Questions to Ask When Choosing a Financial Advisor

What capabilities are available at the firm?

This question reveals a lot about how a firm is structured, as well as whether its advice is fully coordinated or pieced together from separate providers.

At Mercer Advisors, your wealth plan is built and managed by a single, coordinated team. You have access to wealth advisors, investment professionals, tax specialists, estate strategists, and insurance professionals, all working together with a shared view of your complete financial picture. That means your retirement planning, your tax strategy, your estate documents, and your investment portfolio are all designed to work together from the start. You don’t have to translate between advisors or worry that one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing.

Most of our wealth advisors and specialists have received certifications and designations related to their focus. Financial advisor credentials aren’t everything, but they do show a commitment to professional standards and ongoing education. For instance, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional (CFP^®) is trained in all aspects of personal finance, while a Chartered Financial Analyst^® (CFA^®) specializes in investments.

How are your advisors compensated?

Understanding how an advisor gets paid can be a way to assess whether their interests align with yours. Fee-based compensation versus commission-based compensation is a fundamental distinction worth understanding before you commit.

Our wealth advisors are compensated through a fee-based model.  They don’t have any sales goals to meet. We’ve also intentionally separated sales and service roles: The people responsible for your ongoing plan are not the same people incentivized to bring in new accounts. Our wealth advisors are hand-picked for their experience, their fit with our client-centered culture, and their dedication to fiduciary standards.

Are you a fiduciary financial advisor at all times?

Not all advisors are fiduciaries . That’s why asking this question matters more than most people realize when choosing a financial advisor.

As an independent, SEC-registered registered investment advisor (RIA), Mercer Global Advisors is legally required to always act in your best interests, not just when a transaction is taking place. At Mercer Advisors, our fiduciary obligation runs through every interaction, every recommendation, and every plan we build. It’s not just a legal requirement for us — it’s the foundation of how we operate.

What is your advisor-to-client ratio?

This question helps you understand whether you’ll receive personal attention or if you’ll be one of hundreds of accounts managed by a single advisor.

Each Mercer Advisors client has a dedicated wealth advisor as their primary relationship. The difference with our model is that your advisor is backed by an entire team of specialists. You don’t have to rely on one person who specializes in investments, taxes, estate planning, and insurance simultaneously. Instead, your wealth advisor coordinates a team that brings the right people to your situation when you need them. This structure is designed to keep your relationship personal and consistent while helping ensure every aspect of your financial life gets the attention it deserves. And it doesn’t require you to manage multiple firms or advisors.

What does your ongoing client experience look like?

A wealth management relationship can remain valuable if it actively evolves with your life. This question tests whether a firm thinks in transactions or in long-term partnerships.

Your relationship with Mercer Advisors isn’t transactional. We build a comprehensive financial plan with you upfront, and then we stay actively engaged as your life changes. That means regular reviews, proactive outreach when tax laws shift or market conditions move, and a team that can anticipate what you might need before you ask. You have access to your full wealth team when questions come up. You’re not expected to rely on a call center or a portal. Our goal is that you feel genuinely supported at every stage.

How do you build investment portfolios?

The answer to this question tells you whether a firm starts with planning or starts with products. It’s a meaningful difference when you’re thinking about long-term wealth management.

We build portfolios the way institutional investors do — with disciplined, evidence-based strategies that are personal to your specific situation, goals, and tax circumstances. But the portfolio is one factor of the entire plan. We start with your comprehensive financial plan and then build an investment strategy designed to serve that plan. A portfolio that looks solid on paper but doesn’t align with your tax situation, your estate goals, or your retirement planning timeline isn’t necessarily working for you. Our investment professionals bring institutional-grade rigor to every portfolio, and your wealth advisor helps ensure it connects to everything else in your financial life.

How do you measure success for your clients?

Returns matter, but this question can help you see whether your advisor is only managing a portfolio or helping you manage your financial life.

We measure success by your ability to make confident, informed decisions and stay on track toward your goals, not just by portfolio returns in any given quarter. Research in behavioral economics consistently shows that one of the greatest risks to long-term financial outcomes is investor behavior: selling in a downturn, chasing performance, or making emotional decisions during major life events. A coordinated wealth team can help you avoid those costly mistakes. When your advisor knows your full picture — your investments, your taxes, your estate plan, and your retirement goals — the guidance you receive can be more grounded, more comprehensive, and more likely to keep you moving in the right direction over time.

How long do clients typically stay with you, and why might they leave?

Client retention is one of the most honest measures of whether a wealth management firm delivers on its promises over time.

Our clients tend to stay for the long term, on average 10 years, and we believe that reflects both the quality of the relationships we build and the breadth of what we offer. When clients do leave, it may be because of a major life change, a relocation, a family situation, or a need that falls outside our scope. What keeps clients with us is the feeling that they have a team that knows them well and can anticipate their needs and grow with them through every stage of life.

What happens if I experience a major financial change?

Life’s biggest transitions are typically also its highest-stakes financial moments. This question tests whether a firm is built to support you through complexity or only in calm waters.

Life doesn’t follow a straight line, and your wealth management shouldn’t either. Whether you’re selling a business, inheriting assets, navigating a divorce, approaching retirement, or managing a sudden liquidity event, Mercer Advisors is built to help you through all of it. We think about wealth in stages, like financial chapters that move through a lifetime, and we have specialists who focus on exactly those transitions. Your wealth advisor can bring the right people to the table at the right moment so a major change becomes an opportunity to strengthen your plan rather than disrupt it.

Ready to start a conversation?

Asking the right questions is how you find the right partner. If you’re evaluating financial advisors and want to see what a comprehensive, fiduciary approach looks like in practice, we’d welcome the chance to connect.