That’s an excellent question.
I won’t speak from personal experience, but research has also been conducted on the impact of financial advice. I would say that, all things considered, in our experimental studies with real financial advisors, we see that the decisions or recommendations they make are generally sound. We don’t see any major mistakes, but it’s certainly true that, like everyone else, financial advisors can also have biases. The literature shows that, sometimes, financial advisors tend to recommend products they own themselves, products they trust, or products they’re familiar with.
As for determining whether these products are good or not for the consumer, that’s a step that goes a bit beyond what my research could show, but the literature demonstrates that there is a slight familiarity bias involved in what is recommended.