Choosing the right financial adviser

One of the top goals of our blog is to help clients to choose the right financial adviser. This is not an easy task for sure. However, if you keep in mind the below key points you should be able to avoid the biggest mistakes some people do when selecting their financial advisors. Key point 1: Ask you the following question: Do you really know who the person who manages or will manage your investments? You do not need to know the person who will manage your assets well but you need to be sure that you know if this is the same person that you are talking to when you have questions. Do not hesitate to ask your financial adviser if it will be him or her who will directly manage your portfolio. Key point 2: Never consider your financial adviser as a friend. Your financial adviser does not work for you for free and she or he is not your friend regardless of what he or she can say. Vigilance is always needed to avoid scams. Key point 3: Before investing, investigate!! Questions that you need to ask your financial adviser include the below: 1. What degrees do you have? A degree in an investment-related field from a top school should be required. 2. What are the fees and the fees system? Here we want to have a clear answer. 3. Can you explain me your general investment strategy? In our next entry blog, we will review the questions that you need to ask yourselves before choosing a financial advisor.

Bitcoin has become a good way for people to make money

Bitcoin is defined as a cryptocurrency, a form of electronic cash. It is a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single administrator that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer Bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries. Bitcoin has become a good way for people to make money. Yes, you read that right. Indeed, the best way (even though not a legal way) to make money with bitcoins may well be to sell financial products based on them or on other cryptocurrencies. Many national financial authorities (including the French and Italian ones) gave a call for caution to the investors interested in the bitcoin markets. Several players offer without authorization, investment services relating to derivatives the underlying is crypto-active. Among the players who are clearly out of the laws, are below: - www.bforfinance.com - www.xcoinbroker.com - www.coin-financial.com - www.gwt-capital.com - www.jbcapitals.com You should avoid these players at all cost. However, this does not mean in any way that if a player is not part of this list it is ok to trade with them. In other words, the above list is not only non-exhaustive but you also need to understand that it only comprises small parts of the existent frauds. There are also other types of Bitcoin scams. These include Hardware Wallet Theft, Exchange Scams, Fake ICOs, Cloud Mining Schemes, Multi-Level Marketing.

Salaries that financial advisors: expectations and reality

Recently, we have looked at the salaries that financial advisors can expect to receive. This is always a difficult analysis to do even though there is more and more available data nowadays. Of course, the salary or total compensation you can expect varies greatly depending on where you are based. In Switzerland for example, salaries are much higher than in the rest of Europe. On average, a Financial Advisor based in Switzerland earns 6800 CHF per month. At today’s exchange rates, that is equivalent to 6000 euros per month or 6800 USD. On a different note, it is interesting to notice the perfect parity between CHF and USD. Half of the financial advisers earn between CHF 5375 and CHF 8000. 10 % earn less than 4380 CHF per month but 10 % earn 10200 CHF or more. All posted salaries are based on a full-time workload and a payment of 13 monthly salaries. The gross salary (before social contributions) is displayed. If you are based in Geneva, salaries go even higher and the average salary for a financial advisor gets close to CHF 130k per year.

How much make financial advisors?

Even though the number of financial advisors per inhabitant varies greatly by country (with the big differences being of course between developed countries and developing countries), based on our experiences in the field it is possible to give rough numbers. Our estimate is that in developed countries there are currently roughly around 150,000 financial advisors for a country with 100 million inhabitants. There are roughly 100 000 financial advisors in countries like the United Kingdom, France or Italy. In term of incomes, differences are great depending on the country where these financial advisors are based. In most European counties, a financial advisor makes on average around 50,000 euros (roughly 60 000 USD) per month. We are here talking about incomes before taxes. Of course, this is only an average. Some financial advisors earn less than that especially the young ones, but some financial advisors make fortunes too. It is indeed not unusual to meet some successful financial advisors making several hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

The most difficult part of the financial advisor job is to find new clients

This is not surprising, but when a person suddenly becomes wealthy by selling a company, taking possession of an inheritance, or in a more extreme case by winning a lottery, that person is suddenly interesting for a lot of financial advisers. The most difficult part of the financial advisor job is to find new clients. This is more difficult than it may sounds. If you win the lottery tomorrow, there are high chances that you will start receiving many phone calls from financial advisors willing to meet you to explain to you how well they can help you manage your news wealth. Financial advisors fight between each other to convince rich prospective clients. However, there different types of financial advisors. Robert van den Eijck once pointed out that "you can compare a private banker to a ready-to-wear clothing salesman and a wealth manager to a tailor who makes tailor-made clothing, although the craft has evolved over the years." Private bankers work in the private banking divisions of large retail banks or investment banks, they often simply have a product from their own bank to sell to the clients. On the other hand, the wealth manager will be more interested in understanding all the aspects of a potential client in order to provide the best-tailored service. That does not mean though that all wealth managers provide better services than private bankers. It actually depends on many factors and the own circumstances of every client.

How you, as a financial advisor, can capture the attention of your clients in a meeting

There is no doubt that financial products are increasingly complex and consequently financial advisors must deliver more. However, a key question is how you, as a financial advisor, can capture the attention of your clients in a meeting. There are as many techniques to achieve this as there are advisers. Some financial advisors try to limit the length of their meetings to the maximum. Usually, this means that no meeting should last for than an hour. In fact, after 20 minutes you already take the risk to start losing your client’s attention. Reducing the length of the meeting is one thing but it should not mean that the quality of the meeting should be decreased. Instead, the financial advisor should focus his or her energy on making every minute of the shorter meeting matters. Being effective and straight to the point is a fundamental point. However, being flexible and listening to the client’s needs is another key element. You always need to listen carefully to your client’s needs. You also need to understand his or her passion in life and more importantly his or her objectives whatever they could be. Finally, a good financial advisor should try his or her best to avoid getting too much technical. The risk here is simple, losing the clients in technical details that he or she do not necessarily understand or even need to understand. Why making things complex when you can make them simple?