financial adviser, how do they work?

ACC-HE

Have you consult with a financial adviser before?  How can they help you?  What do they want from you? What can you get from them?

快樂牛郎

"How can they help you?"

By telling you stories and theories they read from their textbooks

"What do they want from you?"

Fees

"What can you get from them?"

Bad advice and capital loss

daimo

you make your own mistakes and learn.

they make their mistakes on your $; and they charge a fee for that.

bluemoon

Depends if u are finding one from the banks or brokerage firms.  Some are so call Financial Planner, Financial Advisor, Investment Advisor....   they actually mean different jobs but people usually get confused and thought they are the same.  Even Investment Advisor, Financial Advisor, and Investment Rep. are all different jobs, although they sound similar.

Those one from bank, call either FP or FA, they do not charge commission but they get pay from bank salary plus bonus or trailers.  The financial planning services at the bank is considered a free services that bank provided.  You do not necessary have to take investment or financial advices from them.  If you are under their portfolio, they are the one in the bank that  perform banking services for their clients, even you are not investing with their advices, eg. mortgage, loans, rrsp, etc.  They are also able to perform retirement planning and estate planning for clients.

Those one from brokerage firms, they are mainly brokers with the title of financial advisor/planner.  They can give you advices on investments, but not financial planning.  Their job focus is to grow the portfolio, therefore, possibly placing investments into more aggressive route.  They earn by commission and trailers.  Newbies of some companies get basic salary for a few months and other is fully commission right at the start.  They could give you good advices if you want to go aggressive, as if both you and their goal is to grow the portfolio.

To be fair, in any industry,  if you got someone who is unethical and not good at what they do, you are screwed.  But it does not only happen in financial industry...   you'd probably screwed as well if you unfortunately hired a notary who is not so professional.  Banking job or Brokerage job is a sales and services job, just liked many of the other jobs.  

How much you can benefit from it would really depends on who you are able to get as your Advisor/Planner and if he/she able to balance the interest of the company and the clients, which is the same as every other jobs.  Also, it depends on how much knowledge you have and how much information you need.  Many people do need someone at the bank liked this to help out for cash management and retirement planning, as not everyone knows what is a variable mortgage or close mortgage or options or even how to set up POA.  

Or, you just need someone at the bank to process stuff for you... so you do not need a professional planner.

Littleprince

bluemoon 答得真詳盡呢

任何行業都有好的及壞的 ADVISORS﹐包括我所接觸過的醫生同律師。。。

只是﹐若你真的有時間﹐自己可以做自己的 FINANCIAL ADVISOR﹐念足夠的書﹐天天看經濟財經資訊﹐你甚至可以給朋友投資的意見添。。。

好的 FINANCIAL ADVISORS 顧及全人需要﹐不獨是買賣基金股票市場分析﹐而係對你未來幾十年該怎樣儲蓄﹐是否要多買保險﹐小孩讀書﹐退休怎樣生活﹐ESTATE PLANNING & WILLS PREPARATION 應該全面照顧﹐還要定時和你 REVIEW﹐如果他不能給你全面的意見﹐你可以與多一些不同的 FINANCIAL ADVISORS 傾 (CONSULT 是免費的﹐特別是銀行 commissioned 的 Investment Advisors (小心他們可能欠缺中立)﹐找出適合的﹐因為後生仔﹐若有時間自己念書及有時間操縱自己的投資項目﹐例如買賣基金股票﹐確實不一定需要這種專家的﹐學樓上說的﹐找到的不一定好。。。可是﹐若不想煩﹐確實也有好多人願意花錢找人幫他處理財務方面的事情呢。。。