Financial planning

The multi-faceted Fensham Howes service is anchored by single comprehensive document: the long term financial plan. The objective of the financial plan is to help clients build a stable bridge between achieving their human aspirations on the one hand and managing the hard financial numbers on the other. This is the core organising principle that drives all other activity.

Our process differs markedly from the approach historically adopted by many financial advisers. The traditional adviser primarily focused on selling investment products. In contrast, we specifically require that all investment activity be supportive of the strategic framework prescribed by the financial plan.

Consequently, the core relationship we have with our clients is never driven by investment activity or the sale of financial products. In fact, as fee-based advisers our financial plans may not necessarily involve the purchase of investment products.

Developing an effective long term financial plan involves more than plugging a few numbers into a canned software program. Sophisticated modelling of a client’s assets and likely future income and expense is certainly an essential piece of the process. But it is important to ensure that any abstract mathematical modelling is always undertaken within a framework shaped by the decidedly human goal-setting process.

The planning process may present several different (and possibly conflicting) potential strategies. In these cases, each alternative is given due consideration before deciding a course of action.