You didn’t get a vote. You didn’t get a say. One day you open an envelope, or more likely an email, and find out that the person who knows your pension, your portfolio, your hopes for retirement, and probably a fair amount about your marriage has been acquired by a company you’ve never heard of, based in a city you don’t live in.

Welcome to the age of the consolidator.

It’s happening everywhere right now. Long-established, locally-rooted financial planning firms, the kind built by people who genuinely gave a damn about their clients, are being snapped up by national roll-ups backed by private equity money. The advisers stay on for a while, smile reassuringly, and tell you nothing much is changing. Then, two years later, they’re gone.

I’m not saying this is always bad. Sometimes it genuinely isn’t. But I am saying that most clients in this situation don’t ask the right questions. They get a letter, feel mildly unsettled, decide it’s probably fine, and get on with their lives. And some of them will regret that.

So here are the five questions you should be asking (right now, not in six months) if your financial planner’s firm has just been acquired.

1. Will my actual adviser still be working with me in three years?

This is the one that matters most and the one that gets glossed over most often. “The team is staying on” is not the same as “your adviser isn’t going anywhere.” In most acquisitions, the original owners are tied in for one to two years as part of the deal structure. After that? No guarantees. Ask specifically: is my adviser contracted to stay, and for how long? What happens to my relationship if they leave?

2. Are my fees changing?

They might not change immediately. But a national firm with shareholders to satisfy and an acquisition to recoup has different economics than an owner-managed practice. Fee reviews happen. Service tiers get rationalised. Ask directly: will my charges change in the next 12 months, and what is the process if they do?

3. Who actually owns my client relationship now?

With an independent firm, the answer was pretty simple. Now it’s a corporate structure, potentially with private equity sitting above it. That matters when it comes to things like data, continuity, and what happens if the acquiring firm is itself sold — which, with PE-backed consolidators, is often the plan all along.

4. How will decisions about my money be made?

One of the things that makes a small, independent financial planning firm good is that your adviser has genuine discretion and a genuine relationship with you. When a firm scales to hundreds of advisers and billions in assets, investment decisions often get centralised. Model portfolios replace bespoke thinking. Ask: will my investment approach stay the same, or will I be moved to a centralised solution?

5. What would it take for me to leave?

This one’s not for them, it’s for you. Sit with it. If you’re honest with yourself, how settled do you actually feel about this change? Because the right answer to “my adviser’s firm just got acquired” isn’t automatically “I’m leaving.” Sometimes staying is entirely fine. But the worst outcome is staying out of inertia when the arrangement no longer serves you, and only realising it years later when the damage is done.

A good financial planning relationship is one of the most valuable things you can have in the decade before and after you retire. Not just because of the financial returns (though they matter) but because of the clarity, the confidence, and the sense that someone is genuinely paying attention to your life, not just your portfolio.

That’s worth protecting. Don’t let a corporate announcement make you passive about something this important.

If you’re going through this and want a straightforward, no-obligation conversation about your situation, I’m happy to have it. No sales pitch. Just an honest chat.