Private Client Work

Most of my work is for private clients, individuals who want to look after their personal finances better.

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.

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.

This area of financial planning splits into a number of different streams, and you can find out more about each in the tabs below:

Have you ever wanted to sense-check your plans? Do you have an expected retirement date and want to make sure that you can actually afford to retire? Are you thinking about making a gift to your children, but you want to be better informed as to what that might mean for your own future finances?

If any of these or similar statements apply to you, then you need cash forecasting.

Cash forecasting is simply building a model and asking it one or more questions. A good cash flow model will take into account your income and expenditure, assets and liabilities, goals, known future changes, and many more factors. From this, you will gain an understanding of how certain events might affect your financial plans, and you will be able to decide how to respond appropriately to that information.

A good cash forecast is the heart of a good financial plan, therefore this service is included in all private client cases.

Investments are at the heart of many financial plans, whether personal investments or those held within a pension or another wrapper. I have assisted many clients over the years with their investments, including:

Discretionary investment managers, where the decisions on trades are left to a third-party.
Advisory portfolios, where you as the client are consulted before every trade. This can include multi-asset funds, which replicate the discretionary service above but in a unitised fund.
Execution-only portfolios, where you make all the decisions and simply report back the changes to your adviser. This is particularly relevant if you enjoy buying and selling investments but have little patience for tax planning.
Tax-privileged investments, including Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs), Enterprise Investment Schemes (EISs), Seed EISs (SEISs) and business relief portfolio.

Most of us have a pension, but for many people that is both the beginning and the end of our interest. The world of pensions is extremely complicated, with state pension, defined contributions schemes and defined benefit schemes, and my job as a financial adviser is to demystify the world of retirement benefits.

Sometimes this means consolidating schemes that you accrued over the course of your life, but it also might mean leaving schemes in place, as many schemes have valuable benefits that would be lost on transfer. Importantly, this doesn’t stop you from getting all the information into one place for ease of reference.

It is still possible to transfer benefits held in a defined benefit pension scheme to a defined contribution scheme, but Aegis Financial Consulting does not currently hold the regulatory permissions to conduct this sort of business.

Insurance is not the most interesting subject to most people, but it is arguably one of the most important at various stages of your life. For example:

New parents might want to make sure that their children are financially looked after in the event of their untimely demise.
People without long-term sick pay might want to make sure that their income is secure in case they develop an illness that stops them from working.
People making a sizable gift might wish to protect their Nil-Rate Band for Inheritance Tax purposes.
Anyone with significant debt might want to make sure that the debt is repaid if they acquire a critical illness.

Taxes are important, in that they pay for the basic services we all need, but most of us begrudge paying more tax than we owe. Tax planning is about structuring affairs to legitimately reduce the amount of tax owed, in line with government aims. This might, for example, mean using ISA allowances to shelter a proportion of your investment portfolio from income and capital gains taxes, or it might mean making use of annual gift allowances to reduce your inheritance tax bill.

I also have experience with certain specific tax-privileged investment vehicles, and would be happy to discuss these with you.

Fees

I believe that the world of financial advice is a very murky one indeed when it comes to pricing. In fact, for those of you who have a financial adviser already, consider the question “how much did you pay for financial advice last year?” From what I have seen over my career, most people will not be able to answer this.

My fees are different. At every stage and for all levels of complexity, the fees are fixed. The exception to this is where someone wants to use my services but don’t feel that they can justify the fixed fee model yet. In this case, I can offer a more traditional percentage-based charging model which will switch over to the fixed fee model once the ongoing fee exceeds the standard fixed fee for that client (subject to your approval, of course).

Initial Fees

£ 2,000

Cash flow forecast
Investment strategy
Set up of ISA & unwrapped investments
Additional transfers in £500 each

£ 2,500

Review of an existing pension scheme
Transfer to an existing scheme or suitable new alternative
Additional analyses charged at £500 each

POA

Review existing schemes
Formal protection review to identify shortfalls
Set up of new policies
Discussion on trusts
Payable by fee or commission - your choice

I can also take on more complex projects depending on your needs. Please contact me for a bespoke quote.

Ongoing Fees

£ 2,500 per year

Updating cash flow
Review of investment holdings (ISAs and unwrapped investments)
Use of ISA allowances
One meeting a year

£ 5,000 per year

Upgrades the Basic Review Service to include pensions
Includes discussions on generating income from pensions with drawdown or annuity purchase

£ 7,500 per year

Upgrades the Holistic Review Service to include insurance-based investments and inheritance tax planning methods
Includes discussions on top-slicing relief available on bonds and how to maximise returns net of tax

£ 10,000 per year

Upgrades the Complex Review Service to include overseas pension schemes or other highly technical matters

If you would like to tailor one of these categories, for example by increasing the number of annual meetings from one to two, that can be arranged. Just let me know and I will issue a bespoke quote.

Does VAT apply?

Value Added Tax (VAT) is a very complicated question when it comes to financial planning. The general rule is that fees which are the direct result of intermediation are exempt from VAT for the most part. However, any fees that are levied where there is a distinct breach between me as the adviser and you as the client or where there is not a product at the heart of the recommendation will not be exempt.

As such, the status of these fees for VAT purposes will depend at least in part on what you elect to do. For example:

If you simply want me to provide you with my advice and analysis and want to implement the recommendations yourself through your own broker, this is not intermediation, therefore the fee would be subject to VAT.
If you elect for me to set up a platform for you as part of my recommendations and then provide you with advice periodically about what investments to buy, that would likely be intermediation and therefore exempt from VAT.
The exception to this is if I advise you to take on a discretionary investment management account, as this is always subject to VAT, as is the advice that goes with it.

In short, VAT is a very complex subject, and may become chargeable depending on the specific service you opt for. By default, my service is likely to be wholly exempt from VAT, but as I am very flexible and can work with your requirements, it is possible that this will change.

NB: at the moment Aegis Financial Consulting is not registered for VAT, so the point is moot.

Aegis Financial Consulting