​Starting a Financial Planning Advisory business in the UAE

I’d like to share with you a concept I have in mind about a Financial Planning Advisory business in the United Arab Emirates. Now, this is my first post – as far as i remember – so bear with me if it’s not formatted/“reddit”-y enough.

A little bit of a background, I have around 10 years of experience in an Oil & Gas company with a focus in Corporate Strategy and Business Economics, passed the CFA level 1 exam and have two certificates from the Corporate Finance Institute – Financial Modeling & Valuation Analyst and Financial Planning & Wealth Management. I love dealing with numbers, good listener (at least that’s what I think) and usually plan for the long-term. I would love to be able to use this to help people – no actual experience doing it but I want to start.

Now on to the concept, I want to start a financial advisory that has a fiduciary responsibility towards its clients, offers “hours” or consultations that are pro-bono and have a pricing structure that doesn’t take advantage of the client and incentivizes the firm to act on the client’s best interest (avoids an agency / self-interest dilemma). Some points that are important to me: – the advisory offers products that are extremely low risk, but are worth putting in the time, effort and money. I can’t face someone that lost their money due to an advice from my firm (even if the problem was timing) – I’m not looking to make money from “referrals” or commissions from selling insurance products. I want the investments to be sound and maximize the returns to the client – Again, pricing structure that doesn’t make money from “Assets Under Management” but more like a service/subscription fee maybe plus some performance-driven fee. – My goal is to benefit the client, so I would like to also educate them about the products/investments that they get into – if that results that they start taking care of their financials without my help then so be it, mission accomplished. If they stay, it’s so that they have someone to guide them when “issues” or specific life events come up, other than that just be there for support and offer updates on their portfolio and what new opportunities are available or if a re-allocation of assets would be beneficial. – Would love to get into wealth management for families that plan generations ahead at some point – something I’m interested in personally.

These are some of the obstacles that I foresee: – Lack of experience and no idea where to start such a process. – Regulation may require some heavy-investments upfront – I’d like to start slow, take it easy and see where it goes. Not sure if I can start on the pro-bono track on a personal level to get a feel for it. – Investments products need to be “Shari’a Compliant” to cater for the majority here in the UAE (and also for me from a religious perspective)

This is still a rough draft, wrote it on the go but I was asking ChatGPT where would be a great place to discuss concepts and apparently reddit’s the place 🙂

Looking forward to your thoughts and inputs