People often ask me what it is that a financial adviser actually does?
Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those ‘day in the life of’ pieces where at 5:45 am I’m up running a half marathon, before doing my hour a day helping the homeless. I mean I’m not a bad human (I hope), but a typical day in my life would either be a) probably a bit dull for you all, or b) full of exaggeration. So let’s not do that.
But what do we do as a Chartered Financial Planner? Well, right now, I’m writing content for the website, whilst waiting for a new prospect to arrive at the office to explain why they have chosen to come talk to us, and decide whether to work with us.
Much of my life consists of reviewing a clients situation, checking that they are happy, that they are still doing the right things, whether their situation has changed, and reconfirming that what we are doing is still correct, or making changes when required. Much of it fairly consistent from year to year.
However occasionally legislation lobs a small (and very occasionally, nuclear) grenade our way, and we have to do something more significant – sometimes for multiple people all at once.
Yesterday whilst perusing my emails for exciting news from providers that might be of interest to me, an article caught my eye. It was (obviously) promoting a product, but was doing so by promoting their technical expertise (a bit like this post then, oh the irony). They were highlighting that post April 2024 we now have new pension allowances, and the old lifetime allowances are dead.
I think I’ve posted before about the new LSA (Lump Sum Allowance) and LSDBA (Lump Sum Death Benefit Allowance). I even talked about the TTFAC (Transitional Tax Free Amount Certificate), and how beneficial it could be for some clients, particularly those who have used all their old Lifetime Allowance (you know it’s abolished right? Well, ‘evolved’ might be a better word). So this provider was putting forth about all of that, and making a case to advisers that they were the ones you needed to speak to, as experts in the field.
The TTFAC isn’t something to be taken lightly. You are either better off with one, worse off with one, or it has no impact whatsoever, but there are a couple of key points – the first is that once you have it, that’s it, it’s yours for life, and there is no getting rid of it – so only get one if you’re better off with it. The second is that you can only apply for one BEFORE you have any crystallisation of pension benefits after 5th April 2024. So it’s a timely, potentially urgent decision with long lasting, possibly serious consequences.
Recipe for disaster right?
And this provider is merrily telling us about it towards the end of July, almost 4 months after the operative date – neatly excluding anyone who decided to take benefits after ‘XYZ’ day or whatever we’re calling the seismic shift in pensions that was 6/4/2024.
I thought we were a bit slow out of the gate honestly – we did a scoping exercise in April, wrote to clients early May, and didn’t get our first TTFAC for clients until the end of May, I think. But we were done (with one hold out, who has been on holiday for a bit, and hasn’t signed the form yet) before the end of June, and before there was any risk of our new government of grownups staging an ‘emergency budget’ and upending everything.
So, what does an adviser actually do? Or at least what does a good adviser do?
We get it done. If there is obvious stuff (ISAs, pension contributions, savings for the future) we advise, and facilitate you getting stuff done. If it is a slightly obscure bit of legislation that will make over £300k difference to your beneficiaries if you die before age 75 – we show you where to sign, explain the issues, and get it done.
I’m not saying we’re all over everything every minute – how tiring would that be, but we get the important stuff done, so you can get on with the much more interesting (to you – we really like this stuff) activities of your life..
