What do you think about when you hear the word ‘trust’?

Confidence, support, honesty, reliability, reassurance. These are some words that come to mind when we consider our experiences of trust.

All of these are fundamental to any successful relationship, none more so than the relationship between a client and their financial planner and adviser.

As an adviser, we are entrusted with managing our clients’ life savings and investments in order to help them achieve their long-term financial goals and future life plans. For this to work, the foundation of our relationship with our clients has to be built on trust.

Building this takes time and effort from both sides. But once it has been established, more often than not, it leads to a long and fruitful partnership where everyone benefits, and, most importantly, the client achieves their financial goals and can start thinking about fulfilling their lifelong plans.

There are four key aspects of trust in the relationship between a client and their financial planner and adviser:

1. Confidentiality

A financial adviser is entrusted with sensitive information about clients’ financial circumstances, including income, expenses, investments and debts. Clients need to know and feel assured that their adviser will keep this information confidential and not disclose it to anyone without their consent.

We use our secure client portal to store client information. This portal also has a secure messaging functionality which we use to send and receive potentially sensitive information from clients. The only time we ever share any client information with third parties, such as an accountant, is with the expressed agreement from the client.

2. Objectivity/ Independence

A financial adviser’s investment recommendations should be based on the clients’ best interests, not their own. Clients need to trust that their adviser is objective in their advice and not motivated by commissions or incentives from product providers. This is where an independent financial adviser is much more beneficial than a restricted one.

We pride ourselves on our independence. We are not part of a larger wealth company with its own funds, nor are we restricted salespeople who are only allowed to advise on a small set of investments. With the exception of protection, we never receive commission from any investments that we recommend to our clients and the only source of fees we receive are directly from the client. This means our incentives are fully aligned with giving the client the best advice for them, no matter what investment product or fund(s) we are recommending.

3. Transparency

A financial adviser should be transparent about their qualifications, experience and fees. Clients need to trust that their adviser is qualified and competent to provide financial advice, and that their fees are fair and reasonable.

Our tagline at PWP is “For professionals. By professionals.” This means that one of our unique attributes is all our advice-giving team have had previous careers and qualifications in other professionals fields – be it investment markets, accounting, management consulting or compliance. All our financial planners have the Diploma of Regulated Financial Planning, but more importantly, they have real-world knowledge and direct experience of the financial situation of most of our clients.

4. Accountability

A financial adviser should be accountable for their actions and decisions. Clients need to trust that their financial adviser will take responsibility if things go wrong and will work to rectify any mistakes.

We endeavour to be perfect in everything we do, however this is a people business with people involved and sometimes people make mistakes. When that happens, we will always ensure that the client is not disadvantaged and put them back in the position they would have been otherwise. There is no internal negotiation on this. It is the right thing to do for the clients, so we do it. Simple.

These four key aspects, when combined, produce the winning formula for a client-adviser relationship that is built on trust and leads to long-term financial success for the client.

We have built long-term trusting relationships with all our clients over the years. If you would like see whether we might be a good fit for you, book a FREE 15-minute initial call to chat to one of our professional financial planners.