They must be the good guys, right?

I went to see one about setting up a private pension because I don't get one through my employer (employed through an offshore company). Got charged about 150 quid for them to go away and "research" some options for me (probably very little research to be done; they already have a standard set of funds that they use through Openwork). For the first year they wanted 35% of my contributions.

The fund that they "found" for me (something Graphene, can't remember the name of it and I'm not at home to check) consisted of several individual funds to apparently lessen the risk of a single fund manager going to shit. In total the funds consisted of about 70% UK equities (why?), had rubbish past performance when compared to a global index tracker and would've cost me well over 2 or 3% per year (can't remember the exact number sorry), plus about 1% per year to the financial advisor for "management" after the initial 35% for the first year.

Both of my parents saved their money with one of the giants in this field (as tempting as it is, I will not name them). When you visit their offices, there is lots of polished wood, hushed tones, and big conference rooms as they very seriously do their job of turning the assets entrusted to them into more money.

I was executor for both of my parents' estates (they were divorced), so I got an up-close-and-personal look at what the investing company was doing, but only after the fact. My father thought of himself as a savvy investor, so he managed his money himself. He was, in reality, the epitome of the “Poor Dad” and couldn’t find a good investment with a flashlight, a compass, and someone pointing him right at it.

My mother was the polar opposite; she totally trusted this investment company. Over more than 50 years, they both managed their retirement assets this way. While my mother “won” this race because she had more money when she passed, the fact is that if you look at how much money she handed over to them and how little they actually did with it, it’s just sad.

When it was time to unwind her accounts, she was diversified to the point of “diworsification." There was no rhyme or reason for what she was invested in. It was as if the plan was to see if there was a possibility to buy a little bit of everything. She was in every high-load mutual institutional fund you could possibly find, and a smattering of international institutional funds as well. What a mess.

They wanted to hand this over to the heirs as-is and not sell any of it. I insisted they cash all of this mess out and only transfer the money to the heirs. They did this for everything except her IRA, which they transferred as-is. I received $13,000 (give or take) worth of 20 different mutual funds. That’s just nuts.

So, don’t be swayed by the big conference rooms and the fancy offices with their name on the top of the building. These folks are totally in it for themselves, and if they make you some money, it was by accident.

I’ve had initial chats with two, and met two at parties. No horror stories, but all four left me certain that I wouldn’t trust them with a penny of my money. The two I met socially gave me the strong impression they had no idea what they were doing and just parroted dubious soundbites like “you’ll never lose money in property” or “you can’t go wrong with bonds”.

One had been in agriculture before getting a job at his father-in-law’s advisory firm.

I tried to chat to them about more complex post-recession low-interest rate stuff and they kinda changed the subject and just went back to soundbites. The two I actually spoke to about getting advice, one didn’t know how to deal with crypto and promptly ghosted me, the other also appeared to lose interest once it was clear I wasn’t just gonna buy life insurance and commission products. All four did the 1980s sales-y bullshit like using my first name constantly (one of them calling me by the wrong name over and over).

So (while I know every industry has its bad apples), my own personal experience has been that 4 out of 4 had strong scammy used car salesman / estate agent vibes. So basically, they’re the last people I’d hand over money to.I manage my ~£0.5m portfolio myself.