The ultimate question, in my opinion, is does your FIL believe in an Efficient Market, or does he believe in the Random Walk Down Wallstreet.
If your FIL believes in an Efficient Market, in that there truly are "magic stocks" or "magic funds" to be purchased because some of those stocks/funds contain information that no one knows about yet and thus haven't been reflected in their price, he'd be better off going to the bank. He doesn't have the time or resources to do all the background work to find that magic purchase, and the banks (or their contracted employees) do.
If your FIL believes in the Random Walk, over the long term there aren't any "magic stocks" or "magic funds" to be purchased, as the market has already taken into consideration all available information and priced their stocks accordingly. As no one can predict the future on any one item, all stocks and funs are just as likely to go up as they are down at any point in time. Diversification becomes the key at this point. Since you're hoping to do as good as the market itself, then just buy a whole stock market index and be done with it.
As far as I'm aware, over short periods of time (a year or two) several funds and managers have beat the market. But only three can consistently do it over extended periods of time. One manages Yale's endowment fund. Another was Peter Lynch. The third is Buffet. Those are the only three that I know of that can consistently beat the market. And according to Buffet, unless you have a team of researchers at your disposal, you're better off buying broad range index funds, as you can't compete with the big guys and the fees will eat yourself up.
Most people on here likely believe in the Random Walk. Myself included. Which means there's no reason to pay a bank any fees to give me results that, over the long term, are all but guaranteed NOT to beat the market. So just buy the market and be done with it.