At the chance of sounding facetious, an independent financial adviser is someone who gives independent advice on financial matters. Actually, stating the rather obvious in this manner put an important pressure on the three vital components of the independent financial adviser's role.
Independent
The independence of the adviser is crucial. When an independent financial adviser is consulted, it is important to know that he or she does not have any vested interest and will not be influenced in any way by selling a single company's products. Independence means that the client can get the adviser to act completely impartially, entirely in the client's best interests, and not because there is an established dependent relationship between the adviser and something particular supplier. The significance of this independence cannot be stressed enough. The adviser should be licensed by and is regulated by the Financial Services Authority, and independence is something that is central to such recognition. The client's faith and rely upon the adviser stems largely from the latter's independence.
Financial
An unbiased financial adviser needs to have expert professional knowledge of a huge range of financial products and services. Since it has probably the most highly developed financial services industries on earth, the sheer range of products on the British market implies that knowledge and professionalism should be of the highest order.
Because of the sheer range of subjects with which an unbiased financial adviser must be familiar, there exists a correspondingly wide variety of qualifications open to individual advisers. For example, the adviser may have professional qualifications awarded by the Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) Institute, the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), the Institute of Financial Planning (IFP), the non-public Finance Society (PFS), the Pensions Management Institute (PMI, the Securities and Investment Institute (SII), or others. Most importantly, however, the adviser knows that his is really a constantly changing market, with new products and services emerging constantly. He or she will make it his / her business to remain completely up to date with these trends.
Adviser
As an adviser, the third and vital component of the independent financial adviser's role harks back again to the first of his or her qualities, independence. The financial advice given should be "best advice" when recommending any product or service. In other words, the advice must be the advice that's genuinely in the client's best interest. It really is as if the adviser had stepped into the client's shoes and was giving advice entirely from the client's perspective. In this manner, the client can be assured that the advice is actually independent, objective and impartial advice which will fulfill the interests that your client himself or herself has identified.
Summary
It is surprising the amount of meaning could be packed in to the three words that describe the role of the independent financial adviser. But as Helpful site , thumb-nail sketchy shows, each one of the three words encapsulates a simple and vital part of this professional's job. Each word describes the obligations that the adviser has towards all of his clients, so that the clients, for his or her part, can rest absolutely assured that they receive genuinely independent, well-informed and expert financial advice that will serve their own best interests.