PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE

Advisers will bamboozle me with jargon

  • 28 April 2020
  • 10 mins

From school children in the playground to politicians discussing a new bill, every group of people has their own jargon or slang that is crystal clear to those in the know, but a mystery to everyone else.

As financial advisers, we know that you are probably very knowledgeable and experienced in your field. You may be an expert in contract law, surgery, Italian fabric trends or property renovation, for example. You may have a great head for business.

Just as we won’t know much about your area of expertise, we don’t expect you to know a great deal about ours – the management of money and investments. Rest assured, we don’t expect you to know the difference between a income (passive) fund or an growth(active) fund, an index tracker or a unit trust. It’s our job to explain these things to you.

Yes, the financial management industry had a terrible reputation in the past for confusing people with complex language, over-complicated products, small print and claims that over-promised. But strict regulations have now overhauled the industry completely. Not only do we have a duty to explain everything to you to make sure you understand things fully – we really want to do this, as that’s how we can work best together.

Myth buster: we use clear, straightforward language and make sure you understand

When we give financial advice, we put you at the centre. We want to get an informed picture of where you are financially and where you would like to be. We want to talk in ways you understand, so instead of asking about your ‘dependants’, we’ll ask about your children and the other vulnerable members of your family. When we’re discussing your retirement plans, we won’t go on about ‘retirement provision’, we’ll talk about your pensions.

If the letters SIPP don’t mean much to you, we’ll explain exactly how a self-invested personal pension works, using simple terms like an envelope that you place your investments inside.

Doesn’t ‘passing on your wealth’ sound much less daunting than ‘estate or inheritance tax planning’? We want to keep everything straightforward for you. Discussing money can make people feel quite uncomfortable enough, let alone bombarding them with phrases and names that don’t mean anything to them.

We want to make it not just comfortable, but even enjoyable to discuss where you are financially and how to get to where you want to be.

We want to understand your commitments, present and future, as well as your unique tax position. When we know all about you and where you would like to go, then we can start to help you design your very own strategy.

We want your financial plan and its products and solutions to be truly helpful to you. And, of course, we want to make sure that you fully understand all our recommendations.

Our goal is to make financial planning simple to understand, so you can get on with achieving your dreams.

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