Get unbiased, personal and goal-specific financial advice from a SEBI Registered Investment Advisor

For many decades, individual investors didn’t have anyone credible to turn to for personalised and unbiased financial advice. The people giving advice were always product sellers who would double up as financial advisors. These people were essentially company representatives who sold or pushed products depending upon who offered them better commissions. On the whole, there was a huge conflict of interest as far as that advisory model was concerned.

All that changed when SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), the main financial markets regulator in India passed a regulation in 2013 to take care of this fundamental problem. This regulation raise the bar for financial advisors, making it a win-win situation for the clients. Through this regulation, SEBI introduced a new class of fee-only financial advisors who would be their clients’ representatives in the true sense of the word, in a client-centric and conflict-free arrangement. SEBI advisors can only get paid by their clients and are not allowed to make any commissions on the products. Below we tell you how these SEBI RIAs are able to provide unbiased, personal and goal-specific financial advice.

- It is the responsibility of a Registered Investment Advisor to gather complete details related to the client’s requirements, comprehensively study their situation, carry out an analysis of different scenarios & options, and come up with strategies to suit the client’s needs, eventually providing advice that is completely aligned with those requirements. On the other hand agents have a superficial association with the clients and are more focused on selling more and more of their parent company’s offerings.

Improved representation - While agents are essentially representatives of their principles, and are accountable to them, the fee-only Registered Investment Advisors represent their clients and are not related in any way to the product creators. It makes them conflict-free and independent, enabling them to give unbiased financial advice.

Follow the Fiduciary standard – SEBI RIAs are required to follow the Fiduciary standard. Fiduciaries always put their client’s interest over and above everything else, even their own interest. On the other hand, distributors or agents follow a standard wherein they are allowed to position their principal’s offerings in a manner to make it more attractive for the clients, even if they’re not in the best interest of the latter.

More qualified – Registered Investment Advisors are normally more qualified compared to the agents, as it is a prerequisite for them to get registered with SEBI.

Separation of financial advice from product distribution – Agents have an inbuilt incentive to sell costlier products. The client doesn’t have any control over the product selection and usually has to go by whatever is offered by the agent. There is no option for the client to hold back or pay a lesser payment if they receive poor or deficient services, as what essentially goes to the agent is already deducted by the parent company from the product cost, and is paid out as commission. However, when it comes to a Registered Investment Advisor, there is a separation between the financial advice and the product distribution.

The advisor provides only advisory services and will receive payment if the client is contented and happy with the results. The client is free to buy the product from anywhere they like.

Remunerated by the clients - Registered Investment Advisors being representatives of their clients can only ask for remuneration from them. There is no question of conflict of interest in such an arrangement. Agents/distributors on the other hand earn their commissions from principals, by selling their product/s to the client. Even if they claim to be representatives of the client, there is a clear conflict of interest in such an arrangement as they make their money from the principals.

We at MyBillions are a team of such SEBI Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) who have earned a lot of respect in the market for the results we have delivered for our clients. We are your ultimate source for personalized, unbiased and goal-specific financial advice.