How do you find a decent financial advisor

Stephen7372

I'd love to know. I found a website but every advistor was given 5 stars everyone !

george4064

www.unbiased.co.uk is considered a good 'portal' for finding IFAs. Alternatively try speaking with friends/family for recommendations of any IFAs they may use, personal recommendations are good as you should be able to get a good feel of the advisor from your friend/family member before meeting/speaking with the advisor yourself.

Remember, that there is a big difference between Financial Advisors (FAs) and Independent Financial Advisors, FAs are tied down to a restricted list of products they can advise their clients to invest in whilst IFAs are free to invest in any suitable product for their clients.

eskbanker

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/best-financial-advisers/

dunstonh

edit: post removed due to the abusive comments from the OP on another thread.

JustAnotherSaver

The problem with review sites is can you trust them?
How many people jump to leave positive reviews vs negative ones when they're angry and want to vent?

What if an IFA has a large circle of friends and associates? Hey do me a favour can you and leave a good review without overselling. 

eskbanker

JustAnotherSaver said:

The problem with review sites is can you trust them?
How many people jump to leave positive reviews vs negative ones when they're angry and want to vent?

What if an IFA has a large circle of friends and associates? Hey do me a favour can you and leave a good review without overselling. 

Obviously feedback on any review sites need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but that's inherent in the nature of all such sites rather than being anything IFA-specific, hence the caution advised when relying on the likes of TrustPilot, Trip Advisor, Google reviews, eBay feedback, et al.

There's always subjectivity at play when assessing anything, whether that's a plumber, a holiday or a bank, and cheapest is rarely best, so evaluation criteria will inevitably vary.

The recommended course of action, both in the MSE article and on similar threads on here, is to take advantage of the free introductory meetings that advisers offer, not to try to get any meaningful advice (impractical in an hour) but to establish process, costs, etc, as well as seeing if there's any sense of personal 'chemistry', i.e. if the customer feels that the adviser is someone they can trust.

colsten

george4064 said:

www.unbiased.co.uk is considered a good 'portal' for finding IFAs.

I thought people/firms listed there pay to get listed

underground99

JustAnotherSaver said:

The problem with review sites is can you trust them?
How many people jump to leave positive reviews vs negative ones when they're angry and want to vent?

What if an IFA has a large circle of friends and associates? Hey do me a favour can you and leave a good review without overselling. 

Review sites are not very good for financial services, not many people will randomly register on a review site to say a service is fine, while others will register with a bee in their bonnet to complain publically about something, so the reviews will generally skew worse than the average person's experience  unless the business takes action to seek to remove the poor reviews or get their friends or shills to give them an upvote, to cancel out the effect.  Portfolio returns can be judged with 5-10-20 years of hindsight whether the portfolio was suitable for purpose. That's not the sort of thing that lends itself to online reviews. 

Also, the types of people needing to buy advice may not necessarily have the experience to know good advice from bad.  So, even personal recommendation is not necessarily going to get a great outcome. If OP does not have any good recommendations for local professionals, he may be better off using a directory service to find lists of independent financial advisors in his area and have free introductory meetings with a few to understand the costs and whether they feel they could get on with each other, before going ahead.

OP mentioned on another thread that near where he lives, most local people are morons and corrupt. (https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78201918#Comment_78201918 ) So perhaps he will have to cast his net further afield to find a good selection of professionals that cater to his particular requirements and attitude.

LHW99

colsten said:

george4064 said:

www.unbiased.co.uk is considered a good 'portal' for finding IFAs.

I thought people/firms listed there pay to get listed

Many of these type of things are - the costs of maintining the site have to come from somewhere, advertisments may not cover it all.

https://adviserbook.co.uk/ is another site that gets mentioned here.

JohnWinder

Stephen7372 said:

I'd love to know. I found a website but every advistor was given 5 stars everyone !

Try some of Jason Zweig's questions from the WSJ: https://switchpointfinancial.com/19-questions-ask-financial-advisor/

IvanOpinion

Stephen7372 said:

I'd love to know. I found a website but every advistor was given 5 stars everyone !

The first question you should be asking is 'Do I need a financical advisor?'