The Adviser as Navigator: Jack of All Trades, Master of None?

Financial advisers have traditionally spent a significant amount of their time talking about investments, pensions and financial products. There is nothing particularly surprising about that because this is where much of the profession came from. However, financial planning has evolved, and I think our view of the adviser’s role needs to evolve with it.

A client does not have an investment life, a tax life, a family life and an estate planning life that conveniently exist independently of each other. They have one financial life in which all these things overlap. If we genuinely want to call ourselves financial planners, our responsibility should therefore stretch far beyond managing investments. In simple terms, I think we should be capable of having conversations with clients about everything from paying their bills today to what happens after their death.

Does the adviser need to know everything?

This raises an obvious problem. No adviser can realistically become an expert in investments, pensions, tax, trusts, estate planning, protection, mortgages, family businesses and every other issue that might appear during a client's lifetime. Nor should we try to.

What we do need is sufficient breadth of knowledge to have an informed conversation about most areas of a client's financial life. In many cases, the issue can then be resolved through good financial planning and a sensible conversation. Where it cannot, we need enough knowledge and self-awareness to recognise when we have reached the boundary of our competence and specialist expertise is required.

That makes the description "jack of all trades, master of none" rather more interesting. It is normally used as a criticism, but perhaps breadth is actually one of the financial planner's greatest strengths. The value is not in pretending to be the best tax adviser, solicitor, investment manager or accountant. It is in understanding enough of each discipline to recognise how they connect and when another professional needs to become involved.

Specialist advice does not always mean handing over the client

The extent to which the adviser remains involved will depend upon the issue, the adviser and the client. There should not be a standard answer.

For something highly technical, such as complex international tax or trust planning, the sensible approach may be to hand the technical work to a specialist and then read and understand their report afterwards. With wills, the adviser might remain much closer to the process by helping the client clarify what they are trying to achieve, recording their intentions and preparing a useful brief for the solicitor. With something comparatively straightforward, there may be very little value in the adviser remaining involved at all.

The important distinction is that coordination does not require participation in everything. Sometimes remaining involved helps the client, sometimes it provides a valuable learning opportunity for the adviser and sometimes the work can legitimately form part of the service being provided. On other occasions, the adviser is simply adding time and cost to something another professional can handle perfectly well.

Time changes the equation

This is perhaps the biggest practical challenge with the integrator model. Once advisers start thinking of themselves as responsible for coordinating the client's whole financial life, it becomes very easy to become involved in everything. That is neither efficient nor necessarily valuable to the client.

Adviser time is a scarce resource, so deciding where to become involved becomes an important professional judgement in itself. Does the client want me there? Do I believe my involvement will improve the outcome? Will being involved deepen my understanding of the client's wider circumstances? Is there useful professional learning involved? Can the additional work reasonably be charged for? Most importantly, am I genuinely adding value?

The answer will be different for different clients and different situations. Being an integrator therefore does not mean doing everything yourself. It means making intelligent decisions about when to lead, when to collaborate and when to step back.

Someone still needs to keep everything connected

This is where I think the long-term value of the financial adviser becomes much clearer. A solicitor may prepare the will, an accountant may deal with a particular tax issue and another specialist may advise on something highly technical. Each professional can deal brilliantly with their particular piece of the puzzle, but somebody still needs to understand how all those pieces fit together.

That person should be the financial adviser.

The adviser should understand where the client is today, where they are trying to get to and how the different decisions being made along the way affect the overall plan. Their role is to coordinate the moving parts, recognise when specialist expertise is required and help the client understand the choices and consequences that emerge from that advice.

There is also an important boundary here. The adviser coordinates, but the client decides. Our job is not to take ownership of the client's life or make every decision for them. It is to bring together the information, expertise and planning that enables the client to make informed decisions and then help turn those decisions into a long-term plan.

That, to me, is also why the adviser remains valuable year after year. Investment management may be part of the relationship, but it should not define it. The enduring value comes from being the one person who understands the whole financial picture, keeps the different parts connected and helps the client turn a long-term plan into reality.

Perhaps being a "jack of all trades" is therefore not something financial planners should be embarrassed about. We do not need to know everything, and we certainly do not need to do everything. We need to know enough to understand what matters, recognise what we do not know and make sure the right people become involved at the right time.

The skill is not mastering every part of the client's financial life. It is mastering how those parts fit together.