Marcel Ramel: Tips for selecting best Fund Adviser

Usually, people don't choose financial advisers; they simply get in touch with them. Many times in some private banks you will find a super consultant or super advisers who will sell you everything like insurance, credit card, and even mutual funds. Banks are a distributor of mutual funds and not advisers.

Mind it; if you are investing advice from any bank you actually take advice from a distributor and it that case it is not necessary that you get a fair and quality advice.

Marcel Ramel Says, An adviser should be one who can provide his customers with real value-based advice rather than simply pushing sales in order to earn a better commission. Adviser's role assumes significant importance in an exuberant scenario like the present one when it is easy for investors to lose track of their objectives and make wrong investment decisions. Conversely, an association with the wrong investment adviser can spell disaster for investors. We present a few pointers which will help investors gauge if they are with the wrong investment adviser.

If the Adviser is offering rewards in terms of payback:

Select an adviser for his ability to recommend the right investment avenues and manage your investments rather than his willingness to refund commission. By offering payback the adviser is not doing justice to his work as he is luring you towards doing that investment. This specifies that an adviser is putting your money at risk by giving you a commission.

This practice among investment advisers is to rebate a part of the commission earned, back to investors i.e. the investor is 'rewarded' for getting invested. What investors fail to realize is that the commission offered by the adviser is actually rewarded for taking more risk. Wealth creation for investors should come from the investments made and not commissions. Select an adviser for his ability to recommend the right investment avenues and manage your investments rather than his willingness to refund commission.

Marcel Ramel

Advisor only advises the top few funds most of the time:

Most of the time an adviser will suggest you some fund and will show you its annual returns. Most of the top-ranking funds are sectoral funds and they carry a certain amount of risk. Usually, sector funds being a fund with major allocation to specific sectors are high-risk funds. Many times in order to generate large funds from the market the fund houses have fallen prey to herd mentality and launched similar offerings in quick succession. The banks and investment advisers have played their part by indiscreetly pushing these products since they get a better commission.

If the Adviser's role is restricted to delivery and pick up of forms:

The investment adviser's primary role includes creating a portfolio for the investor based on his needs, risk profile and successfully managing the same. While maintaining high service standards is pertinent, it shouldn't gain precedence over the advice part. Most of the advisers I have seen are usually working for big distributors such as banks, big brokerage houses. The main work for them is meeting the targets rather than provide value-based advisory service. Independent individual Investment advisers prefer to make their work simpler by showing themselves only when they had to collect the form.