Quora Answer: Do I Need a Financial Advisor if I Know a Lot about Finance & Investing?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do I really need a financial advisor to manage my investments if I know a lot about finance, and investing, but do not have enough free time to dive into it?”

You may know a lot about finance and investing, but that does not mean you have the license to do many of the things you know without the services of a financial advisor.  In the same way also, I know a lot about accounting, but I still hire an accountant so that I have the time to do my own business.  Unless I am a chartered accountant, it does not matter how much I know about accounting since it is not my signature that carries legal weight here.

A good financial advisor, just like a good lawyer, is hard to find.  He must not only have sound knowledge of financial instruments and derivatives, but he must also be up to date on the legal requirements pertaining to their management and ownership.  Unless someone is in that industry, he is not going to be at those meetings with the banks, the fund houses and the various government institutions.