What is Financial Planning?
• Financial Planning involves working out what is most important to you in life: your goals.
• Then by adding timescales and costs, you can work out how to get where you want to be in life by planning your finances accordingly
What do Financial Planners do?
• Help their clients achieve their goals
• Protecting their assets and their family
• Saving and Investing
• Retirement Planning
• Tax planning
Garry Hale
Thursday 3 February 2011
Tuesday 1 February 2011
If you want financial advice don't go to the bank.....
You may have noticed the recent decision by Barclays Bank to stop offering financial advice to individual customers in its bank branches. An overhaul of how financial advice is given, known as the Retail Distribution Review or “RDR” for short, comes into effect at the beginning of 2013 and this has meant the bank’s costs are likely to rise at exactly the same time as it will have to be more explicit about how much that advice is costing its customers.
Given the publicity Barclays’ announcement has received, I thought this might be the perfect moment to raise the subject of RDR and to write a few words to explain what changes you might see as a client of HK Wealth Managers Ltd.
Higher standards
RDR is specifically designed to improve people’s understanding of, as well as increase their confidence in, the financial services industry. Most significantly, the Review wants to increase the level of professionalism so the minimum qualifications required to give advice are being increased and the way in which you pay for that advice is being altered to ensure complete transparency.
This will affect all financial advisers to an extent. However, the reason for my note right now is that many of the reasons Barclays Bank has given for its decision to withdraw from in-branch advice do not hold true for all advisers – particularly ourselves.
At HK Wealth Managers Ltd most of the groundwork has already been done. Our continuous professional development means I am already qualified beyond the new minimum requirements and in fact am working on a few final exams to qualify as a Chartered Financial Planner.
In terms of payment for our services, we already operate on a fee based structure which is both fair and transparent to both our business and our clients. While a few of the logistics may change slightly nothing the new rules are asking of us should come as a shock.
Further information
Nevertheless, if you have any questions about comments made in the Barclays’ announcement, or are concerned about what it means for our relationship with you or would simply like to talk to us about the new rules, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
In the meantime, however, the following link to an opinion piece in this last weekend’s Independent on Sunday says a lot of things much better than we ever could…
http://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/simon-read-if-you-want-some-financial-advice-dont-go-to-the-bank-2197858.html#Scene_1
Garry Hale AIFP, Dip PFS
Director
HK Wealth Managers Ltd
Given the publicity Barclays’ announcement has received, I thought this might be the perfect moment to raise the subject of RDR and to write a few words to explain what changes you might see as a client of HK Wealth Managers Ltd.
Higher standards
RDR is specifically designed to improve people’s understanding of, as well as increase their confidence in, the financial services industry. Most significantly, the Review wants to increase the level of professionalism so the minimum qualifications required to give advice are being increased and the way in which you pay for that advice is being altered to ensure complete transparency.
This will affect all financial advisers to an extent. However, the reason for my note right now is that many of the reasons Barclays Bank has given for its decision to withdraw from in-branch advice do not hold true for all advisers – particularly ourselves.
At HK Wealth Managers Ltd most of the groundwork has already been done. Our continuous professional development means I am already qualified beyond the new minimum requirements and in fact am working on a few final exams to qualify as a Chartered Financial Planner.
In terms of payment for our services, we already operate on a fee based structure which is both fair and transparent to both our business and our clients. While a few of the logistics may change slightly nothing the new rules are asking of us should come as a shock.
Further information
Nevertheless, if you have any questions about comments made in the Barclays’ announcement, or are concerned about what it means for our relationship with you or would simply like to talk to us about the new rules, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
In the meantime, however, the following link to an opinion piece in this last weekend’s Independent on Sunday says a lot of things much better than we ever could…
http://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/simon-read-if-you-want-some-financial-advice-dont-go-to-the-bank-2197858.html#Scene_1
Garry Hale AIFP, Dip PFS
Director
HK Wealth Managers Ltd
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