11 Key Questions to Ask a Financial Adviser in the First Meeting

If you haven’t already, you should read our previous post, 11 Key Questions to Ask a Financial Adviser in the First Meeting.

Here, we will give our (Quintet Financial’s) responses to those 11 key questions.

The Questions

1. Are You Qualified to Provide Financial Advice?

Yes. We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and our FCA number is 697420 (David Gunter t/a Quintet Financial). You can look us up on the FCA register.

Both David & Mark are qualified to at least QCF Level 4 for pensions and investment advice. There are some areas of advice that David (and in some cases, Mark) is qualified to advise upon, but we choose to outsource to an exceptional specialist who handles those cases all day, every day.

At the time of writing, we are qualified to advise on every area we would like to and believe our clients receive the best possible service with the current mix of in-house and outsourced service.

2. Are You Independent?

We are directly authorised independent financial advisers. We have no sales targets and have built a service efficiently focused on producing the best possible outcomes for our clients. The solutions we recommend are ones we identify (through our extensive due diligence process) as the best available across the whole market.

3. If You’re Not Independent, Can You Look at Products from Across the Market?

See the answer to question #2.

4. Can You Walk Me Through Your Financial Planning Approach?

Every financial planning client goes through the same process:

• Discovery Questionnaire
• Discovery Meeting
  • After this meeting, we will decide if working together is a good fit
• Onboarding
• Building Your Financial Plan
• Presentation Meeting
• Implementation
• Ongoing Review Process

You can find more information about our process here.

5. What Is Your Investment Approach, and Why?

Our investment philosophy is built upon 6 tenets. There is no finger up in the air. It’s all evidence-based and supported by the extensive due diligence we carry out. We have skin in the game, too. Our personal investments use the same approach and share the same portfolios as our clients. Here are the tenets:

• Getting to know you, your circumstances, your lifestyle, your future plans and your tolerance for risk.
• The global equity market is efficient in the long term.
• Don’t try to guess or time the market.
• Don’t chase past performance or the flavour of the month.
• The news is a money-making machine, driven to provoke an emotional response. However, sometimes some events happen around the World that can cause your investments to rise and fall. Nevertheless, there is no news that would cause us to change our investment approach in the short term. We ensure we know you and what you may need the money for. If something in the news could impact your ability to achieve the goals we’ve identified with you, we wouldn’t have invested it somewhere that would experience such volatility.
• An immeasurably large proportion of financial success is driven by behavioural factors – Humans can’t make logical, sensible decisions and be disciplined for decades when left to their own devices. That’s where the financial plan and our conversations with you at review time are critical. It’s also why so many advisers use another adviser to manage their financial plans.

6. What Do You Charge and How Much Am I Likely to Pay?

For most of our clients, we charge £35-£52.50 per month and an ongoing servicing fee of 0.65% per year (based on a percentage of funds invested). No initial fee. No exit/cancellation fee. Clear, simple and great value. There are some additional costs for specialist work (e.g. wills and trusts) and some standard external charges which don’t go to us. In rare cases, we may agree to work with a client where the relationship is outside of our normal workflow. This can result in a different charging structure. You can read more about our charges on our Pricing page.

Before any client signs up to work with us, they will receive a Service And Payment Agreement with a detailed breakdown and we will talk through the charges to make sure you fully understand them.

Here is an example of a new client investing £200,000.00:

7. How Often Will We Assess My Plan?

At least annually. Once initial solutions are established, it is important to review your financial plan regularly as your life and wealth evolve, making adjustments and changes to your strategy to reflect your developing aspirations and needs. You should let us know if there are any life changes we should know about, or new priorities and concerns. We can take action whether it’s review time or not.

8. Can You Include My Family And Business in My Plan?

Yes and yes.

If you’re planning a future that includes your spouse, we would encourage you to introduce them to us. If you and they want us to, we will also gather information from them to build a joint plan. This can make tax planning and projections more detailed and accurate. The monthly retainer you pay us covers the plan, so one joint plan for a couple still only costs one retainer. We can set up investments for your children (e.g. Junior ISAs, Junior Pensions, etc.). We will also offer them guidance (not advice) free of charge.

We offer market-leading business advice, which can include:

• Setting up insurance (e.g. life, key person, professional indemnity, etc.) or improving the policies and premiums you currently have
• Help with efficiently extracting profits
• Improving the workplace pension scheme (countless studies show that upgrading the company pension is some of the most efficient money a company can spend)
• Building an employee benefits package that will improve engagement, job satisfaction, absenteeism, and attracting and retaining the best talent.
• Planning for a business exit/sale and working to prevent a post-sale case of Sudden Wealth Syndrome (SWS)

9. Do You Have Many Clients in a Similar Position to Me?

For most clients, the answer will be yes, but we will cover this in the Discovery Meeting.

10. Can You Assist Me with Mortgages, Will Updates, Equity Release, Pension Transfers, and Protection Advice?

We offer all of the services mentioned here. As discussed above, some of them are outsourced to ensure our clients get the best possible outcome.

We can also help with trusts.

11. How Am I Protected in The Event of Things Going Wrong?

We work extremely hard to ensure good outcomes for our clients, but in the event that something went wrong, you have a range of protections in place.

In the event of mis-selling or unsuitable recommendations, you have recourse to file a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service and protection under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, providing added peace of mind.

We ask for a lot of information (more than most advisers) and this reduces the chance that the advice could be generic and lead to a bad outcome.

We take data security/privacy very seriously. If you think your data has been misused or that we have not kept it secure, you should contact us. If you’re unhappy with their response, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) or get advice from the ICO.

Is There Anything Else I Need To Do Before This Meeting?

Read the resources mentioned in our email (which you will have received after completing the Discovery questionnaire). If there was anything you weren’t sure about from the questionnaire, make a note of it and bring it up in the meeting.

There’s no pressure and you won’t be “sold to”. Just relax and we’ll have an enjoyable chat. If we both think it’s a good fit, we’ll work together for a long time.