Ask a group of financial advisers what they ‘do’ and you’ll hear familiar answers.
“Investment planning.”
“Retirement strategies.”
“Pensions.”
Perfectly respectable. Entirely sensible. And yet, somehow, incomplete.
People don’t entrust their life savings for a model portfolio. They don’t ring you in a panic because they want a performance chart. They come to you because they feel uncertain, overwhelmed, or anxious. Turning money into a life well-lived is daunting, and they want someone they trust to help them make good decisions when the stakes are high.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the spreadsheets are incidental. The human being across the table is what truly matters. Much like an iceberg, most of what matters isn’t immediately visible. The work that makes a difference lies beneath the surface.
From Industry to Profession: Looking Below the Surface
At AES, we’re on a mission to make independently owned, employee owned, certified
fiduciaries the new gold standard.
The broken industry has historically been riddled with:
• Brokerages: Banned in developed markets decades ago…
• Industry consolidators: Private Equity backed hand grenades…
• Vertically integrated behemoths: The model is totally anti-client…
These models have been widely scrutinised by regulators and commentators for conflicts of interest, sales-driven incentives, and a lack of transparency, issues that have repeatedly eroded public trust in financial advice.
If wealth management is to graduate from a product-pushing industry to a genuine profession, we mustn’t lead with credentials, products, strategies or process. This is all commoditised. Clients aren’t looking for more data. They’re looking for clarity, confidence, and a steady guiding hand. The true ‘independent profession’ is about transforming the traditional industry into people-centric businesses that create win/win relationships for those within them and those they serve.
This is a movement. An opportunity. And a calling. For professionals guided by long-term responsibility rather than short-term incentives.
Clients don’t experience life in percentages. They experience it in events and milestones: property investments, an ageing parent requiring care, a business exit, the quiet triumph of reaching financial independence. We’re invited into those moments not because of our technical competence – that’s merely the tip of the iceberg – but because over time, we earn a place as trusted guides.
Technical skill gets you in the room. Wise, genuinely independent counsel keeps you there. And trust, once earned, allows you to navigate the base of the iceberg – the unseen complexities, psychology, values, and needs that truly drive great life decision making.
The Role Is Larger Than the Task: Guiding the Iceberg
Clients don’t wake up thinking: “I need a diversified portfolio with downside protection.” They lie awake worrying about:
“Am I going to be okay?”
“Am I making a mistake?”
“What happens if something goes wrong?”
“Can I really afford this?”
“Am I doing the right thing for my family?”
Those are emotional questions, not technical ones.
Professional guidance answers the big life questions clients aren’t yet asking. When you help someone discover they can retire years earlier than they feared, you aren’t delivering a spreadsheet. You’re delivering time. When you restructure a portfolio to reduce volatility during a critical life transition, you aren’t optimising asset allocation – you’re providing peace of mind. When you sit with a widow navigating finances for the first time in 40 years, you’re offering stability during profound disorientation.
The industry talks incessantly about alpha. But the real value we provide is closer to dignity: the dignity of choice, of security, of a future that feels navigable rather than overwhelming. And that dignity lies beneath the surface, where the iceberg’s strength resides.
The Iceberg Model: Security, Value, Confidence
A lot of ‘financial advice’ remains at the tip of the iceberg – the visible, surface-level solutions. Insurance policies. Product comparisons. Investment allocations. They’re necessary, yes, but shallow. The real work begins below the waterline. Beneath the surface lie three deeper outcomes: Security, value and confidence. These outcomes are not ends in themselves. They’re the base – the foundation that moves the iceberg. And when these foundations are solid, they generate something transformative: a profound sense of relief. The ability to live a truly wealthy and prosperous life in a much fuller sense.
A Responsibility Few Professions Carry
People tell their financial life manager things they struggle to tell those closest to them: hopes wrapped in uncertainty, fears they consider foolish, regrets they’ve carried quietly for years. These conversations don’t appear on a fee schedule but are the bedrock of advisory work. Next to a family GP, there are very few professionals so deeply interwoven with the well-being of a household. One guards physical health; the other guards the financial scaffolding upon which futures are built. Both protect quality of life, not merely its duration.
Your Influence Outlives You
There’s a generational echo to sage guidance. Sensible planning today reduces stress between partners, creates financial stability for children, and models prudent behaviour that may influence decisions for decades. The compound effect of steady guidance is remarkable: not only does wealth compound, but confidence does too. A couple you helped navigate early retirement may pass those principles to their children. A business owner you guided through a sale may structure their next venture differently because of what they learned. A family you supported through bereavement may approach estate planning with clarity you helped instil. These outcomes are beneath the surface – quiet, unseen, but transformative.
A Profession Built on Steadiness
In a world allergic to uncertainty, you’re often the lone, steady voice. Markets descend into chaos. Headlines catastrophise. Social media amplifies panic. Yet clients turn to you – not to foretell the future, but to calm it.
They don’t remember the precise explanation you gave about valuations or mean reversion. They remember the way your voice made the panic feel temporary. That steadiness – the refusal to react when everyone else is reacting – is worth far more than any market prediction could ever be. Sometimes, you protect clients from themselves. You talk them out of selling at the bottom. You prevent them from chasing performance after it’s already run. You help them avoid concentration risk disguised as conviction. These interventions are heroic acts, rarely celebrated, yet fundamental to future well-being. This is the work beneath the iceberg’s waterline.
The Test
To understand the true value of good financial advice, consider this: Write down your 10 most important client relationships. Next to each name, note one life moment you guided them through – a bereavement, a business sale, a university acceptance, a redundancy, a late-night call when markets misbehaved.
Then ask yourself: would their life look the same without you? The answer won’t inflate your ego – but it will reaffirm your purpose. Because the real value you provide, like the bulk of an iceberg, is hidden. It’s in lives lived with greater clarity, confidence, and control because you were invited to be part of them.
Hold Fast to the Meaning of the Work
Few professions quietly improve the texture of everyday life in the way good financial advice can. Plenty of people build products. Some build companies. Good financial advice builds financial futures – often quietly, often without fanfare, but always with impact. Yes, the technical work matters – asset allocation, tax efficiency, estate planning. But these are the tip of the iceberg. The real work is helping people make better decisions under uncertainty, guiding them through transitions, and providing clarity when life feels overwhelming. The real work is being the steady, wise voice when everything else is noise.
A Final Thought
If you’ve been in this sector long enough, you’ve likely experienced product peddling and glimpsed professional planning. You’ve also made, or can make, the choice of which of these divides you stand upon. The industry up there at the ‘tip’ of the iceberg, or the profession. Choose wisely. I’m personally profoundly grateful for the privilege of receiving many messages of thanks from clients from people reflecting on their experience of good advice – not for performance, not for clever planning, but for something quieter. For listening when they needed to talk. For helping them see clearly when everything felt muddled. For being there during a moment that mattered. That is the quiet work of good financial advice at its best: rarely headline-grabbing, often invisible, but fundamental to lives lived with greater confidence, dignity, and control. And it lies beneath the surface, like the base of an iceberg: unseen by the wider world yet carrying everything above it.
Sam Instone is CEO of AES International
