For many of us, how to make smart investments is a mystery, thus having a financial advisor is invaluable. While some advisers may be unwilling to give away free advice during the initial meeting, it is important for you as the potential new client to walk away with some useful information. Before that though, the analyst would need to gain some basic understanding of the potential client’s current status.

Potential clients have a somewhat unique financial status and, at times, different goals. As a result, the same solution cannot be sufficient, nor is it personable. Since money matters represent such pivotal importance to our lives, you should expect a high service quality from your financial adviser.

Before going to see the expert for the first time, review their website and see if there is a potential match to your needs. Once you are in their office, expect to fill out a client profile. Even if it takes an hour, this time is well worth it since an hour is negligible compared to what you can get back in terms of good investment advice.

Expect to hear back from the analyst whether you are on the right track and to some extent how diversified your portfolio is. Any additional advice such as highlighting some badly performing mutual funds you may have in your portfolio would be a nice bonus input to have. Expect to receive some general information on whether your portfolio is under-performing and what your performance goals should be. The how to get to achieving these goals would be discussed once you sign an agreement. Lastly, in the first meeting, expect the cost of the service to be discussed.

It’s important to shop around before making a decision on which analyst to go with. Stay away from analysts who give vague or very little details and already have an agreement for you to sign without giving you time to think about it on your own. The overall value of service for the price is what you need to consider here.

In a future post, we will describe the types of questions to ask the adviser during your first and future  meetings with them.