How To Choose A Financial Planner in Macau? 如何在澳門選擇財務策劃師?

My inspiration to write this post came from my mother who lives in Macau.  As Macau's economy prospers, there is an increase in  opportunities for the finance industry to set up retail shops in Macau to offer a wide array of financial products, from health insurance, retirement annuities, mutual funds to all kinds of investment vehicles that cater to the Macau citizens' need to invest their idle cash. The extremely low interest rate has been fueling my mom's desire to invest her money somewhere that offers decent returns.   If only my mom had discussed with me before she handed her money to her cousin many times removed, who proclaims herself as one of Macau's top "Financial Planners", I would have recommended my mother to one of the fee-based  and performance-based  Certified Financial Planners whom I've been working with here in the USA.  Yes, I always advise my clients, if you are to select a financial planner, try to find one who charges a planning fee and one who is not compensated by the commission on selling you the investment products. Better yet, find a planner who is only compensated by the performance of your financial plan.  It's because if a financial planner is compensated by earning commission on the sales of the financial products, where do you think the planner has his or her best interest?  The performance of your investment, or your purchase of his or her financial products?

When my mother happily informed me the news of her latest investment with her distant relative, I was shocked to find out that my mother had absolutely "NO" idea of  where her distant relative is putting her money in.  She only knows that her money is now with some "American" fund that is going to make her rich!  She has no idea about the portfolio of that "American" fund, and she definitely is ignorant about the investment expense of that fund or its risk exposure.  I never really thought about how people in Macau, or the typical Chinese people invest.  It's because as an American educated Certified Public Accountant who has been living in the USA for many years,  my investment approach is quite "American Textbook", which means I will not invest anywhere without doing my due diligence and reading the fine print. Yet my mother in Macau just gave a self-proclaimed financial planner a check  without knowing or reading anything.  That's a lot of blind trust! 

When I asked more, my mom just shut  me up by telling me, "All my cousins are investing with her! She will not cheat our money!  She's on newspapers all the time and she is very reputable."  I almost wanted to faint when my mom told me that.  My mom and her Chinese friends and relatives have no idea what "marketing" and "publicity" is about.  The lack of regulation in the financial industry in Macau allows the commission-based financial planners a lot of freedom to market, make promises and rosy projections on the financial products they are selling.  My mom certainly is very impressed by the many "Top-selling" awards her distant relative received.  She absolutely doesn't realize such awards are not related to the performance of the fund she is investing in.  Financial planning in Macau seems to be totally centered on multi-level marketing, which is also loosely regulated in Macau.  Besides, my baby boomer mother and her friends in Macau all read the same newspaper that seems to always put her distant relatives' company on the center spread.  Interestingly, Macau being a small city, newspaper advertising with infomercials is still a very effective marketing tool.   My trusting mother doesn't know what infomercial is.   She thinks it's news and it's the "actual result" instead of projections made by the selling agents. I don't think Macau at the moment has  an agency similar to America's FTC to regulate how financial products can be marketed without being misleading. Meanwhile, I just hope the so-called American fund that  my mom invests in is going to ride the hide tide of America's current economic growth.

It's amazing how the word "American" can sell  financial products like hot cakes in Hong Kong & Macau, despite what happened in Wall Street back in 2008. Everybody there already forgot about Leeman Brothers, and my mom of course wasn't even aware of it, and she asked me, "Who are the Leeman Brothers?"

我寫這篇文章的靈感來自我住在澳門的母親。隨著澳門經濟的繁榮，金融業在澳門設立零售運作的機會也相應增加，現在澳門有很多保險理財公司，向市民提供多種金融產品，包括健康保險、退休年金、共同基金，以迎合澳門人投資閒置資金的需要。因為銀行的儲蓄利率極低，我媽一直渴望能夠把她的儲蓄放在回報率較高的投資上。她沒有跟我商量, 便把錢交給她那個自稱是澳門頂尖“理財規劃師”之一的遠房親戚。如果我媽一早告訴我的話, 我會給她介紹一直在美國和我合作的, 並不是金融公司中介的獨立註冊財務策劃師。如果想繼續閱讀下去, 請按這超連結與我聯絡, 我會把中文全版 (繁體或簡體) 電郵給你…