Note: MoneyDown’s Find A Qualified Advisor tool is a paid service for advisors in partnership with the Financial Planning Association of Canada. Association members have to be accredited CFP, RFP, F.Pl or QAFP members.
What is the difference between the consultant types listed within the tool?
The Find a Qualified Consultant tool permits you to seek for consultants by Qualifications, Location, Services, Specializations And Payment model.
A note on location: You can have already looked for “financial advisor near me” or something similar. Many advisors now offer their services virtually, so that you don’t necessarily have to seek out an advisor in your individual city.
The advisors listed in our tool offer different services, have different specializations, and have different financial planning designations. Additionally, they charge fees for his or her services or are paid in alternative ways. Here’s tips on how to understand these criteria:
Services
The consultants in our directory may offer some or all the following services:
- Financial planning: These advisors can evaluate your current and future financial situation and create a comprehensive financial statement with recommendations to optimize your situation while taking your goals and values into consideration. A financial statement can even concentrate on a particular goal or circumstance, corresponding to planning to finance post-secondary education, paying off debt, financial planning within the context of a separation or divorce, risk management, or retirement planning, to call just a few examples. Below is an inventory of various terms for financial planning.
- Investment planning and implementation: These advisors can offer you specific investment recommendations and implement them by investing your money for you. To provide investment planning and implementation services, an advisor have to be licensed by the investment regulator in each province and territory through which they provide their services and manage the cash through an investment intermediary.
- Insurance planning and implementation: These consultants can offer you specific insurance recommendations and implement them through the sale of insurance products. To provide insurance implementation services, a consultant have to be licensed by the insurance regulator in each province and territory through which they provide their services.
- Implementation of mortgages/loans: These advisors can offer you specific mortgage and loan recommendations and implement them for you by arranging mortgages, term loans, consolidation loans and other types of credit. In order to supply mortgages, these advisors have to be licensed as mortgage brokers or mortgage agents in each province and territory through which they provide their services.
Specializations
The advisors in our directory may specialise in particular areas of recommendation or services, corresponding to cross-border or international financial planning, socially responsible investing, business succession planning or retirement planning.
Qualifications
The consultants in our directory are all members of the Financial planning Association from Canada. According to FPAC membership requirements, all of them hold no less than one in all the next financial planning designations:
