by Tony Vidler 
Being a valued financial adviser is the goal, right? Well it is difficult to considered yourself “valued” if you don’t place a value upon your own expertise or worth to the client. It is even more difficult for prospective clients to consider you valuable if you do not place value upon your own time, and therein lies one of the best arguments for those who have made a career from being product reps to consider moving towards fee-charging.
I am not going to go down the path of claiming that one remuneration model is ethically superior to another either…ethical standards are compromised by folk at either end of the spectrum. And ethical standards are upheld by folks at either end of the spectrum too. Commissions are without doubt a conflicted advice model…but the fee-based model can be too. Especially when those “fee’s” are just a more cunningly constructed commission package…there is no compensation model really that comes without any potential conflict of interest, and commission as a method of remuneration is not necessarily a bad thing – except for one aspect:
You are being paid for successful product placement regardless of how much work you actually do, and that is a wonderful way of trivialising the actual work that a good financial adviser does.
One of the toughest things for an adviser to do is make the move from a product representative living on success fees, or commissions only, to being a valued adviser getting paid for their expertise, time and regulatory & reputational risk.
In this edition of quick tips we explain how to begin making the transition (in whole or in part), and being valued for the objective life-changing advice you can provide, instead of being seen as a product representative only.
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