The Process Guarantee includes meaningful and comprehensive disclosure of options and recommendations. The financial advisor is supposed to be the expert. He is paid not only to plan the right financial strategy, but also to work with you to ensure that the plan suits your needs.
Only when the financial advisor meaningfully and comprehensively explains your options and her/his recommendations can you make your own decisions. All financial plans have risks including opportunities taken and opportunities foregone. You should be the one to make these decisions.
You can only make these decisions if your options and the benefits and risks of the recommended financial strategy in comparison to alternatives, are laid before you. Without meaningful and comprehensive explanation, your instructions can easily be described as “garbage in, garbage out”.
Of course, the folly of a financial advisor failing to meaningfully and comprehensively explain your options is not readily apparent to the average investor, at least until unbearable losses are suffered.
The most common problem we see in our work to recover financial losses of investors is the failure of a financial advisor to clearly and understandably explain the risks and limitations inherent in their recommendations and/or plan. Without full disclosure of risk, the financial advisor is merely a glorified salesperson. With full disclosure, the client can make choices and, we all agree, should be responsible for his/her own choices regardless of the outcome. Without meaningful disclosure, the financial advisor, in effect, guarantees the success of his/her proposal, which is a foolhardy guarantee indeed.