What to expect in your first meeting with a Financial Planner

If you are not sure whether you need professional service from a Certified Financial Planner or not, please read the article – Are Financial Planners worth your money?

You and I spend a lot of time buying a mobile phone. Buying a great phone is important. There are many features to look for in a mobile phone.

But, do you spend enough time selecting a financial planner? Why should I meet with a Financial Planner?

Do you know, what to expect when meeting a financial planner for the first time?

Or, what are the questions to ask financial advisor in first meeting?

Financial planning has the potential to shape your future and give much-needed importance to your hard-earned money.

But, sadly, financial planning is done improperly or ignored by many.

So, we insist you take some time to look for the right financial planner to manage your finances or your family’s.

If you’ve not worked with a financial planner so far, you may not be sure what to expect in your first meeting. Don’t worry; here we are with some guidelines specifically for you.

Why to prepare well for your first meeting with the financial planner?

“The only way to permanently change the temperature in the room is to reset the thermostat. In the same way, the only way to change your financial blueprint permanently is to reset your financial thermostat.”

– T. Harv Eker

Only if you do your homework, you will be able to reset your financial thermostat., and you can choose the right financial planner who will ably assist you in achieving your financial goals in a stress-free way.

Prepare yourself by understanding your financial situation and identifying your problems. It is important because unless you know your status and problems, you may not know what exactly you need from a Financial Planner.

By this, you will get better clarity on the questions to ask a Financial Planner in the first meeting. And this will also help you understand what are the areas to be addressed during the meeting with a Financial Advisor

Ask these questions to yourself know your problems better:

• Am I choosing the best investment schemes?
• Am I planning my taxes better?
• Am I clear on where to invest my money to get better returns in the short term and long term?
• Am I managing my finances well despite of my busy work/ other issues?
• Am I saving enough money to achieve my financial goals?
• Am I able to project the results of my savings and investments correctly?
• Am I sure how much to save for my retirement?
• Am I well prepared for a happy retirement?

If your answer is “No” to one or many of the above questions, then those are your problems.  So, these would probably be the areas that you might need to address during the meeting with your Financial Advisor.

Good Advice depends on a clear picture of your financial situation and needs.

Keep your expectations clear

Think about the type of advice you’d like to receive. Do you want the financial planner to prepare a complete financial plan or do you want advice on a particular area like Investment Planning, Tax Planning, Retirement Planning, Wealth Management, etc?

In simple terms, you should have a clear agenda of what you are looking to achieve from the Financial Planning Meeting.

Considering your present situation, problems and expectations; a good financial planner would be able to give you the right solutions.

Especially having a first meeting with a Financial Advisor will help you cross those initial barriers in your investment journey.

But how to prepare for the first meeting with the Financial Advisor?

Keep a Financial Goal List

“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.”
– Robert Kiyosaki

It’s advisable to go with your financial goals to the first meeting with a Financial Planner.

Know what you want to do in the short-term as well as long-term.

• Pay the Child’s Education fee
• Arrange my Child’s Marriage
• Pay off my mortgage sooner
• Building Wealth
• Early Retirement/ Retirement Planning
• To buy one more House
• Better Insurance Plans
• Meet my Medical Cost
• Better Investment Plans

This is just the first step in making Financial Planning Sessions more effective.

Things a Financial Planner will ask you

What to expect from a Financial Planner?

A Financial Planner will ask about your family, and personal financial situation – income, expenses, current investments, loan, insurance, tax, property, will, short-term & long-term goals, etc.

This will help the Financial Planner to understand you well and to create a custom financial plan for you.

Please be prepared to give accurate information to the Financial Planner about your finances. If not, the financial Planner may give you advice that’s not suitable for you.

By now you might have come to know why is consulting a Financial Planner important for your investment goals.

21 Important Questions to Ask Your Prospective Financial Planner

Ask these questions to get a basic understanding of Financial Planner and their business practices:

1. Tell me about you and your professional background

This is to know about the Financial Planner, their experience, services, skills, educational qualifications, and professional certifications.

2. Tell me about your firm

This is to know about the company of your Financial Planner and its reputation.

How long the firm is in this financial planning business? 

More than a decade of experience is needed in this business to gain expertise. Going through a few stock market cycles and economic cycles will make a financial planner fine tune his / her investment strategies and evolve as an expert.

You can see the reviews on Google or testimonials on the company website. You can check whether the content on the Website and Social Media pages is purely based on sales or information-oriented to its audience.

3. What is your Investment philosophy?

Investment Philosophy, which is commonly known as the School of Thought, differs from company to company or from one financial planner to another. Some commonly identified schools of thought are given below.

1. Investing in a long-term plan (5 to 10 years)
2. Buying in the morning and selling in the evening
3. Investing more in property
4. Investing more in liquidated assets
5. Investing in Debt Funds – Duration-Based Fund or Accrual-Based Fund

4. Can you offer me a personalised Financial Planning service?

Can your financial planner give you a customised financial plan based on your present situation and goals ahead? Because some financial planners only give generic investment advice to everyone.

This question will help us to know whether the financial planner’s service is product-based or client-based.

In both cases, ask if their recommendation is limited to certain products like Mutual Funds, Insurance, Stock Market, fixed deposit, etc. This will help you critically evaluate the business model of the financial planning company.

Asking the below questions to the financial planner will help you decide this:

1. Do you create customized financial plans for each client?
2. Can you provide examples of how you’ve helped clients with similar financial goals?
3. How do you incorporate changes in my life circumstances or goals into the financial plan?

5. Is this your primary business?

You may be surprised to see this, yes, some people do financial planning in addition to their primary work. For example, Chartered Accountants, Stock Brokers, Insurance Agents, Wealth Managers, etc., along with their main work, they also tend to do financial planning as well.

But you will not get a complete service from these part-time professionals when compared to full-time Financial Planners. This might again lead you to fall short of financial goals.

6. Can you show me your Client profile and share your Client experience?

By asking this, you will come to know how comfortable the financial planner is in dealing with the clients and also you get to know about their work.

You can ask the financial planner for a client reference similar to you to understand the plan and its process better.

You can ask the financial planner “Can you provide references or testimonials from current or past clients?”

Hearing from others who have worked with the financial planner can provide valuable insights into their strengths, weaknesses, and overall client satisfaction.

7. What is your legal compliance with the profession?

Know if your financial planner follows the code of ethics and professional laws strictly. This will help you build trust and long-standing relationships with your Financial Planners.

8. Is your Fee Transparent?

Know how and what they charge for their service. Know if there are any hidden charges they put. This is very important because it assists you in verifying the credibility and trustworthiness of your Financial planner

9. Plan Implementation

• Can I implementation it by myself or is it mandatory to do implementation through you?
• If I am busy, can you implement it for me?
• What is your implementation process?
• Can I have access to all my plan-related information?

These are very important questions to ask in the first meeting with your Financial Advisor.

10. Will the CFP be accessible during plan implementation?

• If yes, how often and in what way?
• If not, it’s a warning sign.
• In some companies, only one CFP will be there.

The CFP will create a plan and leave it to their staff members to proceed further. Supporting all the clients for future clarifications will not be possible for the CFP of those companies. So here you as an investor not able to able to get complete guidance from your investment Planner.

11. Who will be in charge in the absence of my CFP?

Your financial planner may temporarily or permanently go out of your region/country or even out of the company. Know how will you get the service in those cases.

And these things don’t occur often but as an investor, you need to prepare yourself against all possible odds that you face in your investment journey.

Also, know who will be your relationship manager and point of contact.

12. What is your financial planning review process?

Know if the review fee is inclusive of the planning fee and know how often they conduct the review like quarterly half yearly or yearly.

Also, ask if a review is possible in special situations like when your income/expense/goals are changed.

This is very crucial because it will enable you to have a smooth financial ride against all investment odds.

Are you using any CRM or other software to follow up with the client? This question will reveal to you, how serious your financial planner is in reviewing and serving all his clients.

13. Does the Financial Planning include my family or only me?

This is to know if financial planning is for individuals or families. Know if you can start as an individual and later change it for family or vice versa. It is not only an added advantage but it also offers flexibility to you as an investor.

14. Will you provide a service agreement?

This is to be clear on the list of services agreed to you with clear terms and conditions. It’s wise to go with the one who provides a service agreement. It’s better for both.

15. What are your general risk-free and risky investment suggestions?

• A good financial planner would suggest risky investments for 12 – 15% returns and risk-free investments for 6-8% returns.If a financial planner suggests you a rough 30 or 40 % return from an investment scheme, >it’s a high warning sign.

Any investment scheme that promises you with 30-40% return can either falter or fail miserably to meet expected returns.

16. How long will it take to create a Financial Plan for me?

It would take a financial planner 2 to 4 weeks to create a custom financial plan after several discussions with you to form strategies to achieve all your goals.

Some financial planners use calculator model for general purposes and will give the plan in less than a week which may not be customised to meet all your needs.

The reason why we approach an Investment Planner is because we don’t have enough time to spend on personal finance management. So we expect a financial planner to do an in-depth analysis before drawing any conclusions. And as you know doing in-depth analysis isn’t easy and it consumes more time.

17. Will you do Tax Filing in addition to Tax Planning?

If yes, know if it costs you extra money.

18. With so many clients to you already, how will you track my portfolio?

(Important): Some financial planners, without a proper process for handling clients’ portfolios, keep adding their client’s numbers. Here, the financial planners suggest investment plans randomly which will makes it difficult for them to track all of their clients’ portfolios.

A good financial planner recommends financial products or services based on a master portfolio – shortlisted best investment schemes. The best investment schemes are identified from detailed research by their team/ company.

He arrives at a customised portfolio for all his clients from the master portfolio. So by tracking the master portfolio, he will be able to manage all his client’s portfolio. This makes their job easy to manage all their client’s portfolios.

With this, you will be able to estimate the effectiveness and efficiency of Financial Planner.

Do you have an app to track my portfolio? Asking this question will provide you what app or software they use to monitor and manage your portfolio.

19. Has your work been acknowledged/ published in leading Media Channels?

It can help you assess the visibility and credibility of the planner within the industry. If a financial planner has been featured or quoted in reputable media outlets, it may indicate that they are knowledgeable and respected in their field.

20. And, have you won any professional awards/ accolades?

This is to know their reliability. This question can provide insight into their professional reputation and recognition within the industry.

21. How do we proceed further?

How do you stay up-to-date?

You can ask your financial planner. “How do you stay up-to-date with changes in the financial industry and best practices in financial planning?”

You need to look for a financial planner who demonstrates a commitment to ongoing education and professional development to ensure they’re equipped to provide the best possible advice.

A Bonus Question to ask: How do we proceed further?

This is to know how the financial planner carries out service for you in steps to help you achieve your goals.

You can find out whether the financial planning process is structured or not to serve you better.

A good financial planner will have a structured process which is evolved over many years with a thorough understanding of the process and clients.

You will understand the financial planner and it’s process better with these 21 questions.

So, these are the questions to ask a Financial Advisor in the first meeting.

Warning Sign

If you find a financial planner who talks about a specific investment product straightaway without first getting data about you and your family, that’s a warning sign you should consider very seriously. This kind of financial planner tries to sell some products for their profit instead of their clients.

For Your Information (FYI)

• A Financial Plan created has to protect your investment and yield reasonable returns without exposing you to too much risk. Know that high returns also come with high risks.
• Based on time and circumstances, your risk-taking nature may change. So, let your financial planner know about your willingness to take risks and to what extent.
• Become clear about the service you’re receiving, what the service will and won’t cover, and how much it will cost.
• If you don’t understand why a particular strategy is appropriate for you, don’t hesitate to ask for explanations from your adviser. If you’re not comfortable with an investment product or strategy, never agree with your financial planner.
• Any workable recommendation would be based on calculated inflation, investment returns, savings, income, and expenses.
• Fee-only Financial Planners work for compensation for their service. They will try not to sell you any financial products or services for extra money.
• In the case of commission-based Financial Planners, make sure they don’t sell any unwanted products or services to you.

What next?

Financial Planning is a process, not a product.

In the first meeting, you’ll spend the time learning about the financial planner and the investment firm, get an outline of your financial planning process, and set up plans for future communications.

You can follow up over the phone or even ask for a second meeting for clarification.

Take time to select a financial planner because it’s your money and your future. Your family also depends on it.

With these questions, you will be able to choose a financial planner:

1. Will the planner be able to solve my problem?
2. Will the planner be able to meet my short-term and long-term goals?
3. Is the planner Trustworthy (based on Character and Ability)?

With a financial planner by your side, you can achieve your goals with confidence using a workable financial plan.

Though the process may seem complicated to you at first, actually it’s not.

With some knowledge about the whole process and what to expect before and after the process, you will be stress-free to meet with a financial planner.

If you are confused about choosing a Financial Planner in India, please read the article to learn about the Financial Planning Process and Financial Planner’s Fees.

Financial Planning for a Better Future

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb. Now is the best time to schedule a call with a financial planner.

Now you have to fix an appointment to meet with a Financial Planner. You can either fix the appointment for a face- to- face talk or an Online Video Chat like on Skype/Google Meet/Zoom.

Don’t let fear hold you back from seeking help from an expert.

Many things were said, if you are facing some problems in managing your finances for you or your family, and if you would like to interview us for financial planning, we wholeheartedly welcome you to have a 30 – Minute Complimentary Session with our Financial Planners at Holistic Investment Planners.

You can freely question us more than what we told you here to know more about us.

Please share this article with your family and friends if you like it. Comment us about your experiences when you first met with financial planners.

If you have any comments or questions, write them in the comment box below.

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