This article is likely to be a little long and is based on my experience of meeting upwards of 20,000 IFA over my life time of training. I started in 2002 – which must be making me the trainer with the longest -17 year track record..

1. Helps the investor start of on a long, arduous, boring, journey to create wealth.
2. Holding the clients hands during times of stress and distress
3. Keep the client away from noisy, stupid, financial porn – and it is available in many forms these days
4. Keeping the client away from chauffeur knowledge – the untrained, uneducated journalists and bloggers.
5. Understand taxation in totality and not just in investment tax – e.g. clubbing provisions/ dividend taxation, etc.
6. Be approachable and easy to talk
7. Use relevant technology – be on the same page as most of his/her clients
8. Involve the client’s family – be willing to explain concepts to the spouse, kids, parents of investors
9. Have a clear fee structure without any conflict of interest
10. Explain Goal Based Investing process
11. Should be available easily for communicating
12. Should have a good knowledge of the investment process and the people involved
13. Sheer math based returns may hide some serious frauds – he should be experienced enough
14. Have the guts to tell the client that a Rs. 5000 sip can be enough to buy an Indica, not a Jaguar.
15. Be willing to look foolish for long periods of time – real long periods

Seems to be unending…and I have not even mentioned making an investment plan, an investment strategy statement, asset allocation, risk profiling, making a will,…..

Sadly why I am not in this “profession” is that the fee that I would like to charge is killing – and not enough people will be willing to pay for it. More importantly I am not willing to invest in infra – been there done that in 1999 – so not willing to walk that path again.

However, I do some kinda hand holding for older existing clients and for IFA. Helping IFa is a new project apart from blogging and writing books.