When a pro tries to sell you investments, they want to know a bunch of stuff. (That's an investment adviser pro, not any other kind of pro, btw.) How much can you invest? What are your goals? How comfortable are you with risk? What's your time frame as to when you'll need the cash you invest returned to you? It's not all small talk.
All the questions are designed to create an investment strategy, or a game plan, for your investments. The investment policy statement is just the written road map that shows what you've talked about. It makes sure that you aren't lost in Bondland...when you really wanted to be investing in growing stocks.
See: Trust Indenture.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is Compensation: Advisory ...2 Views
Finance a la shmoop what are advisory fee limits? well they're basically a
price ceiling above which financial advisors can't go yeah I can't go they [Financial advisors in an elevator and hit price ceiling]
can't touch that ceiling you know like hammer time, can't touch this...
so when you invest in a mutual fund you pay two fees there's a commission
and there's an annual management fee usually based on the assets you have
with them under management like maybe it's one percent on the first hundred [Asset rises]
grand that you have and then half a percent above a million or whatever
but there is a third and insidious fee element in the world called advisory
fees like how do you choose which fund to buy well if you have a financial
advisor they'll walk you through the lists of mutual funds out there and [Ice cream flavors appear]
index funds and all other set of funds as well well they're like a gazillion of
them and then that advisor will charge you for their time in some form right
someone's got to pay for their beach house well if you start adding up all
the fees you're paying for arguably no better performance than had you just [Itemized list of fees appear]
logged onto schwab.com or fidelity.com and bought an index fund hmm
well then you're gonna start to pause here it starts to be a big number in
those fees that eat meaningfully into your investment returns most buyers of [Pacman fees eating up money]
mutual funds are not financial gurus yeah not like that they're doctors and
lawyers and plumbing parts distributors and they really don't have a
sophisticated understanding of just how badly they could get taken by
unscrupulous financial advisors so the industry placed a series of structured
limits to keep the non gurus safe from the financial predators when it comes to
compensation and fee limits you know on advisory services and predators like [Tiger walking by]
this guy
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