Practice Management
The intersection between financial advisors and their clients, Investopedia offers inspiration and resources to help financial advisors have more productive conversations with their clients.
Financial Advisors Helping Financial Advisors
Discussion Guides for Financial Advisors & Clients
As a financial advisor, you're constantly fielding questions from clients seeking guidance on complex finance topics that relate to their portfolios and life's biggest moments. To support your conversations, quickly download and share these free, brief discussion guides with your clients to support them in key topic areas. These guides–which include brief explanations of key terms, basic context on a topic, and a list of potential questions to ask–can be a starting point for productive conversations, and let you hand a client a useful educational resource.
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The cost of seeing a financial advisor will vary depending on what your goals and needs are. If you just want to create a budget and select a target date fund to invest retirement savings, you can do that relatively quickly with an advisor charging around $100/hr. If you have funds to invest and you’d like an advisor to manage it for you, they may charge over 1% of your assets under management annually.
Learn More What Fees Do Financial Advisors Charge? -
Yes, clients can sue their financial advisor for negligence or malpractice, including breaches of fiduciary duty and regulatory noncompliance. Advisors can protect themselves from unexpected and costly claims by getting professional liability insurance.
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Yes, financial advisors are allowed to sell their clients life insurance policies. Life insurance policies make financial sense for a lot of people, which is one reason financial advisors will recommend these policies. Though it is also true that advisors who sell life insurance can receive large upfront commissions and annual commissions of 3% to 5% for the remainder of the policy’s term.
Learn More Why Financial Advisor Sell Life Insurance -
The average salary for a financial advisor in the United States was about $120,000 in 2021.
Learn More Financial Advisor Career: Pros and Cons
Key Terms
- Investment Adviser Registration Depository (IARD)
The Investment Adviser Registration Depository (IARD) is an electronic system through which investment advisors register themselves and file required reports and disclosures with the U.S. federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and with state-level regulators.
- Brochure Rule
The brochure rule, otherwise known as rule 204-3, requires all financial advisors and brokers to provide their clients with a written disclosure statement outlining the services they offer and their terms and conditions, before working with them.
- Best-Interest Contract Exemption (BICE)
A Department of Labor rule, vacated by federal courts in 2018, that allowed financial institutions that both trade securities and give investment advice the ability to earn variable compensation, such as commissions and some kinds of revenue sharing.
- Blanket Recommendation
A recommendation to buy or sell an asset that a broker or other financial institution sends to all its clients, regardless of their investment objectives.
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Explore Practice Management
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