If your friend or relative is a competent adviser and can sell you a good financial products, than please "support" them wholehearted. Recommend others to them. But if your friend or relative is lousy in advice or can only sell you a lousy product, please do not buy from them. Do not buy an insurance policy or investment and than latter complain 20 years later that the product could not deliver. I have written about this before (the second link belongs to my colleague):

Birds and Eskimos
Getting a ‘Gam-Cheng’ policy