Choosing Regulated, Cross-Border Advice in Kenya: What Good Looks Like

December 2025

Families and professionals face a crowded marketplace. Many offers look appealing but fail to deliver what matters most: planning, governance and long-term stewardship. This note sets out practical checks you can apply to evaluate advice and protect your capital over time.

1. Start with Planning, Not Products

Morningstar research shows clients rank helping them reach their goals as the top priority. High-quality advice begins with a written plan: clear goals, cash flow modelling, risk alignment and documented recommendations you can revisit. 

Planning-led advice keeps decisions anchored in your life, not in market noise. Your advice reports should demonstrate these principles in practice, including values-based planning and coordination with other professional advisers.

2. Be Wary of Promotions and Sales-Led Propositions

Glossy advertising, enticing bonuses, and “exclusive” products often mask complexity and lack transparency. True advisory relationships are not built on sales tactics or short-term incentives. They are built on long-term planning, clear governance, and client-first care.

3. Demand Institutional Governance

Ask where your assets are custodied and who oversees suitability. Well-regulated custody with discretionary management under proper regulatory oversight provides strong investor protection and transparent reporting. Confirm there is a clear exit protocol. This protects you and avoids lock-in.

4. Favour Evidence Over Speculation

Disciplined, diversified portfolios should be judged across a full cycle. Over the five years to end Q2 2025, the Waugh McDonald Adventurous GBP portfolio delivered 63.48% cumulative, or 10.33% annualised, through COVID, rate hikes and rotation. Context matters. 

Peer groups and private bank comparators were broadly in the mid-30s over the same period. Past performance does not guarantee future results, yet documented discipline is a useful signal.

5. Keep Fees Transparent and Fair

Clients consistently rank fee clarity among their top concerns. Understand both the initial advice fee and the ongoing service fee and check they are tiered and reduce as assets grow. Initial fees cover professional work at the outset and keep annual costs honest over time. Platform and discretionary fees should be shown separately.

6. Retain Flexibility on Funding

You do not need to deploy all capital at once. Managed cash on platform accrues daily interest at a published benchmark-linked rate and allows phased or quarterly deployment. This preserves governance while reducing timing anxiety. Check the rate and set a schedule that matches your plan.

7. Look for an Ethos of Stewardship

Morningstar behavioural research highlights trust and personalisation as critical. The emphasis should be on clarity, values, and long-term culture. Clients benefit when advisers favour ethics, transparency and patient compounding over short-term schemes.

Takeaway

Better outcomes come from planning first, custody and oversight that protect you, evidence-based portfolios, fair fees and flexible funding. These are practical checks you can apply to any advisory relationship.

A Professional Note

A successful advisory relationship is built on mutual trust and respect. Your adviser is a professional, not a free service or a sales agent. Regulated advisers invest heavily in compliance, ongoing education and robust administration to protect your interests. When both client and adviser approach the relationship as a partnership, the benefits are long-lasting: better outcomes, greater peace of mind and a foundation of trust that endures through market cycles.

To explore how regulated, planning-led advice can help protect and steward your capital over time, reach out to us at info@waughmcdonald.co.ke