Wealth Management Advice
Protecting and Managing Wealth is at the heart of what we do. We provide a highly personal service, based on your needs and objectives, and designed to build and safeguard your long-term prosperity.
Wealth Management is more than just investment advice, it encompasses all parts of a person’s financial life. Our professional service includes a combination of financial planning, investment advice, estate planning considering client’s tax and legal status. Our aim is to work with you to help you to preserve and increase your wealth.
We work at identifying and understanding what you are trying to achieve, now and in the future. Working with you to understand your long-term personal financial goals, risk tolerance capacity for loss, preferences, and needs.
We can provide advice on the many options available when taking benefits from pension schemes or other assets and will also advise you on possible investment options.
Pensions & Retirement Planning
Pensions are designed to enable you to save sufficient money during your working life to provide an income stream for you to live comfortably after you have retired. Once you reach the stage where you’re considering your retirement income, expert financial advice becomes even more important. Many of the choices you make at this time will affect your lifestyle so you need to make sure they’re right.
Pensions can be also used as a very effective form of tax planning; reducing your immediate income tax liabilities, achieving tax free growth, providing a tax-free lump sum in the future and potential to pass on their value to the next generation (and beyond) without any IHT being payable. It is essential that you review your pension situation regularly. We can advise you with taking steps to make it more certain that your pension pot will be able to achieve the income you want when you retire. We can guide you through key life decisions and advise you on tax-efficiency, making certain that you’re saving enough into your pension enabling you to enjoy the retirement you deserve. Options are varied and can be tailored to your circumstances.
Advice on taking benefits from pension schemes
We are experienced in providing advice on the many options available when taking benefits from pension schemes, including:
- Pension Fund Withdrawal (Flexible Drawdown)
- Phased Retirement
- Pension Lump Sum Investment/Portfolio Planning
- Capped Drawdown review
- Annuity Purchase
- Impaired Life/Enhanced/Smoker Rate Annuities
- Investment Linked Annuities
- ISA Investment
- Income Producing Investments
Decisions that are made today can have an impact on your retirement income and lifestyle, so it’s important to get the right advice. That’s where we can help.
Investment and Savings
There are many savings and investment products available; whether you are wanting to invest a lump sum or savings on a regular basis. All products will offer many features and benefits, we can provide you with quality advice that will help you make the best choice in addressing your needs.
For most people making an investment, their main priority is to ensure they are getting the best return they can on their money. The level of risk they feel comfortable with is also paramount. Balancing risk against the potential return is an important aspect of investing that always needs to be taken into account.
It can be confusing with so many different ways to invest your money, from bank saving accounts to ISA’s, stocks and shares to bonds, we can assist you by:
- Overhauling your current savings and investments plans and advising you on how to get more from them.
- Offering advice on a range of carefully selected products that are available on the market.
- Creating a tailored financial plan to suit you and your circumstances.
- Informing you of the risks involved when investing your money to help you make the right decision.
Please contact us so that we may assist you in determining an investment strategy best appropriate for your needs and circumstances.
Protection (Life Insurance, Income Protection and Critical Illness)
For you and your family
Ask yourself what would happen if you were unable to work for any length of time because you are ill or have had a serious accident? What would happen if you died? How would your family cope? How will the mortgage and other loans be repaid? Will extra childcare be needed? Will the surviving partner have sufficient resources to maintain their standard of living? Life Insurance, Critical Illness and Income Protection are vital elements of your financial well being and should be a standard part of your insurance arrangements. Families insure their home and their cars yet over-look their most important asset that generates the income and wealth of the family – themselves and their partners.
Key People in your business
Consider what are the consequences for the business should you lose a KEY individual due to death, or serious long term illness. Will the income of the business reduce? Will the business be able to continue paying the KEY persons wages? Will the lenders foreclose on loans or reduce overdraft facilities the business uses for cash flow? Will the business be able fund the cost of recruitment? How long will it take for the business to recover. This is where KEY Person insurance can help to ensure the continuity of your business.
Shareholders Protection
If a shareholder dies their stake in the business could be inherited by an unwelcome beneficiary or end up being sold to a rival. Does the businesses have capital or the ability to borrow to purchase an outgoing shareholder’s stake in the firm? Shareholder protection sets out an agreement between the shareholders so that their estates have the obligation to offer the shares for sale to the survivings shareholder who must offer to buy with life insurance policy proceeds providing the funds to pay the agreed value. The insured person’s beneficiaries have clarity over the amount they will receive for the company shares when they are bought out by the other shareholders. For small businesses, shareholder protection can be vital since many smaller firms might struggle to raise buy-out capital at short notice.
Tax Planning
It’s important to make sure you aren’t paying more tax than you need to. Taxation can be very complicated and the rules, reliefs and allowances often change.
Our UK tax year runs from 6 April through to 5 April. During this time everyone is required to pay an appropriate level of income tax on their earned income, which helps to pay for things like healthcare and education. As well as income tax, you can also be liable for capital gains tax on profits you make from any chargeable assets you have sold, or for tax on gifts you have made during your lifetime.
Trust Planning
Trust Planning helps you to manage assets for the future, so that you can plan ahead and know that taxation is being mitigated. Since trusts usually avoid probate, your beneficiaries may access these assets quicker than they might access assets that are transferred using a will.
Estate Planning
As a consequence of increasing property prices more people than before have found themselves being caught liable to Inheritance Tax. If your estate is over the inheritance tax allowance when you die, it will be subject to a tax, known as inheritance tax.
There are a wide range of investment products which are acceptable to HM Revenue and Customs and which enable investors to reduce their potential liability to either income tax or inheritance tax or both.
Ultimately, financial planning will focus on what happens to the estate when you are no longer around, we can help by talking to you about the importance of making a will and the basics of inheritance tax. Should you then wish to find out more about estate planning and inheritance tax we can arrange an initial discussion.
Cash Flow Forecasting
An additional service which most professional advisers are able to provide is cash flow forecasting. This uses specialist technology to calculate the period of time over which a given investment portfolio might be expected to meet identified needs for income and or capital.