How to choose a financial adviser

Choosing an adviser is mostly a question of working out three things: whether they are allowed to do this, how they get paid, and whether the thing they do is the thing you need. None of that requires financial expertise. It requires asking directly and writing the answers down.

Check they are registered before anything else

In most markets, giving investment advice requires authorisation. Registration is the floor, not a recommendation — it means someone has met entry requirements and is supervised, nothing more — but an adviser who is not registered is not an adviser you should be talking to.

In the United States, investment advisers are searchable in the SEC's adviser register and brokers in FINRA's BrokerCheck. In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority publishes a register of authorised firms. Look the firm up yourself rather than accepting a certificate on a website: registers show disclosure history as well as authorisation, and that history is often the more useful half.

Where a company profile on this site is matched to a register, we link to the register entry so you can go and read the primary source.

Understand how they are paid

This is the question that changes the most and gets asked the least.

Fee-only. You pay the adviser directly — a flat fee, an hourly rate, or a percentage of the assets they manage. Nobody else pays them for recommending a product.

Commission. The provider of the product pays them when you buy it. This is not automatically bad advice, but it does mean the adviser earns nothing if the right answer is "do nothing", and that is worth knowing.

Both. Common, and the detail matters. Ask which parts of the service are which.

A percentage-of-assets fee deserves a moment's arithmetic. One per cent a year sounds small next to a portfolio and large next to a return. Ask what it comes to in currency, annually, on the amount you would actually be investing.

Ask whether they owe you a duty

In some jurisdictions and some arrangements, an adviser must act in your best interests. In others, they need only recommend something suitable — a lower bar, and one that can accommodate the more expensive of two suitable products.

Ask plainly: are you acting as a fiduciary for me, on all of this, all of the time? A straight yes is a good sign. An explanation of when they are and are not is a fair answer. Discomfort with the question is itself informative.

Work out what you actually need

Adviser is a broad word. Some do one-off planning, some manage money on an ongoing basis, some specialise in retirement, tax, estates or business owners. A firm that is excellent at one of those may simply not do another.

Before the first meeting, write down what you want to be different in a year. "I want to know whether I can retire at sixty" and "I want somebody to manage this portfolio" lead to different firms.

Four questions worth asking directly

1. How are you paid, by whom, and what would you earn if I did nothing?
2. Are you a fiduciary for me in all of our dealings?
3. What does your service cost in currency, per year, on my numbers?
4. What do you not do?

The last one is the most revealing. A firm with a clear answer knows where its edges are.

What to do with the answers

Ask more than one firm and compare like with like. Get the fees in writing before you agree to anything, and keep the written version.

If you are not comfortable, that is a sufficient reason to walk away. There is no shortage of firms and no obligation created by a conversation.

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This guide explains how to evaluate advisers. It is not financial advice, and it does not recommend any company listed in this directory. Registration and fee details should be confirmed with the firm and with the relevant register before you decide.