IFAs

Make financial advice work for you

Rebecca Atkinson — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:41:31 +0000

When it comes to seeking advice, there are four types of adviser you can see. They vary according to the products they can recommend and the way they are paid for advising you.

1. Independent

Should I sell my endowment?

Chris Thomas — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:04:02 +0100

I signed up for a 25-year endowment policy in 1989. I have never drawn on this for my mortgage and have instead kept it on as a savings policy.

Over the past couple of years, all I have read is doom and gloom about endowment policies. I am unsure whether to wait until the policy reaches maturity and hope that the tide turns in my favour, or cut and run.

How would you prefer to pay for financial advice?

Rebecca Atkinson — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:17:46 +0100

* Solely through a fee as commission creates bias * I am happy for my adviser to get commission if it saves me from paying a fee * I would prefer for my adviser to use a combination of fees and commission

Dumb advice

Matt Pitcher — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:53:01 +0000

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?

Matt Pitcher — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:06:39 +0000

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.