How do financial advisors/planners (whatever euphemism for insurance agents) help clients with their investment portfolio?

Financial Advisors are not going to stock pick for you. They are there to guide you in the right direction.

They will look at your overall portfolio, income and expense habits and give you some very basic pointers for free to gain your trust. Most of those pointers are already available publicly in blogs and YouTube videos. However, it is much more convenient and easier to get all that information in one place rather than to spends hours googling.

Next point is how do the FA make money? Nothing in the world is free. FAs are making a living as well. It’s going to be about earning trust with the customer. Once the trust has been established, then they will propose you how much money to invest in what kind of schemes and it will be much easier for you to invest the money in those schemes via FA. Obviously, FAs have targets on how much cash they bring in and get compensated accordingly.

The core financial work is done by someone else at the back end. FAs are there to build trust, guide you in the right direction (which is influenced by their targets).

You can always have a non obligatory meeting with a FA. They are NOT going to tell you what to invest in. They may seek your income and expense habits and recommend that you should start investing this much money for retirement etc. They will give you a teaser of what they can do for you.

It’s pure marketing. It’s like you can watch the trailer for free on YouTube and know what to expect when you go in for a movie. But you will only know if it was worth it or not once you watch it yourself!

Insurance agents are not licensed to advise what to of should invest in. If I remember correctly they are not even allowed to advise you which ILP sub fund you should choose if you buy an ILP. insurance agents are very loosely regulates here in terms of their business activities. For example, many claim they are "hiring" when they are not hiring you under an employment contract but as fellow agents where you are self employed. How is it possible to hire a self employed person?

In reality, most insurance agents are not wealthier than their prospects when they start out. It is funny people with more money take advice from people with nothing.