What to do when your financial planner leaves

First, you should have the type of client-planner relationship where your planner will get in touch with you to inform you of the change.

They may tell you which company they are going to, and offer you the choice of moving over as a client of theirs.

This works well, particularly because the relationship between a financial planner and their clients is based on trust, and you may not feel inclined to start building a new relationship of trust with an adviser appointed by the company.

However, your adviser may have signed a restraint of trade when they left, and this might preclude them from contacting any of their current clients to inform them of the fact that they are leaving or even from saying which company they are going to.

In such a scenario, the client can directly approach the adviser and request to move their portfolio to the company that the adviser is moving to.

If you are working with an independent financial planner who is moving from one independent firm to another, there should be no reason why you cannot switch.

However, if a financial planner is moving from an internal position at one product provider to another, then you want to be wary of the planner trying to switch you from one product to another purely for brand-loyalty purposes and to earn fees.