Does anyone have any personal experience or recommended strategies to manage Financial Advisors who are falling short (more in comments)?

What are the benchmarks for the rights of an insured/client of a FA?
How often does your FA update you on your policies, do a review for you?
Are they proactive enough to be "on the ball" or do they keep in touch only to recommend new products or to persuade you to do a "buy" transaction with them?
What are your experiences with your personal FA?

Please kindly share your personal experiences, the good, the bad, how to manage expectations for your FA etc. Thank you very much!

Hey there!

I think as a client, it is within your prerogative to state out your expectations with your advisor and of course, all being reasonable and logical too.

There are customers who want a purely transactional relationship while there may be other clients who love new updates and advisory that goes beyond the sales of insurance eg. what's happening in the market, hottest stocks, good deals etc. What we deem as benchmarks are hence highly subjective. So communicating the expectations is necessary because it can be difficult to gauge what is expected if it's not verbalized.

Of course as an advisor, there are some sort of servicing and reviewing which has to be consistent especially when it comes to investment plans. Your advisor should be updating you on your investments periodically, a good 2-3 months interval will be great and doing necessary fund switches when necessary. Reviewing of insurance should happen 6 months to a year or whenever there is a lifestage change eg. marriage, newborn child, housing etc.

All in all, an advisor should be within the realm of approachability for anything finance related.

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