With many thousands of family offices, asset managers and private offices in Europe alone, how do you choose the right wealth adviser? The decision will naturally come down to who has the best products or who has the best pricing and, ultimately, who one trusts the most. But everyone is saying the same thing. Every financial services professional will tell you that their products and services are the best, according to some measure or ranking or reason. Everyone is good at risk management, everyone beats the benchmark, and everyone adds alpha. How on earth is one to discern who is saying what, who is telling the truth, who can make the best predictions, and aren’t the markets supposed to be random anyway?
It really is no wonder that people are turning to robots and machines for help. But is that the answer? Wouldn’t it still be nice to also talk and meet a human every once in a while? Particularly since you have opened up the most inner workings of your entire life. All the assets, earnings, or activities you have to declare to whatever jurisdiction, according to which act or directive you now to need to abide by, just to make an investment.
From our experience, trust no one and no one has all the answers. And if someone claims they do, then you can immediately eliminate a good deal of sales people, pitches and unscrupulous institutions that just don’t know any better. Next, you need to apply common sense: spreading your investments is a no brainer but make sure they are also truly different from one another – never put all your eggs in one basket. Whenever someone comes to you with the deal of the century, ask yourself why they need you or came to you in the first place. And, no matter what they say, there is never something so urgent or an opportunity so great, that you need to drop or even sell everything to make a decision right away. Finally, know what products and services cost in the market place and be prepared to negotiate the fees. With so many institutions competing for your services, prices are literally tumbling, and good advice and research is available for next to nothing nowadays.
Once you understand that investing your money soundly isn’t (and shouldn’t be) rocket science, then neither should the choice be in who can help you with executing your chosen strategy.