Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Financial advisers willing to sell term and ETF

Hi Mr. Tan,
I am currently recruiting advisers especially tied agents who felt that their agencies have not been providing good support to them. I am aware that a number of agencies/firms taught their agents to sell based on the highest commissions rather than needs of their clients with very few training provided. 

Under my team, advisers will not be judged based on how much revenue they can bring in but on how clients are being helped. I imposed no sales quota. I’ll hand-hold these new advisers on how to do recommendations based on needs of their clients. I am product neutral as long as recommendations are suitable for their clients. This is unlike other agency managers who may be unhappy with low cost recommendations such as term and ETFs. Moreover, training provided easily exceeds 90 hours per year. This is way above the regulatory requirement of 30 hours.

My advisers will not charge an advisory fee unless they have significant relevant experience and academy qualifications. I do not consider advisers from tied agencies to have the relevant experience unless they can show evidence of selling products based on needs. In the meantime, how these new advisers are going to earn a decent living selling suitable products is going to be an issue. One of my ideas is to get clients to come to our business center for consultation during office hours. Clients indirectly pay for the advisory fee by incurring their own travel expenses and the inconvenience of taking time off from work. Even if these advisers do not charge a fee for the consultation, the reduction in travel and marketing expenses for these advisers will be significant because the profit margin for selling low cost products is higher when expenses are lowered. 

My recruitment page can be found here: http://www.wilfredling.com/content/view/169/67/.

Thank you for posting this on your blog. Appreciate it.

Wilfred Ling

FA Associate Director
Promiseland Independent Pte Ltd

1 comment:

Chen said...

I am an ex adviser for Aviva and will testify that the advisers there give me advice on my own financial planning. I give them the thumbs up for selling me the products that i need then the highest comm ones.

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