What to look for in a financial adviser, and why many people get it wrong
Most people spend more time researching a new phone than they do picking a financial adviser. Money feels complicated, a little intimidating, and there’s always something more pressing to deal with. Then one day you’re staring at a pension statement you don’t fully understand, or you’ve inherited some money and genuinely don’t know what to do with it, and suddenly the decision feels a lot more urgent.
The Irish financial advice market has changed quite a bit over the past decade. Regulation has tightened, fee structures have become more transparent, and there’s a lot more pressure on firms to actually demonstrate value rather than just collect commission. Which is broadly a good thing, though it does mean the process of choosing someone to manage your money has become simultaneously more straightforward and somehow more confusing.
The difference between a broker and a financial planner
A lot of people use these terms interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. A broker is typically focused on products, finding you the right mortgage, the best life insurance policy, that sort of thing. A financial planner is looking at the whole picture: your income, your goals, your risk tolerance, what you actually want your life to look like in twenty years. Both are useful. They’re just useful for different things.
The confusion tends to arise because many firms do both, and don’t always make it clear which hat they’re wearing at any given moment. If you’re sitting across from someone and they’re mostly talking about specific products in the first meeting, that’s worth paying attention to. A planner-first approach should start with you, your situation, your concerns, before any products get mentioned at all.
One firm that’s become reasonably well known in the Irish market for this kind of holistic approach is Fairstone, which operates through its askpaul platform. The askpaul side of things is particularly interesting because it was built with the idea of making financial advice more accessible, not just to people with significant assets, but to ordinary working people who might have questions about pensions, savings, protection, or planning for a family. That kind of democratisation of advice is still relatively rare in Ireland.
Fees: Ask the uncomfortable question early
Fee transparency is one of those things that sounds obvious until you’re actually in the room trying to bring it up. People feel awkward asking how much something costs, especially with financial services, where the pricing can feel deliberately obscure. Don’t let it be obscure.
Ask upfront whether fees are percentage-based, flat fee, or commission-based, if there will be ongoing charges or just a one-off fee, and what happens if you want to stop. None of these questions should make a good adviser uncomfortable. If they do, that’s information too.
The Central Bank of Ireland has done a fair amount of work on disclosure requirements in recent years, which means advisers are legally obliged to be clearer about how they’re paid. But legal obligations and actual clarity aren’t always the same thing, so it still pays to push a bit.
Online advice isn’t the lesser option
There’s still a perception in some quarters that proper financial advice means sitting in a wooden-panelled office somewhere in Dublin 4. That’s not really how it works anymore. Hybrid models, where you get access to qualified advisers via phone, video call, or even an online platform, can be just as rigorous as traditional in-person services, and are often significantly more accessible.
The askpaul platform from Fairstone Asset Management is a decent example of this. The premise is fairly straightforward: you shouldn’t need to already be wealthy to get decent financial guidance. Younger people trying to figure out their first pension, couples buying a house, someone who’s just got their first pay rise and wants to do something sensible with it – these are exactly the kind of situations where good advice makes a real difference, and yet these are often the people who historically fell through the cracks of traditional advice models.
Getting the basics right early, a proper pension, appropriate life cover, a savings strategy that actually suits your income, tends to matter a lot more than any single financial decision you might make later on. Which is arguably the best argument for finding a decent adviser sooner rather than waiting until your finances feel complicated enough to justify it.