Clients often approach conversations about switching financial advisers with a sense of momentum. Something feels off. The relationship no longer fits. Performance disappoints, communication lags or life circumstances change. From the client’s perspective, the solution can appear deceptively simple: find a new adviser and move on.
As an adviser, your job at that moment is not to accelerate the decision. It is to slow it down. The issue here is not about protecting your own self-interests. It’s about protecting the self-interests of your clients.
This is especially critical when the client holds meaningful private market investments — real estate, infrastructure, private credit, private equity or energy. If that’s the case, the act of changing advisers is rarely only a rela
