You will be able to explain to a client why you ask so many questions before you recommend anything.
Before your next client meeting, write down the two sentences you will say before you ask your first fact-find question. If you can't write them yet, the sections below cover what they need to contain and why they matter so much.
Hafiz agrees to meet Wei Ling, an adviser, on a Saturday morning at a coffee shop near the block where he and his partner Nadia live. Ten minutes in, Wei Ling asks what he and Nadia spend each month. Hafiz laughs and asks whether she really needs all that. He just wants to know what plan to get for the baby. It's a fair question, and the way Wei Ling answers it will decide how much he shares with her over the next hour.
In most sales jobs, discovery is where you learn enough to pitch well. In financial advice it is also something more formal. The fact-find is the written record of the client's objectives, finances and needs. It is the basis for the reasonable basis requirement, which you met in Lesson 1.1, "Financial advice is a regulated act, not a sales pitch". Every recommendation you make has to rest on the fact-find.
There are two reasons it is the most important meeting in the whole advice process. First, if the fact-find is thin, every recommendation built on it is thin too, however good the product is. You cannot show that advice suits a client if you never found out what they have, what they need or what they can afford. Second, the fact-find is the first thing a reviewer reads. When a case is sampled for review, the reviewer starts with the fact-find and asks whether it supports what came after it. Module 5 covers how that review works.
So the fact-find is the real conversation with the client, and its record is your evidence. Treating it as a form to get through before the real conversation starts is a mistake.
Clients share more when they understand why you are asking. Reluctance like Hafiz's is normal. People are used to sales conversations where personal questions lead into a pitch, so they guard their answers. If a client thinks you want their income figure to size up a commission, they will round it, skip it or end the meeting early.
Explain the purpose before the first question, rather than waiting until the client pushes back. Keep the explanation short and specific. A good opening explanation does three things. It tells the client the questions are for their benefit. It is honest that the record matters to you too, for example if your advice is ever checked. And it gives the client permission to decline any question. That last part seems backwards, but most people become more willing to answer once they know they don't have to.
Wei Ling's opening, put in her own words, goes something like this. Before she suggests anything, she needs to understand what Hafiz and Nadia want the money to do and what they already have. That way the recommendation fits their family rather than a typical family, and anyone checking her advice can see why she gave it. Some of the questions are personal and Hafiz can skip any of them, but she will tell him if skipping one changes what she can recommend.
Clients may decline to give some information, and that is their right. Common examples:
not sharing their income not discussing existing policies held with another firm skipping the risk questionnaire because they "just want something safe"
When a client declines, accept it and record two things: that the client chose not to provide the information, and what effect that has on the advice.
Suppose Hafiz still won't share their monthly spending. Without it, Wei Ling cannot properly judge how much premium they can afford. Her file should say so, and her recommendation should reflect it. She might keep the premium at a level clearly within their income, or she might limit the scope of the advice.
Explain the effect to the client when it happens, rather than leaving it for the written report. Wei Ling might say something like: that's fine, but it means she can't check how much they can comfortably set aside each month, so her suggestions will be on the cautious side and they will need to judge affordability themselves.
Most firms' fact-find forms have a section for recording declined information. Use it. Don't leave a declined field blank, because a reviewer will read a blank field as a question you forgot to ask.
The conversational tools from the course "Discovery: questions that find the real problem" all apply here. Use open questions, move through the funnel from wide to specific, look for the problem underneath the first problem, and use silence. If you read out a list of form fields in order, you are running the kind of interrogation that course warns against.
This course adds the regulated record on top of discovery. In a general sales meeting, your notes are for yourself. In a fact-find, you must record answers accurately, completely and in a form someone else can read, because they are evidence. The core skill is running a conversation that feels natural to the client while making sure that, by the end, everything the record needs is there. Before the meeting closes, check the record for gaps.
The next three lessons cover the main parts of the fact-find. Lesson 3.2 covers objectives, Lesson 3.3 covers finances and existing cover, and Lesson 3.4 covers risk.
Your two-sentence opening explanation shapes the rest of the fact-find, so prepare it in advance. It should cover why you ask, that the client can skip questions, and what skipping means for the advice. In the activity below you write your own version, in words you would be comfortable saying across a coffee shop table.
Write the two sentences you will say at the start of a fact-find to explain why you ask these questions and what happens if the client skips one.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).