Our Approach
Our Process
Planning and Design
1. Spending time with you and asking lots of questions. This helps us to determine what you want to achieve. We also need to find out about your existing financial arrangements. We call this “knowing our client”.
2. Carrying out research and analysis. We look in depth at all of your existing financial arrangements before calculating what financial resources you will need, and when, to meet your objectives.
3. Providing you with a bespoke financial plan or advisory report. This is a comprehensive report answering all of your important questions. We take pride in our ability to communicate our advice in plain English.
4. We provide specific recommendations on the most appropriate action you should take. This might include changing existing arrangements or filling gaps with new financial products. We are always independent and impartial in our recommendations, this means any product solutions we recommend are thoroughly researched and selected from the whole of the market.
Construction
5. Implementing any advice we have identified. Once we have agreed with you a course of action, we put in place any recommended plans or arrangements. We do this in a cost-effective and efficient way, so our clients can pay attention to what is important, rather than dealing with reams of paperwork.
Maintenance
6. Keeping your plans under regular review. The best financial plans are those that are reviewed regularly and kept on track to achieve your objectives.
Most importantly, we keep things under regular review. All of our clients are offered the opportunity to receive an annual review. This is supported by a meeting with their Financial Adviser along with a review report. It confirms any further recommendations that might be needed to keep your plans on track. This is your opportunity to monitor progress, update your plans and keep your investments under control. Of course, we can arrange to meet with you more frequently if required.
Who We Work With
We work with a sensible number of hugely diverse but also very interesting clients.
Some are employers running their own businesses. Many are executives in large companies and are used to making important decisions on a daily basis.
Many clients have reached the stage in life where they are getting close to retirement and may need to generate additional income from their resources. Many clients are already enjoying a healthy, active and enjoyable retirement, without the concerns of where their income will come from next month or next year.
Personal Clients
Lifestyle Financial Planning
Many of us you can realistically expect to live to a greater age than our parents or grandparents and enjoy a lifestyle they could only have dreamed of.
However, in practice, this is only possible if you have arranged your affairs so that you will be financially independent and able to afford to maintain your lifestyle whatever happens, for the duration of your life.
Everyone has concerns about their finances.
- “How much do I have?”
- “What will happen in the future?”
- “How long will it last?”
- “Can I retire early?”
- “Will I be able to do what I want when I retire?”
Lifestyle Financial Planning is about achieving life’s most important and goals, putting life before money, and not the other way round.
Many people have no idea where they are heading financially. They may have assets, investments, and income, but many people have no idea what it all means or what sort of financial future they are heading for. Lifestyle Financial Planning aims to bring financial clarity as you go through life.
Lifestyle Financial Planning is based on the premise that advisors should first discover a client’s most essential goals in life before formulating a financial plan, so a client’s finances fully support those goals.
At Integrated we believe that this approach forms the solid foundations of any on-going financial plan. It starts with an exploration of your current circumstances, concerns and issues. Together we develop the vision of where you want to be and how you want to lead your life. This is at the centre of our process.
Current and future lifestyle expenditure is central to the planning process, as is the development, implementing and monitoring of a clear and realistic investment policy.
Some financial advisers often just focus on the numbers, budgeting, investments, products, taxes, or insurance without exploring the bigger, more important picture. While these aspects are important we must look at what your most essential goals are first and build from there.
Business Clients
A world of protection and planning
One of the very few certainties in business is that, over time, organisations seldom remain the same. They grow, they diversify, they look to new marketplaces. Key people come into the business and, eventually, leave it. The drive for change brings its rewards, and also its risks.
We will take time to understand your financial goals and provide solutions. We will guide you through the advantages, including taxation, of the various corporate options and work closely with your other professional advisers.
We believe that protection and planning is at the foundation of strong business growth. Through our dedicated approach, we understand your needs, working closely with you to help achieve your goals.
We can help you make the right decisions on issues that often shape the prosperity of your business and those associated with it for years to come:
- How resilient is your business to unforeseen setbacks?
- How effectively are your funds being utilised?
- How will you maintain protection as your business grows and expands?
- How carefully have you planned for the futures of those who run things now, and those who may one day take over?
No two businesses are the same. That’s why we take the time to understand your needs and priorities. We can then create individual solutions to support and protect you and the business.
The risks you prefer not to think about
Unforeseen events can hit even the best run companies and often very hard.
- What would be the financial impact if a director, partner or other key employee were to be lost from your business due to death, critical illness or an accident?
- What if illness or accident stopped a key person from returning to work for a prolonged period?
- If one of the director/shareholders were to die or suffer a critical illness, would you be able to retain control and ownership of the business going forward?
- What would be the impact on the business if a major shareholder dies and their shares pass to their spouse or children?
We believe that fully exploring these areas is vital to the future security of your business both now and in the future.
Are your surplus business funds working as hard as they can?
Today’s good investments are tomorrow’s extra capital. With the continuing low bank interest rates it can be challenging to get a respectable return on your retained profits. Everything we do is based upon a thorough understanding of your needs and goals. We’ll work with you to establish your attitude to risk and understand your risk tolerance and capacity for loss. We will discuss your cash flows and any future projects that you expect to need funding for and can then where appropriate help plan, design, construct and maintain an investment portfolio that meets your objectives.
Looking after you and your employees
We can also help you design and construct an employee benefit package to include pension schemes, death in service and private medical insurance. This can help you retain your most valuable staff and at the same time attract new ones.
Under the Pensions Act 2008, every employer in the UK must put certain staff into a pension scheme and contribute towards it. This is called ‘automatic enrolment’. If you employ at least one person you are an employer and you have certain legal duties. This can feel like a minefield for many employers. We have the knowledge and expertise to help you with this and keep you legal.
As well as providing pension schemes for directors and employees, we can also guide you through issues surrounding individual pensions when you reach retirement age. This includes the new pension freedoms and drawdown alternatives to traditional annuities.