How to find a qualified “Financial Professional”.

Finding a “Financial Professional” seems easy enough, flip through any phonebook or type in “life insurance”, “financial planning”, or “estate planning” into any search engine and you will be bombarded with more so-called advisors than you can handle.

He is a word of advice, don’t bother wasting your time.  While a search engine or even the phonebook can be useful tools, neither provide you with the information needed to find and identify an advisor versus a salesperson.  Instead follow the following steps:

1)       Ask for recommendations from your friends and family.  Many of them will have had experience with purchasing the financial service in question.  Ask them if they were interviewed to determine needs and wants, educated prior to making any selections, kept informed during the purchasing process, and if they have received subsequent regular follow-ups.

If the answers are “no” move on, if “yes”, then place them towards the top of any list you may compile.  Nothing is a reassuring as a good recommendation.

2)      Don’t stop there.  Be sure to check the credentials & professional designations, license status, and professional organization membership of the advisors in question.  You should find that they have active licenses, maintain their credentials and professional designations, and that they are members of their local, state, or national associations.

This is extremely important.  Without the above, the advisor is telling you that they don’t focus on additional / continuing education, don’t want the additional scrutiny of an association / organization membership, and that they can’t be bothered to maintain a valid license status.

Once you have found your potential candidates, it is now time to interview them.  Did you say interview?  Yes, I did –interviewing is one of the most important steps in the process.  Would you hire a new employee without interviewing them?  What about building an addition on your house or putting in a pool without getting multiple bids?  Hiring a “Financial Professional” is no different; as a matter of fact it is far more important.

Tagged as: education, expert, Finance, Financial Professional, hiring, interviewing, Principles, professional