Our Services
We deal with people and their finances – in that order. By truly understanding your priorities, we ensure you receive the very best advice developed specifically for you. We will help you save for the future and protect your family, all in the most tax-efficient way possible.
Our advice brings together all aspects of your finances and includes investments, retirement and tax planning. We help you understand what you’ll need your money for and ensure that you take all the right steps to plan for the worst-case scenarios. Every one of our clients is different and unique, and we always provide personalised, bespoke advice.
Investments
From growing your capital to generating income, we can help you build a plan that meets your needs while spreading your risk. We will ensure that creeping inflation doesn’t eat away at your future savings and will evolve your investment strategy as your situation changes and your priorities move on.
Strategies might combine:
- Equities – an investment in stocks and shares that are traded around the world.
- Corporate bonds – a ‘loan’ to a public company that pays a fixed rate of interest until an agreed date when the loan amount is repaid.
- Property – either an investment in a specific building or a paper investment in a commercial property investment plan.
Retirement Planning
Few people arrive at retirement knowing if they have enough money. However, we will use all your assets to give you the best chance of achieving the retirement you dream of. There are many options, for both personal and occupational pensions, and we can talk you through the pros and cons.
When the time for retirement arrives, we will help you decide on how best to use your pensions and other assets. Recent changes to pension legislation have significantly benefited retirement planning. Not only are there attractive tax advantages, but increasingly flexible ways to access your pension pot. We can talk you through your options so you can make the most of your retirement.
Tax Efficiency
All our investment strategies will take into account your tax position, as well as that of your spouse or registered civil partner. Each tax-efficient investment is taxed in a different way and therefore suitable for different circumstances.
We can advise on familiar investments such as ISAs, OEICs, Unit Trusts and Investment Bonds, or structured products which give a definite level of return on a specific level of risk. If you’re looking to invest specifically to reduce your income tax or defer capital gains tax, we can also consider combining other strategies:
- Pension plans – a tax-efficient way to save for retirement where the government adds tax relief to your payments. On retirement up to 25% can be taken as a tax-free lump sum, with the rest reinvested to provide an income.
- Venture capital trusts – investing in smaller, growing companies presents a higher risk but better tax advantages, including up-front tax relief.
- Enterprise investment schemes – investing in the shares of listed and unlisted small companies.
Legacy Planning
Legacy planning is all about passing on your assets to those you care about – with the minimum tax for them to pay. The order in which you use assets in retirement can make an important difference here, as changing legislation offers new opportunities to protect what you pass on. For example, pensions should be spent last – not first. We can show you the tools at your disposal and help you plan the best possible strategy, from structuring wills to setting up trusts.
Protection
We believe that you should always plan for the worst as well as the best. It is vitally important to make sure that any period of long-term illness, or worse, does not put an end to the dreams you had for your family’s future. Strategies might combine:
- Term life assurance – guarantees an established sum in the event of death within a specified period.
- Family income benefit – provides a regular annual or monthly income for your family after your death.
- Whole of life cover – a life assurance policy which includes an element of investment so the policy can acquire value, making it possible to surrender the policy before death.
- Critical illness plans – guarantees a tax-free sum in the event of a diagnosed critical illness.
- Income protection schemes – regular, tax-free income when an accident or illness keeps you away from work.
How We Work With You
We only work with clients who we can make a real difference to, so before we start we’ll want to spend some time getting to know your circumstances.
- Initial phone call – we’ll speak to you to gain an outline of your situation and explain if and how we can help.
- Financial questionnaire – we’ll ask you to fill this in to give specifics about your finances and situation so we can be fully prepared for our first meeting.
When we meet, we will ask you to tell us your story.
We want to know not just the objective facts about your finances but what is important to you and what you want out of your life.
It’s all about listening to you, asking questions and exploring what motivates and matters to you.
At this point we present our findings.
We show you an analysis of your current financial position, including income, expenditure, assets and liabilities; we summarise what you’ve told us about your aims and priorities; and we present a financial plan, covering areas such as pensions, investments, protection, estate planning, and explain how each part of the plan meets your goals.
We then discuss this and make any changes needed.
We regularly need to review the suitability of our original recommendations, as your life and the real world are always changing, throwing up new tax rules, new challenges and new circumstances.
During the annual review we step back and check you’re still doing the things you need to do and decide if there’s anything that needs to change.
Ultimately the annual review offers the reassurance that you’re on track.
We understand that not all our prospective clients can easily make it to our office due to how far away they live, time constraints or due to health.
Therefore, we are happy to have remote meetings by Web Conferencing.
The Freedom to Live The Life You Choose
Call us on 01225 471462 or email info@cfsorg.com
