Working with other professional advisers

We believe that clients receive better overall advice when one hand knows what the other is doing. That's why we prefer to work alongside our clients' other professional advisers to ensure that together we are providing the best and most co-ordinated advice.

Professional advisers may include: accountants, solicitors, stockbrokers and other specialists in particular fields. We are all regulated and all have particular areas of expertise, yet there can be an overlap in advice.

For example, an accountant may recommend pension contributions to reduce tax but not be authorised to advise which pension.

A clients' solicitor is the best person to draw up their wills and bespoke trust arrangements whilst we as their IFA can assess how they can minimise their tax liability and maximise what they can pass on ensuring any proceeds go to the right beneficiaries at the right time.

In order for the trusts and wills to work effectively and in tandem good communication between us and our clients' solicitors can be invaluable. We also work with solicitors where they specifically act for their clients as Powers of Attorney and Trustees.

If you own business assets then the company 'Articles of Association' and any 'Shareholder Agreements' also influence what would happen to shares, assets and liabilities in the event of death or departure from the business. The business and personal insurance you take out and your will and retirement planning, all need to fit together with the Shareholder Agreements so the right amount of money goes to who needs it when they need it, ensuring the control of the shares and business assets can pass to whoever is to continue in the business. This involves legal, tax and financial advice and someone to help you work out the overall strategy.

Stockbrokers are the experts on shares and investment trusts but not on inheritance tax planning or insurance. We therefore need to work together to make sure clients have all needs covered.

Having complete independence we are able to recommend whatever and whoever we feel will be most suitable to assist our clients

We are not tied to any product provider, marketing group or regulatory network. Instead we are directly regulated by the Financial Services Authority. One of the reasons we have chosen to be completely independent (with our independent Compliance Consultant to help us) is that we want to be free to recommend any financial service or product we think is suitable for our clients. We also like the freedom to offer clients different ways of paying for their advice.

Sometimes we can serve our clients better by bringing in experts in a specialist field of financial advice - recommending 3rd parties who we believe can add value to our clients. For example, we happily provide Mortgage advice for residential properties or buy-to-let, but would refer clients needing Commercial or Business Finance to a specialist adviser in that field. We would involve stockbrokers when clients need advice on shares.

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