A reader writes in, asking:
“How can you measure, and verify, a financial adviser’s performance for the sake of comparing one prospective adviser to another?”
While this is a common question for people to ask, it’s not really a useful way to evaluate a financial advisor — for a few reasons.
First, an advisor doesn’t recommend the same portfolio to everybody. The investment portfolio that is appropriate for you as a client may be wholly inappropriate for another client with very different circumstances.
If an advisor or advisory firm were to calculate something like the average annualized return earned by their clients over a given period, that figure wouldn’t provide a meaningful point of comparison to another advisor’s such figure. For example, if one advisor has a clientele that is primarily middle class retirees, while another advisor’s clientele is primarily super-high-earners in their 30s or 40s, the clients of the first advisor would probably have, on average, lower returns over the last several years than clients of the second advisor — and that would simply be the result of the first advisor recommending appropriately low-risk portfolios for his/her clients.
In short, there’s no single figure that can be calculated to meaningfully measure how well the investment recommendations of a given financial advisor have performed over a given period.
Second, an advisor shouldn’t really be trying to do anything clever with respect to client portfolios. If an advisor is putting together a portfolio for you, a simple, boring portfolio of index funds/ETFs that approximately match the market’s return is your best bet. Intentionally seeking out an advisor who shows you a backtested, market-beating portfolio is setting yourself up for disappointment.
Finally, an advisor who engages in actual financial planning does a whole lot more than just make investment recommendations for clients.
A financial planner can also provide advice about tax planning or estate planning. They can help you evaluate your insurance coverage to see if there’s anything important you have missed (e.g., disability insurance). They can help with Social Security planning, and retirement planning in general. They can provide assistance with budgeting if that’s something you struggle with. They can provide advice with regard to your employee benefit options (e.g., help determine which health insurance is the best fit for your family).
And frankly, investment management is quickly becoming the least valuable part of financial planning. While there are still plenty of people whose investment performance would be improved by working with a financial advisor, the list of tools available for DIY investors to create a low-maintenance portfolio has grown dramatically over the last decade. Investors can now choose from Vanguard’s LifeStrategy funds, low-cost indexed target retirement funds at various providers, a smorgasbord of total market index funds/ETFs, or low-cost services like Betterment or Vanguard Personal Advisor Services.
What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?
Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book: |
Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less |
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