Ask a question and the answer comes back full of terms like "alpha" or "standard deviation" words that sound impressive but leave you no clearer than before you asked. A good adviser can explain a concept in plain English, because they understand it well enough to translate it for you. When jargon shows up instead, it's worth wondering whether it's meant to inform you or to make the conversation sound more expert than it needs to.

Notice how much time goes to a fund's features and track record, versus how much time goes to actually asking about your goals, your timeline, your family situation. If a meeting feels more like a product pitch than a conversation about your life, that's backwards. The product should be a small part of a plan built around you; not the main event.

Be genuinely wary of anyone who guarantees a return or talks about future performance with more certainty than markets actually allow. Nobody, however experienced, can promise you what an investment will do. An adviser who does is either not being straight with you, or doesn't fully understand what they're selling. Confidence is fine. Guarantees aren't.

Ask "how much will this cost me?" and you should get a straight answer. If instead you get a maze of percentages and "it depends," with no clear total, pause there. Fee structures aren't always simple, but a good adviser should be able to make theirs simple for you. Struggling to give you a straight number is a signal on its own.

It's completely reasonable to ask what qualifications someone holds and expect a real, checkable answer, not a vague nod to "years of experience." This matters even more with advisers based offshore, where regulation and minimum qualification standards can be considerably looser than you'd assume. Don't be shy about asking directly, and don't settle for an answer you can't verify.

This one's worth watching closely, because it can feel like good service in the moment. It usually starts with a long, confident explanation of macro economics, inflation, interest rates, what's happening globally and drifts into anecdotal predictions about where they personally think the market is headed next. It can be genuinely interesting to listen to. It can also mean the whole meeting was about their views on the world, not your plan for your money. Nobody, however articulate, actually knows where markets are going next. If you leave a meeting knowing more about your adviser's opinions on the economy than about your own finances, that's time spent in the wrong direction.

Simple to test, easy to miss: if they say they'll call before the end of the day, do they? If they promise paperwork by Friday, does it show up? Small commitments are an early preview of the relationship. Someone unreliable about a phone call is unlikely to suddenly become reliable about your retirement.

Missed review meetings. Turning up late. Typos and mistakes in the emails and documents they send. Arriving at a meeting without the materials they need, trying to recall numbers from memory instead of having them ready. None of these alone is disqualifying. Together, they tell you how much care is actually going into managing your money when you're not in the room.

No single sign here should send you running — everyone has an off day. But watch for the pattern. The adviser worth trusting tends to be the mirror image of all eight: plain-spoken, focused on you rather than the product, honest about uncertainty, upfront about cost, easy to verify, more curious about your life than eager to talk markets, reliable in the small things, and careful in the details. That combination is rarer than the marketing suggests — which is exactly why it's worth learning to spot.