission to advisers. Let’s imagine for a minute that advisers are not motivated by purely selfless goals and like most of us have mortgages to pay and mouths to feed.