The Work of an Advisor

In my work in advicing wealth protection and transfer strategies for clients, the planning process often cross path with clients' personal life. This is a natural progress of the advisory work because finance often has significant (though not completely) impact on a person's life.

The role of me as a financial advisor is not to dictate client's life decisions, but to analyse the facts to give client a better platform to make his decisions. Most of my work involves highlighting potential pitfalls in the client's decisions. Hopefully, the consequences of his decisions (financial or otherwise) can turn out better, or at least in the way he expected. Most of these consequences only happen after many years. Only then will my work be deemed as successful (or failure). In the fast pace world today, this sort of client-advisor relationship is not well understood and appreciated.

As a result, in order to be an advisor of any field, he or she should have the following:

1. Well studied and continually study the knowledge of his trade,

2. Has a reasonable years in actual pratice of his trade so that he understands the problems of reality underneath the theories,

3. Has the integrity to say "I don't know" in situation where he really does'nt know,

4. Has the courage and sincereity to serve and bring the benefits of the knowledge to the clients, instead of using the knowledge to steer clients into a direction that benefit the advisor.

The work of an advisor, if conducted properly, is one of the most satisfactory work amongst all; if not conducted properly, it is one of the most miserable work amongst all.