During my working life I’ve had many job titles.  When I was a lot younger than I am now, my first job was collecting glasses in a working mans club and I was called a ‘potboy’.  In my late teens I had a number of part time temporary jobs while studying and most of the time I was just one of ‘the temps’.

However the interesting this is that since I have been providing financial advice for over 10 years now,both within my own business and in my previous corporate life, the primary goal of my day to day work hasn’t changed fundamentally.  It’s always been to ensure that my clients are better prepared for their future financial goals.

However what the ‘job’ has been called has changed based on a number of factors.  I’ve been a wealth manager, financial planning manager, financial adviser, financial planner and wealth consultant.  However it’s important to be clear that, whilst I believe I’m better at providing high quality advice now than I’ve ever been due to our businesses independence (we provide whole of market research) and our focus on robust systems and processes to ensure our business is run professionally, throughout my career the key primary goal has always been the same.

So, I’ve had one ‘role’ (which has always been to help our clients achieve their long term financial goals) and this ‘role’ has had 5 or 6 different names.  However a job title can be misleading at times, and let me explain why.

I attended a networking event where I was introduced to a fellow “financial adviser”.  He passed me his business card when we first spoke and sure enough it had his name on together with the job title of “Wealth Consultant”.

We started talking and I quickly realised that the individual I was speaking to wasn’t a financial adviser at all.  His role, as opposed to give provide ethical good quality advice to his clients, was to recommend high risk investments in unbuilt hotels abroad, south american woodland and solutions which ‘help clients encash all their pension assets’, and usually for high commission payments!

“Oh, that’s interesting” I said having met ‘wealth consultants’ of this type before “How long have you been regulated by the FSA?”

I knew the answer to the question before he answered it.  “I’m not” he said “all of the products we provide are unregulated”.  “That’s interesting” I said “So how do you provide advice on your customers pensions….which are regulated?”

Funnily enough the gent I was speaking to received an urgent text message which meant that he had to leave the event!  I was disappointed….I had so more many questions which would now be forever left unanswered!

It’s important when you look for professional financial advice that you choose to work with an individual with your best interests at heart.  Whilst there are a number of factors to consider when you select a financial planner (which I’ll write about in more detail in a later blog post), a starting point is to check whether the  adviser in question is, as a bare minimum, regulated by the Financial Services Authority.  This can be done quite easily using the FSA register which you can find here.

My suggestion is regardless of how glamorous investments into woodland, Caribbean hotels or plots of land sound ensure you receive advice from a fully regulated professional adviser.  Make the required checks on the FSA register, ask your adviser plenty of searching questions (in my experience good quality advisers both welcome and expect this) and ensure you understand the risks, rewards and costs (both of the product and adviser) of any recommendation given.

Just please be sure that you don’t take advice from any old ‘wealth consultant’.