Process
Our strategic financial planning process is broken down into six steps:
Initial meeting
The purpose of the initial meeting is twofold:
- it allows you to meet us, ask us questions and see first hand the services that we offer to our clients.
- it allows us to establish whether we feel our services will be appropriate for you.
Often this meeting takes place at our offices, as it gives you an opportunity to meet more members of the team and it is the best environment for us to demonstrate the various elements of our service. However we can meet with clients either in their offices or at their home if this is more convenient.
If for any reason either party decides not to proceed following the initial meeting, there is no charge for the time spent together.
Discovery Meeting
Having agreed to work together, a second meeting is arranged. The purposes of the discovery meeting are:
- to allow us to build a detailed picture of your current financial situation.
- to explore your short, medium and long-term goals, objectives, dreams and ambitions.
- to begin the process of establishing your attitude towards financial risk.
In order for us to build a detailed picture of your finances we will ask that you make available statements / schedules / policy details for all of the investments and insurance policies you may currently have in place.
A useful by-product of this part of the process is that we are often able to significantly thin-out the relevant financial paperwork you may be keeping in your files.
After the discovery meeting we will have most of the information we need to build your preliminary cash flow forecasts. To complete the picture of your financial situation and outlook, we will ask you to provide us with details of your regular expenditure, and also to complete a short questionnaire. The questionnaire is used by us as an aid in determining your attitude to risk.
Strategy meeting
At the strategy meeting we present you with the results of the preliminary cash flow forecasts that we have built from the information gleaned to date. We will also discuss any assumptions we have made, and re-confirm your goals and objectives.
From this position we take you through your financial future under the baseline assumptions – together establishing the steps that you will be comfortable taking in order to achieve your goals.
At this meeting we may also discuss issues such as the structure of your estate planning (for inheritance tax purposes) as well as giving you comments on the structure of your existing investments.
The objective is that by the end of this meeting we will have together agreed on a broad strategy that addresses all of your goals and objectives.
Report and Implementation
Following the Strategy Meeting we will produce a full Investment and Financial Planning Report that covers all of the areas discussed.
The report will provide you with a summary of your financial strategy, and will include specific recommendations for its implementation including:
- our recommendations for the investment of your wealth going forward; and
- our recommendations for restructuring any existing investments that may for any reason not fit well with the agreed investment strategy.
Following receipt of your report we will ask you to confirm that you are happy to proceed with our recommendations, at which point we will arrange the “Action” meeting.
Action Meeting
The objectives of the action meeting are to complete a final review our recommendations to ensure that all matters have been fully agreed, and to begin the process of plan implementation.
Ongoing Review
In order to keep you on track to achieve your goals it is essential that we review your progress towards them on a regular basis. We recommend that we review your plan at least annually.
Approximately two months before your review is due we will contact you to arrange a convenient time and date for the review meeting.