The value of financial advice

A 16-year study by Vanguard Investments that found a financial adviser effectively adds around 3% to the value of a client’s portfolio over time.  This is on top of normal investment returns.

The real significance of this is that you can have a finance professional take care of one of the most important jobs in your life (funding your retirement) for very little, if any, real cost.  This can even be the case for those with smaller portfolios.

This benefit isn’t just from better investing, though that will often be the case.  It’s the more holistic approach that wins the day.  Vanguard Investments identify the following areas as those that will generate this positive outcome:

• Suitable asset allocation
• Cost-effective implementation (expense ratios)
• Rebalancing
• Behavioural coaching (Vanguard Investments found this to be the most significant contributor because there are some tasks people struggle with such as budgeting and expense management.  Behavioural coaching addresses this issue).
• Tax efficiency (An example here is where an investor with a modest portfolio lost more than $250,000 in value over a 10-12 year period because they thought the three stock brokers they used were looking after tax related issues.  They weren’t!  If the planner had been involved sooner the outcomes would have been significantly different.)
• Total returns versus income investing.

Finally, the concerns many potential clients have over the cost of financial planning means they delay getting help early enough which, in turn, threatens the very retirement outcomes they want to achieve. 

Peter Graham
PlannerWeb / AcctWeb