Piecemeal advice key to better outcomes
Financial advisers need to be better at piecemeal advising to help focus on issues that clients are facing and to be compliant with the regulators, according to an adviser.
Skeggs Goldstien adviser, Adam Goldstien told a session at the SMSF Association National Conference last week that advisers needed to develop a better engagement, understanding, diagnosing processes, along with scoping and advice preparation skills.
Goldstien pointed to the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FAESA’s) guidance regarding scope or limit when it came to giving advice.
“Not many financial planners today are giving a full statement of advice (SOA) – it just doesn’t happen. Every SOA is scope in some form or fashion down to what needs to bespoke,” he said.
“We need to get better at scoping so that we are focusing on issues and giving advice and information to clients that they need at that point in time. The population wants piecemeal advice not whole financial plans.”
Goldstien said advisers needed to start using more scope or limited advice documents such as strategy or dispatch papers which were delivered in a diligent, fair, and reasonable manner.
“There is nothing wrong with you preparing a discussion paper with clients with alternatives, advantages, disadvantages, costs and benefits and not giving specific product recommendations,” he said.
“You don’t have to do an SOA in every event – you can write that later. The point is that you need to get clients engaged so that we can understand these unmet advice needs.
“I believe scoping is the key here and if we can get that better, and I don’t think advisers haven’t been particularly good at that, giving scope piece advising would give a better outcome.”
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