Some financial adviser firms recommend and sell their own products. There is nothing specifically wrong with this, although it could be that there are other products on the market which are better value and offer more flexibility.
This is why we believe it is imperative for people to take genuinely independent financial advice.
We look at a recent case where clients were on the verge of transferring a large pension fund through another financial adviser. However, the fact that this adviser was recommending their own pension product, rather than selecting the best one on the market, had raised alarm bells.
Our clients are a husband and wife, and the husband had just been made redundant.
They attended a webinar that we hosted which was designed to help attendees understand the financial considerations of being made redundant.
The clients had an existing financial adviser and already had ISAs and pensions worth about £200,000 with them. They were about to proceed with a pension transfer worth £1.4 million.
However, during his presentation, it was highlighted that Chase de Vere is independent and whole of market, and we don’t have any of our own products to recommend. This was of interest to the clients as they had been recommended to transfer their £1.4 million pension to their financial adviser’s own SIPP and this had raised alarm bells and so they wanted a second opinion.
Independence was incredibly important to the clients. They also really valued the comprehensive financial and inheritance tax planning that we could provide, rather than adopting an asset manager type approach, focused almost exclusively on investment management, as their existing adviser did.
So, the clients chose to work with Chase de Vere, where they knew that they would benefit from genuinely independent financial advice, and that any products that we recommended would be those that we believed were the best choice for the clients from the whole marketplace.
The above is for information only and does not constitute individual financial advice.
The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested.
The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate estate planning.