There is a complete alphabet soup as far as financial planner’s qualifications go! CFA, CFP, CA, ICWA, MBA, LLB, Bcom, Amfi pass, IRDA qualified, ….and still more.

Does it really matter?

Well your financial planner should know about you (perhaps most important), equity markets, debt markets, compounding, etc.

Surely if you are looking for a qualification you can get carried away by any of the high sounding qualifications, if he/she does not care enough to know about your goals, your risk profile, your attitude towards risk – i.e. the willingness to take risk vs. the ability to take risk vs. the need to take risk! It is not just a simple word document with lots of ticks!

Currently in India financial planners are difficult (if not impossible) to find – most “planners” are articulate salesmen. Be careful. The difference is like going to a doctor who has a pharma shop and a diagnostic center attached. He will be tempted to recommend unnecessary tests, some glucose shots, …etc.

I think it will be difficult for a doc attached to a diagnostic center and a pharma shop to say “Just loosen your belt, have a soda and do a jog around the block” your stomach ache will vanish. He is more likely to say “get a sonography done, or a lapro or……and take abcmycin, amdmycin, ….and we will check up next week”…

that is called a corporate sales guys predicament. He cannot decide.