Credit Cave

There are three areas to consider when choosing a Financial Planner. A financial planner will get access to your life and certain details that you probably will never give to anyone else other than your spouse, not even the tax collector or revenue agent. So it makes much more sense to choose a financial planner very carefully.

There are three areas that do not require an Einstein to cover. So think EMC, and covers the aspects of Ethics, Money and Credentials.

Today we will cover Ethics

E - Ethics

1. If the financial planner is in the states ask for and check their CRD Number (Central Registry depository Number), then look them up on NASD.org.
2. Look for client complaints and potential resolutions if any to those complaints.
3. Check with state securities commisioners or with insurance commissioners.
4. Due a criminal records search because criminals can get a securities license.
5. Request a full written and signed disclosure that identifies all of their compensation and potential conflicts of interest.
• Consider these closely as they may be worth knowing but not necessarily a disqualifier.

That covers the Ethics aspect of choosing a Financial Planner. It is probably one of the most import portions as you will need to trust this person. Next time we will follow the Money, which corresponds to giving us a gauge for how much we can trust the person based on the alignment of their goals with or against our own.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 11:41 am and is filed under Managing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.