Who we are

Introduction

This document aims to provide you with a brief overview of our company and the services we offer. We aim to describe how we assess value and demonstrate fair value between the price paid for our services and the services they receive.

Sovereign Independent Financial Advisers Ltd have been giving Independent Financial Advice to clients in Thornbury and surrounding areas since 1991, achieving Chartered status in 2017.
Our service charter has been designed to meet the needs of our clients and ensure fair value by offering our clients the opportunity to only pay for the stages of the financial planning process they feel they need.

Most of the clients we work best with fall into at least one of 3 categories; people at or within 10 years of retirement, senior executives or business owners.

Whilst some of our clients do not fall into any of these categories, our services are typically suited to people who:

• Have £300,000 to £20 million of liquid assets i.e. savings, investments and pensions.
• Are prepared to pay for independent financial advice.
• Are seeking income or growth or a combination of the two.
• Are at retirement or at a stage in their life where they want a long-term financial plan to help them answer questions such as “when can I retire?” or “what should I do with my surplus income/savings to help me achieve my goals?”

The Value of our Service

Chartered Financial Planning

Being recognised as a Chartered Financial Planning Firm means we are committed to the highest standards of professional competency, ethical standards, and integrity. We represent the gold standard in financial planning.  We know this gives our clients a great deal of comfort.

The requirement to become a chartered financial planner with the Chartered Insurance Institute, is the culmination of years of learning and professional practice.

Best Practice

Best Practice provide an institutional regulatory supervision and compliance framework service which provides us with a high level of regulatory assurance and leading-edge client management systems.

This high quality and financially sound organisation ultimately provide us with a high level of assurance and comfort around the regulatory framework of the proposition and services we deliver to you, our clients.

By leveraging the quality and services of an organisation like Benchmark, a Schroders plc group company, we have comfort that we will remain at the leading edge of our profession, ensuring we maintain a “Best Practice” approach to serving our clients.  Many of the benefits we derive, we see as having direct value add relevance for our clients, including:

• Enhanced professional indemnity insurance.
• Integrated client technology systems, including the Wealth Platform
• Independent compliance supervision of our advisers and the suitability of our client advice.
• The provision of an independent complaints handling process for all of our clients.

Initial Advice

Our Initial advice process will contain all of the following:

• Initial meeting
• Fact find meeting
• Establish your goals and objectives / needs and wants
• Establish your priorities
• Establish your attitude to risk and capacity for loss
• Analysis of existing plans
• Research of potential solutions
• Construct a holistic financial plan
• Meet to discuss the financial plan and recommendations
• Agree implementation

During this process we will explain all the required regulatory disclosures, how we work and what we charge, what investment risk and capacity for loss is and what changes we would recommend in order for you to improve your financial position and achieve your goals.

Annual Review Service

For us and our clients, this is an integral part of the financial planning journey and our annual ongoing advisory service.  It gives us an opportunity to sit down with you and your family, to reflect on the past year and to look forward and consider what might be on the horizon for you in the coming years. We also aim to give you reassurance and peace of mind about how your investments are tracking against your goals and to review our plans in the context of any changing circumstances in your life, new goals, or changes in your objectives.

We consider the outlook for markets and the economic landscape and changing tax regulations which might impact on your current plans. We make sure everything we are doing remains suitable and is aimed at helping you and your family to achieve your goals.

This process gives you an opportunity to think about the coming years, plans for your family, begin to consider key life stages and events and how we might need to adapt our plans for them. It also helps ensure your current plans are still appropriate for you.

Our service includes top-ups to existing investments / pensions, fund switching and rebalancing.

Cash Flow Planning / Forecasting

Cash flow modelling is a very useful part of the advice process. The value of it can be summarised as follows:

• It helps us to show you visually how your plan has been set up to meet your objectives.
• The cash flow forecasting provides a visual illustration of how a client’s investments and wealth will move over time in relation to the financial plans that we formulate to meet their goals. This gives clients considerable comfort knowing that there is some mathematical rigour to our advice and how it will help them to meet their goals.
• Cash flow planning allows us to scenario test your plans against historical market events and simulate how our clients’ goals could be impacted by these types of events. It allows us to show how risk events might impact portfolios.  It’s a really great way to help you understand more about investment risks and how it translates to the plans you have in place.  It helps you to feel more informed and comfortable about your plans.

Family Protection Planning

It may be an uncomfortable subject but we all need to plan for the unforeseen in life and how this would impact ourselves and our family. We can help you to consider different scenarios which could occur and identify if there are any shortfalls in your protection planning. We can explain what options you have to address these shortfalls and how they would ensure you and your family are able to maintain your lifestyle and still meet your longer-term financial goals, in the event of ill health or death.

Our protection advice gives you:

• Access to professional tools and paraplanning resources/staff to conduct analysis and research to find the best/most suitable product.
• Use of trusts to provide ease of access, control etc.

Inheritance Tax and Estate Planning

We work with your other professionals who have a deep knowledge and understanding of HMRC tax rules in relation to clients and their estate’s assets. We can help to understand the value of future liabilities and design and implement strategies to reduce this burden, often saving clients thousands of pounds in potential tax charges.  This provides real value and peace of mind that your loved ones will be looked after when they are gone.

Retirement Planning

A key life phase. This is an area of planning which deserves significant time in reviewing for our clients each year.  Often in the background, checking on progress of plans and investments you have made to fund your life in retirement.  Adapting to market swings and modelling various impact scenarios.  Retirement planning is one of the most valuable services we provide our clients.

Many of of our clients are currently in retirement, following our advice and drawing on their assets to live a stress-free life in retirement.  Our retirement planning takes the worry away from our clients.

Long Term Care

Long Term Care can be a complex, emotional and difficult topic. Whether thinking about yourself or exploring options on behalf of a loved one, we will simplify and explain all the options available and how best to plan for them.

Tax Efficiency

We make sure we consider tax reliefs and allowances, enables clients to maximise their after-tax wealth. If you don’t take advantage of annual tax reliefs, then you could quite literally be paying more tax than you need to.  We can evidence the amount you have potentially saved through our planning.

Market and Product Research and Analysis

To recommend the most suitable solutions for our clients, we use professional tools to conduct research and analysis of provider and product solutions. This ensures we can make recommendations to best meet your needs and goals.

Advice for companies

We can provide the following services for business owners:

• Work with your accountant and solicitor to ensure all the legal, tax, accounting, and financial advice you get is properly joined up and look at ways to help you maximise business and personal tax breaks, reliefs, and allowances available to you.
• Help you protect your business, key staff and your family should something happen to your or key members of your team.
• Consider lending and finance solutions that may help grow your business and look at ways to make sure the cash in your business is working harder for you.
• Help you attract and retain staff by developing employee benefit strategies.
• Provide advice spanning different generations of your business and the development of a business exit plan for you.
• An annual meeting to review all plans.

Investment Philosophy

Our investment proposition is researched to provide the most suitable investment solutions to cater for your needs. Years of professional experience guiding our clients through turbulent markets has led us to adopt an “evidence based” investment philosophy where possible.

Evidence based investing is a scientific process whereby investment decisions are made based on years of research and historical data. It often leads to:

• Lower costs
• The avoidance of the latest trends or fads.
• A repeatable investment methodology.
• Comfort that the day-to-day management of your money is the responsibility of fund managers that are supported by Nobel prize-winning economists.

We can also adopt our philosophy for you if you would like a more ethical investment approach.

However, our independence means that if you require a more bespoke investment strategy or a have an existing plan that does not have access to our preferred investment approach, we can put alternative suitable investment strategies in place for you.

If you pay for an ongoing service, we can ensure your portfolios are rebalanced every year to ensure they remain invested as per your chosen risk level. If you choose not to pay for an ongoing service, we will try to ensure your money is invested in multi-asset funds that match your chosen risk level, so that portfolio rebalancing is not needed.

Summary

Working with a professional financial planner provides expertise and peace of mind. We build multi decade trust-based relationships with our clients.  We get to know what really matters most to them and their families, what they are trying to achieve in life and help them to achieve it.

Our relationships are often the longest standing relationships our clients have.  They lean on us for so much more than the financial plans we cultivate and manage for them.  This doesn’t happen without trust.

Considering all areas included in the assessment of value, we believe the service provided is demonstrating value overall and our service proposition along with this value statement has been approved by our network, Best Practice IFA Group Ltd.