Over my career I have helped private clients at all stages of their financial journey. I have helped people making their first pension or ISA contributions, I have helped families to make sure that their loved ones are looked after in the event of illness or death, and I have helped clients transition into retirement. Interspersed with this has been a variety of highly technical projects, including:
- Venture capital investing, mostly focused on Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) and Enterprise Investment Schemes (EISs), with occasional forays into Seed EIS space.
- Overseas pension issues, including UK pensions for non-UK individuals and non-UK pensions for UK-based clients. This area gets very complicated very quickly, especially if the overseas jurisdiction happens to be the USA.
- Inheritance tax planning, making sure that beneficiaries get to keep more of your estate when you die. This accounts for a wide range of technical topics, including:
- Allowances, including Nil Rate Bands (NRBs), Residence NRBs and annual gift allowances.
- Reliefs, including Business Relief (BR) and, to a lesser extent, Agricultural Relief (AR) and Woodland Relief (WR).
- Insurance used to pay inheritance tax.
- Trusts, including outright gifts and loans of value.
In short, if you have a financial planning question, I have likely already answered it for another client before. If I can’t answer myself, I will know where to look. I have significant experience of taking complex problems and making them easy to understand, and as a result I will be your greatest ally when it comes to making financial decisions going forward.