Financial services clients need to get information on current affairs to be able to make informed and effective decisions about their financial services and investments which are going to have huge impact on their financial futures. It is one of the financial services advisers duties to provide the client with information and data that is unbiased, useful and easy to understand so that they can use this balanced information to make an informed decision.
If these important decisions are made using unbalanced, biased or incorrect information this can result in bad decisions which will result in financial ruin or serious loss in the future.
The financial adviser must develop a balanced view of PESTLE an acronym for:
- Politics and political decisions that will impact your clients financial decisions.
- Economic events and indicators which could create risks or opportunities for your clients
- Social changes happening in the country that will impact on your clients long term plans.
- Technology that will change the way financial services are offered.
- Legislation that will impact on your clients financial planning situation.
- Environmental change that will impact on your clients long term plans.
To develop balance you need to use commentators and publications that offer different views and oinions and you need to be wary of popular publications that publish sensational stories to sell copies rather than offer you a balance of news that is meaningful and representative of what is happening.
The professional adviser needs to seek out commentators and publications that cover the whole spectrum of opinion:
- Government and opposition commentators
- Business and labour commentators
- Local and overseas commentators
- Active and passive investment managers
- A spread of investment managers
- A spread of spokes men form companies to gain balance
- Read the more serious publications or specialist publications to gain insight into what is happening in the industry.
- Use technology to search for balanced reporting and to easily get access to this information.
- Make use of professional commentators like economists and investment managers who will send regular updates to you via email of social media.
- Use twitter to follow a range of commentators on subjects of interest to you and your clients.
- Use Linked in to link to groups and individuals who can provide you with relevant and up to date information.
- Bookmark useful and relevant websites to provide information
Balance is important and this does not mean you should ignore comment from commentators who have a bias like spokesmen from political parties, unions, business or other opinion groups. You need to understand their bias and compare their comments to those of other interest groups and then you can use this information and comment with out creating an unbalanced or biased view if the situation.
Advisers who develop a system of collecting and assimilating the information that is constantly being published and develops a balanced view of current affairs will be able to provide invaluable information to their clients to help them in making those important financial services and investment decisions that are sensible and effective as they are based on sound and unbiased data.