What the Letters After Your Financial Adviser’s Name Actually Mean

An email landed from my professional body this week.

Dear Mr Sjoerd Bak LIB AMP QFA EFA RPP.

I read it twice. Then I counted the letters. Fifteen.

And here is the embarrassing part. I had to look two of them up.

If I cannot reel off what my own letters mean, you have no chance. And you are the one who has to sit across a table from someone wearing a string like that and decide whether to hand them your pension.

So let me pull mine apart. All fifteen. Honestly.

QFA. Qualified Financial Adviser.

Six modules, six exams, sat over a year. This is the one that matters for basic competency. QFA is one of the main ways an adviser meets the Central Bank’s Minimum Competency Code, and anyone advising you on a pension, an investment, life cover or a mortgage in Ireland has to meet it one way or another.

Read that again. Has to.

It is not a mark of excellence. It is the floor. Think driving licence, not rally trophy. Or as we used to say in Salesforce, a licence to sell.

RPP. Retirement Planning Professional.

Awarded at the end of July. A Level 9 qualification in retirement planning, and it was hard. Real work.

AMP. Asset Management Professional.

Same story. Another Level 9 qualification, this time in asset management.

LIB. Licentiate of the Institute of Banking.

I sat no exam for this one. It is a membership grade. Do enough Level 9 study and they move you up a tier. Same person, different row.

EFA. European Financial Advisor.

On the 1st of January 2022, the Institute handed this to every active QFA member on its books. No exam. No extra study. They covered the fee themselves.

It is a passport stamp on a qualification I already had.

So of my fifteen letters, nine came from exams I actually sat. Six arrived because of the other nine.

Now the ones you will see on other people’s cards.

APA. Accredited Product Adviser. The QFA’s smaller sibling. It covers one product category, and the category sits in brackets after it. So APA (Loans) can talk to you about your mortgage. That person is not qualified to advise you on your pension. Read the bracket.

CFP. Certified Financial Planner. The heaviest one you will see in Ireland. QFA first, then a Level 9 financial planning diploma, then a certification exam, then three years of relevant experience, then a code of ethics you sign your name to. If you see CFP, that person did the work. I am studying toward it, which is the honest reason I know what it costs.

CFA. Chartered Financial Analyst. Brutal exams, huge respect, completely different job. A CFA is trained to take a fund apart. That is not the same skill as sitting down with you, your mortgage and the three pensions you left behind at three employers. Serious letters. Wrong room.

FIB, LIB, PIB. Fellow, Licentiate, Practitioner of the Institute of Banking. Membership tiers, not qualifications.

Here is how I would hold all of it.

The letters after someone’s name are like the stickers in a shop window.

One of them is like the food safety certificate. It shows they have met the minimum standard. It tells you the kitchen is not dangerous. It tells you nothing about the food.

One or two are real awards that took years to earn.

And a few say “proud member of the local business association,” which means somebody paid a subscription.

They are all printed in the same font, at the same size, in the same window. That is the whole problem.

Except none of those fifteen letters tells you how I get paid.

There is no designation for “takes no commission.” There is no set of letters for “will look at your situation and tell you to change nothing.”

The alphabet measures what someone studied. It does not measure what they are paid to sell you.

Both matter. Only one of them is printed on the card.

So use the letters for what they are good for. Check the person is actually qualified for the thing you are asking about.

Then ask the four questions the letters cannot answer.

Which of those letters qualifies you to advise me on this, and what does it cover?

How are you paid on what you are about to recommend? Fee, commission, or both. Ask for the number, not the category.

What happens to your pay if I do nothing?

And the one almost nobody thinks to ask. Do you invest your own money the way you are telling me to invest mine?

Nobody owes you their bank statements, and their situation will never match yours exactly. But an adviser does owe you a straight answer on the principles. A chef does not have to eat in his own restaurant. But if he will not, you want to know why.

A good adviser answers all four without blinking. I have watched the third one change the entire tone of a meeting. I have never seen anyone ask the fourth.

For the record, I go further than a straight answer. My clients see my numbers. All of them, to the euro, everything I have done since I started my own financial independence journey six years ago. The wins and the mistakes. If I ask you to trust me with your full picture, you get to see mine.

So here is one thing worth doing.

Pull up the profile of whoever looks after your pension. Read the letters. Look up the ones you do not recognise. It takes ninety seconds.

Then send one message. “How are you paid on my pension?”

Whatever comes back, you will learn more from that one reply than the letters told you in five years.

Because none of this answers the question you actually care about.

Can I trust this person? Do they have my best interests at heart, and do they understand my full picture? Your pension, your ESPP, the plans you are quietly making for the next ten years.

After hundreds of these conversations, I have landed on one answer.

Understand it yourself.

Once you understand the basics, most of the noise stops working on you. You can tell good advice from bad in minutes, whatever letters it arrives with. That is what I have been teaching one person at a time for two years. The problem is there are only so many hours in my calendar.

“It was great to get educated insight from someone who had my best interests in mind. There was no vested interest in me buying a specific financial product on which he would get paid commission.” — Mel O’Brien, HubSpot

So on the 15th of September I am opening the membership. Its whole job is to teach you to become your own adviser. As effective as sitting across from me. Actually fun. And affordable.

No exam at the end. No letters after your name. Just the skill.

The first 50 founding members lock in the lowest rate it will ever have, for life. The waitlist hears everything first and gets first access to those 50 places.

Add me to the waitlist: https://www.bamillionaire.com/membership-waitlist

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