Dealing with your Relationship Manager / Financial Advisor / Insurance agent

Hi,

In this article I will discuss on how you should deal with your Relationship manager or any sales person before you invest or buy any financial product.

1) First things first, always go by reference for selecting a Sales person for your investments. Never approach Company directly asking them to help you in investing.


2) Your investment advisor and sales person should never be same. Example you can take advice from your auditor or your friend, lets say your auditor advises you to invest in a mutual fund scheme of HDFC Mutual Fund (example). Now you directly approach HDFC and buy the particular product your Chartered Accountant or friend has advised. This is Important because in most of the cases the sales person makes you to buy the product on which he can earn maximum commission or incentives.


3) Clearly ask the sales person as to how much Commission or margin he or his company will get if you buy a product from him. For sure most of them will try to confuse you in terms of different Percentages and slabs. Stop them and ask exactly how much in terms of amount and not percentages. 


4) Always understand that each sales person selling investment products will have around 5 to 10 times of his salary as monthly revenue target. It means chances are he will push you a product with high margin to achieve his sales target.


In my next article, I shall explain 5 simple and easy really easy steps in selecting a good Mutual fund scheme.


Thanks & Regards
Vikram

FREE TIPS ON STOCKS - IS IT REALLY FREE ????

They say there is no FREE lunch on Wall street but brokers are always ready to give FREE advise on stocks . They call it Tips !!!!!

Very recently I got a call from one of the Stock broker who was very pleasing over the phone wanting me to open a Demat & trading account. Immediately when I said "Not interseted" he started to lure me with offers. One among them was FREE TIPS ON STOCKS.

He wanted me to test the Research ideas for ten days and open a account only if I was happy with the tips . Looks very intersting isn't it ??

So how does it all work, do you think they are very confident of there research ??? Not really.

It works like this:

Step 1)  Example around 10000 mobile numbers will be selected to send free tips. Two sets of 5000 each will be created.

step2)  For First set a research tip say "Buy ABC LTD at Rs 150, target 155"

Step 3) For second set the tip will be modified saying "sell ABC LTD at Rs150 ,target 145"

Step 4) So only three things can happen in market on any day , Mkts may go up or down or stay flat.

Step5) If mkts go up, people in first set will be impressed on the tip , and if mkts go down people in the second set are happy.

Step 6) So out of 10000 people who received Free tips through Sms , atleast 1 or 2 percent are happy and are tempted to open an account and trade , only to loose there money finally.

So never take any free tips from any brokers seriously.

If Stock brokers are (as they claim) very good in making money in the market for you, why cannot they do with there own money and become rich.


Cheers
Vikram