Financial planning

Almost all our clients are referred from existing clients directly to Stuart with the first point of contact over the telephone. This initial conversation gives us the opportunity to explore and understand what you are looking for. A meeting will be arranged and guide prices for our services provided.

At our first meeting, we explore in depth what money means to you and establish your immediate and longer term objectives. This gives direction to your money and how it can provide you with the financial freedom in retirement to achieve your goals. By establishing these at outset, we can both establish if there is a good fit between what we offer and the specific nature of your requirements.

We call this process of exploration, ‘giving money meaning’. It helps you define the specifics of what you’re looking for, which in turn enables us to offer you choices.

At this meeting, we explore together the ‘soft’ facts and in the process, really focus on your short and longer-term objectives. This in turn provides clearer, defined aspirations – and a mutual understanding of what your money needs to do in order to fulfill those aspirations.

By understanding why you want to retire and what your goals are, we can define more precisely what you need for the future based on your particular financial circumstances, tailored to your personal retirement objectives.

Following this meeting, we report back to you with a summary of your objectives and a guide price to the cost of the service.

This second meeting is the fact-gathering part of the process in which we gather information about the policies, capital and investments you have. For example, this will include:

• pension plans
• cash deposit holdings
• life assurance schemes
• ISAs, investment funds and equities
• up-to-date overall capital status and liabilities
• how your will(s) are structured
• anticipated future inheritances (capital, property etc)
• income and expenditure

This gives us the necessary level of detail we need to provide the basis of a costed Financial Planning Roadmap which details how best to achieve your objectives.
We will have asked you to calculate current and future anticipated expenditure before this meeting, along with completing our online psychometric investment risk and capacity for loss questionnaires.

We then perform our analysis and evaluate your financial status, which usually involves gathering further up-to-date information from your current investment and pension providers. With this overall picture of your current situation and knowledge of your future objectives, we start to develop a bridge from where you are, to where you want to be. Your personal Financial Planning Roadmap takes shape and this is supplied to you for your consideration before the next step.

During this meeting, Stuart explains your Roadmap in detail and answers questions you will have. Expected outcomes, contingency plans (because life is not straightforward) and risks are highlighted and discussed.

Once you are fully comfortable with the plan, and following any necessary adjustments, the next step is to implement it.

We take care of the implementation of your plan for you. This may include setting up investments, changing deposit accounts, switching pension funds, placing assets in trust, initiating withdrawals from funds etc. Progress in implementation of your plan will give reassurance that you are on track to meet your financial and life objectives.

This is the ongoing monitoring of your Financial Plan, and the step our clients value as much as the initial planning advice. In most circumstances, we provide quarterly updates on your monies’ progress to agreed benchmarks so you can see your progress.

The quarterly updates provide information and monitor the investment returns of the programme. This enables us to keep it on track and make adjustments as investment and economic circumstances change so that your money is engaged to meet your objectives and doesn’t stray.

At your Annual Strategic Review, we meet to discuss and map progress to your objectives. Together we identify how these may have altered for you and look at changes to your circumstances and priorities since we last spoke. We revisit your comfort levels for investment risk and capacity for investment loss, working with our 12-point Strategic Review Checklist.

All this ensures your money is working optimally for you to continue to enjoy the fulfillment of your retirement objectives.

Stuart Knight and Louise Davies will be your dedicated points of contact throughout this process. Stuart and Louise will personally draw up your Financial Planning Roadmap and be on hand whenever you want to discuss any aspect of it.