Is a direct investment right for you?
In finance, Direct Investment is the commitment of money or capital to purchase financial instruments or other assets.
How do we do it?
The objective of the advice service that we provide is to put in place product solutions to enable you to meet your financial goals and then regularly review the performance of those solutions to help you to remain on track. In order to achieve this, we follow the process set out below, which is broken down into six stages:
1. Initial consultation
2. Fact finding
3. Research
4. Report of recommendations
5. Implementation: arranging direct investments and related actions
6. Ongoing review
Initial consultation:
The purpose of this is to identify your personal needs and objectives, establish what benefits would result from using our services, outline our associated costs and give you the opportunity to appoint us.
Fact Finding:
This could involve a specific review of your current direct investments arrangements and circumstances in relation to particular issues you feel require attention or could involve your entire financial situation. Any or all of the following issues could form part of our review service and we would agree this at the initial consultation.
Direct Investment Review – An objective assessment of your risk tolerance and complete review of existing direct investments held, including the interest rates applicable on cash deposits.
Pensions Review & Retirement Planning – A review of existing pension arrangements, guidance on generating income in retirement, including conventional annuity purchase, investment linked annuities, capital protected annuities, impaired life annuities & more.
Protection Review – An assessment of any life or health protection policies in place, the level of cover provided and any identified shortfalls.
Estate Planning Review – A review and assessment of the impact of Inheritance Tax on your estate and possible solutions to mitigate this.
Lifestyle Financial Planning – Creation and implementation of a strategy to enable you to achieve your objectives, which may include solutions for repayment of borrowing/mortgages, saving for school/university fees or investing for other specified goals.
Research
Using the results of our review process we will then carry out product research to enable us to identify the most suitable recommendations to help you to achieve your personal financial needs & objectives.
Recommendations:
We will present back to you our report detailing the results of our research & personal recommendations including specific product solutions that will support you in achieving your personal needs & objectives.
Implementation:
This process only begins once we have your agreement on the direct investment arrangements to be put in place. This involves arranging investments or other products on your behalf, as required, and may extend to implementing a specific financial planning process, such as estate planning. We will act as the intermediary between the product provider(s) and you with a view to arranging the purchase of the Retail Investment Products as we have agreed.
Ongoing review service:
An ongoing relationship with our clients has always been integral to our business, as we believe that it can add significant value to both individuals and businesses.
Dependent upon client circumstances the ongoing relationship may vary but the main purpose of this is to monitor your ongoing position to ensure that the products continue to meet your requirements.
Through regular reviews we can also develop our planning strategies over time to take into account your changing circumstances and objectives as well as developments in economic conditions, legislation (taxation etc), new ideas and financial products. Elements of ongoing service can include the following:
- Up to date valuation of all investments held, quarterly, six monthly or annually.
- Telephone and email access to your adviser, along with a face-to-face meeting to review your affairs at pre defined intervals. An assessment of your investments and pensions with an assessment of the individual funds held and guidance as to whether more suitable products / funds are available in the market.
- Guidance regarding the minimisation of your income and capital gains tax liabilities in relation to your Investments as well as how to restructure your holdings to mitigate the effects of inheritance tax on your estate.
- Advice regarding changing pension legislation and the opportunities and threats created by this.
Contact us on 01323 734530 to book a review.