Written by
Danny Chen💰 Without finance, climate action is unsustainable.
The term “finance” here refers to the “market demand” from climate stakeholders. In order to support the long-term market demands that drive the positive climate movement, we need to manage our financial resources for bigger positive impacts.
As a climate stakeholder, do you know how to identify if the advice is best for your specific circumstance?
Financial fiduciary duties are designed to support clients with the best possible financial advice. It regulates advisors to put the client’s interests before the interests of their own company and themselves in order to make the best possible advice based on the assessment of the information provided by clients.
Typically, advice with fiduciary duties will have the following processes
🎯 Identify your client’s relevant quantitative and qualitative information and circumstances.
🎯 Identify the customer’s short-, medium-, and long-term life goals that require financial support. The financial need of the goal, including any needs that customers may not be aware of, must be communicated to the customer.
🎯 Identify the types of professional services the customer may require during the engagement.
🎯 Identify areas of potential conflicts between your client’s short-, medium-, and long-term life goals with resource prioritization.
🎯 Identify the possible professional service gaps that you will not address in your advice.
🎯 Identify additional information required from your clients to make solid financial advice.
🎯 Identify the potential conflict of interest when you make any professional service referral to the customer.
As climate stakeholders who care about future goal success rates and their positive impacts, we need to acknowledge that financial planning is a heavily regulated industry that ensures fiduciary duties, fairness, transparency, and consumer protection.
Most public information from various channels often focuses on selling financial products instead of planning. Oftentimes, financial professionals and finfluencers hold great conflicts of interest when engaging with the customer as the purpose is to sell more products, not support the user's future goals.
