What to ask a financial advisor about your parent's accounts

What this page is, and what it is not

There are three separate professions in this area and they are not interchangeable. A licensed financial advisor discusses accounts and investments. An accountant deals with tax. An attorney drafts documents and advises on authority. Anyone who tells you they cover all three at a kitchen table is selling something.

What follows is a list of questions, not answers. Do not act on anything in this list without the relevant professional. Do not draft, alter, sign or witness any document about authority over someone else's money. That is an attorney's work and there is no version of it that is safe to improvise.

What you can usefully do yourself is administrative, and it is genuinely valuable: find out what accounts exist, find out what each institution requires before it will speak to you, write down every answer with a name and a date, and put it all in one place.

Do that before the meeting and the meeting is worth having. Turn up without it and you will spend the hour describing what you do not know.

The one-page inventory to take with you

Build this before you book anything. It is one page, it takes an evening of going through post and statements, and it is the document that makes every subsequent conversation shorter.

List institutions, not balances. You are recording what exists and where it is, not valuing anything.

One firm rule about numbers: do not write full account numbers on a page that travels between houses. Write the institution, the last four digits, whose name is on it, and where the statements arrive. Keep the full numbers in one locked place and note in the binder which place that is. If you send anything to a sibling, send the version without the digits.

• Every bank and credit union, and whose name is on each account
• Where the statements arrive — which address, or which email
• Pensions and any old workplace plans, including employers from decades ago
• Regular money coming in: what, from whom, on what date each month
• Regular money going out: direct debits, standing orders, subscriptions, insurance premiums
• Insurance policies of every kind, and where the documents are
• Property: what is owned, whose name is on the deed, and where the deed is held
• Any safe deposit box, which branch, and who has the key
• The professionals already involved: advisor, accountant, attorney, and who introduced each one
• Which documents about authority already exist, and who holds the originals — a list only, never a copy you have altered
• Anything that has already been pre-paid, and to whom

The questions about who is allowed to do what

This is the area where families most often assume rather than ask, and it is the assumption that costs the most time.

Ask each institution separately — the bank, the pension payer, the plan, the advisor's firm — the same administrative question, in these words: "What do you require on file before you will discuss this account with me, what is that form called, who sends it, and how long does it take to process once returned?"

Write down the form's name, the date you asked, the name of the person who answered, and the date you expect confirmation. Chase anything unconfirmed after two weeks. Institutions differ enormously in what they accept, and the only answer that matters for each one is its own.

Ask the advisor's firm what authority it currently has on file, from whom, and dated when. Ask what it does not permit. Ask who at the firm can confirm that in writing.

The documents themselves are drafted by an attorney. Your task here is only to find out what each institution requires and to get the paperwork moving through the right hands. Do not fill in anything on your parent's behalf without asking the attorney whether you may.

The questions about what exists

Ask the advisor to help you complete the picture, because they can see things you cannot and because completeness is a reasonable thing to ask for.

Ask for a full written list of every account, policy or plan held with the firm, with the date it was opened and whose name is on it. Ask whether there is anything dormant, anything with a nil balance that is still open, and anything held elsewhere that the firm is aware of.

Ask who is currently recorded as beneficiary on each product according to the firm's own records, and ask for that in writing. Records and intentions diverge over decades, and the record is what operates.

Ask what statements are sent, to where, and how often — and ask whether the address on file is current, because an old address is how accounts go quietly missing.

Ask what online access exists, who set it up, and what the process is if nobody can get in.

Write all of it on the inventory page, and date the page. Then ask the closing question of the meeting: "Is there anything you would expect me to be asking that I have not asked?"

The questions about the advisor themselves

These are normal questions and any professional will expect them. Ask them plainly, in the first meeting, and write down the answers.

Ask how the firm is paid — a fee, a percentage, a commission, or a combination — and ask for the fee schedule in writing. Ask what the total cost was last year in currency, not in percentages.

Ask whether they act as a fiduciary in this relationship, and ask them to confirm that in writing.

Ask how they are regulated and under which registration, and where you can look that up independently. Then look it up.

Ask practical continuity questions, because these matter more than people expect: who else at the firm knows this account, what happens if you retire or leave, who would we deal with then, and how are we told?

Ask how and how often they report, in what format, and to whom copies are sent.

Ask what happens on the firm's side if it sees something unusual on the account — what its own process is, who it contacts, and what a trusted contact record on file does and does not permit. Ask them to explain their process; do not ask them to guess at yours.

What to write down, and where it goes

Write the meeting record the same day, on one page, in the same format every time.

Date. Who was present, with their role and firm. What you asked, in short lines. What they said, in their words. What they agreed to send, and by when. What you agreed to do, and by when. The next date.

Ask at the end of the meeting: "Will you send me a written summary of what we discussed?" Most firms will. Compare theirs to yours and file both. Where they differ, ask.

File everything in one place, in date order, newest at the front: the inventory page, the meeting records, the written confirmations, the fee schedule, the statements. One tab, and a note on the front of it saying where the account numbers are kept, without saying the numbers.

Send the siblings a summary — what exists, who is involved, what was asked, what is outstanding. Send the version without account digits. Doing this every time removes the single most corrosive suspicion in a family, which is not about money but about not being told.

And put one date in the calendar: review this page in twelve months.

Questions