Don't just trust your planner — what should a planner never do?

Even the best planner relationship has hard lines — things a legitimate planner never needs and never asks for. Banking logins, OTPs, cash, blank signatures, constant product switches: every item on this list is a boundary, not an insult.

The pattern is easy to remember: a real planner works alongside your money, never inside it. Anyone asking to cross one of these lines is revealing something — and the FAIS Act sits firmly on the client’s side when they do.

Your logins are yours — no exceptions

Financial fraud almost always starts with access. These lines protect it:

Never let a planner into your online banking — not to “help set up a payment”, not to “just check a balance”. A planner works from statements and the documents shared with them, never from inside the account.
Never hand over your phone with a banking app open, and never install or approve anything on it at a planner’s request. To the bank, a transaction approved on your own device *is* you — there is no undo built on “but someone else was holding it”.
Never share an OTP — with anyone, ever. A one-time PIN exists to prove that *you* approved something. No legitimate process anywhere in financial services needs a client to read one out.
Never let a planner sign on your behalf, and never sign a general power of attorney in a planner’s favour. A signature is the legal record that you, personally, agreed — hand it over and every other protection on this page falls with it.
Never install remote-access software (AnyDesk, TeamViewer and similar) because a planner asked. Sharing a screen to *look* at something together is normal; handing over control of the machine your banking runs on is not.
Never send emails that hand over an approval step. Forwarding a verification link, replying “approved” to something unread, or giving anyone access to the inbox where those links arrive collapses the one safeguard that matters most: your explicit, informed yes.

Money moves directly — never through the planner

Premiums and investments are paid to the product provider, never to the planner. The insurer or investment platform, in your name, on banking details that appear on the provider’s own paperwork. A request for money into a planner’s personal or business account is the loudest alarm on this page.
Never hand over cash. Legitimate financial products have no cash-in-hand step, and no receipt fixes this one after the fact.

Signatures and paperwork

Never sign a blank or half-completed form. “I’ll fill in the rest at the office” is how details change after the signature is already on the page.
Never be rushed. “This rate is only available today” is a sales technique, not a deadline — regulated products do not expire over lunch. Anything worth signing is still worth signing tomorrow, after being read.
Originals stay home. ID documents, title deeds, share certificates — a planner works from certified copies. Holding a client’s original documents gives leverage no planner needs.

The post must reach you

Never let a planner’s email address or phone number replace yours on a policy or investment. It is a classic fraud pattern: once the provider’s letters route through the planner, problems can stay hidden for years.
Statements arrive from the provider, directly. A portfolio that only ever appears on the planner’s own letterhead — never the provider’s — is a red flag worth chasing until it makes sense.

Churning — the quiet one that costs the most

Many products pay the adviser an upfront commission when they are sold. That creates a temptation the industry has a name for: churning — moving a client to a “better” policy or fund every few weeks or months, not because the client gains, but because each switch pays fresh commission.

Every switch restarts the client’s costs: new upfront fees, new waiting periods and exclusions on risk cover, lost loyalty benefits, sometimes tax. The planner is paid again; the client pays again.

The law already treats this as serious. When an adviser replaces one product with another, FAIS requires a written comparison — old versus new, what it costs, what falls away. Three defences work:

A pattern of switches is itself the evidence. A new “better product” conversation every few months is not diligence — it is a commission cycle.
The replacement comparison is a legal requirement, not a favour. No written old-versus-new comparison means the process the law requires has been skipped. That absence is the warning.
One question stops it cold: “what does this switch cost me, and what does it pay you?” Both answers are legally disclosable. A planner who squirms at either has answered it anyway.

Conflicts that hide in plain sight

A planner is never a beneficiary — not on a policy, not in a will. There is no version of that arrangement that survives scrutiny.
A planner as executor of the estate deserves a hard look. Executorship is a paid appointment; combining it with the advice role stacks fees and interests in one pair of hands.
“Guaranteed” returns comfortably above the bank remain the oldest warning sign in finance. Real returns come with real risk disclosures, in writing.

The five-minute checks

Everything above is about what a planner does. These checks establish who they are — each one takes minutes:

The licence. Every legitimate adviser operates under an FSP number, checkable on the FSCA’s public register — including *which* products they are licensed to advise on. How to run the check is covered in “How do you find a really good financial planner?”
The paper trail. A written record of advice is a legal right under FAIS, not a favour. Advice that only ever happens out loud is advice designed to be deniable.
The fees. Costs and commissions are disclosable in writing before anything is bought — what the structures look like is covered in “How much does a financial planner cost in South Africa?”, and the questions to ask sit in “What questions should you ask a planner in the first meeting?”

If a line has been crossed

The route is free and does not need a lawyer. Step one is a written complaint to the adviser’s FSP — the firm has six weeks to resolve it. Step two, if that fails, is the FAIS Ombud, the independent office built for exactly these disputes, at no cost to the client. Suspected unlicensed operators can be reported straight to the FSCA.

None of this list is anti-planner. A good planner never brushes against a single line on it — payments already go to the provider, the record of advice already arrives unasked, the replacement comparison is already in the file. These boundaries do not filter out planners; they filter out everyone who was never really one.

Terms used on this page

churning: Repeatedly switching a client between financial products so the adviser earns fresh commission on each sale — while the client restarts fees, waiting periods and exclusions every time. FAIS requires a written old-versus-new comparison for any product replacement.
FSCA: The Financial Sector Conduct Authority — South Africa's market-conduct regulator. Its public register shows whether an adviser is licensed, and for which products.
record of advice: The written record a FAIS adviser is required to keep of what was advised and why — the client’s circumstances, the products considered, and the reasons for the one chosen. Clients are entitled to a copy.
FAIS Ombud: The independent office that resolves complaints about financial advice and services under the FAIS Act — free to the client, no lawyer needed. A complaint goes to the adviser’s firm first, then to the Ombud if unresolved.

Sources

Reviewed August 2026

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