What do advisors do anyway?
Ever wondered just what a financial advisor is supposed to do for you? Here are six roles that financial advisors and brokers have historically played for their clients and how Farther is different:
Product Sales (anything commission-based) — Historically, brokers and advisors earned commissions from product sales or revenue sharing arrangements with fund companies. Both of these practices are too often a way for advisors to generate revenue for themselves, instead of generating wealth for their clients. Even worse, many of these fees are hidden within the expense ratios of mutual funds or buried in complex, hard to understand marketing collateral. There’s NO place for fund and investment product commissions at Farther.
Investment Research (stock / mutual fund picking) — Most advisors aren’t doing their own independent research into stocks or mutual funds anymore. Instead, they rely on a handful of big banks that can support teams of people to deeply research companies and fund managers and publish their findings. While many advisors and mutual fund managers still pick winners and losers based on that research, they’ve been shown to underperform the market as a whole when you consider their fees for doing so. Investors end up with less return for all that work. From Farther’s perspective, we believe you might as well keep the fees you would have paid for lower returns in your own pocket.
