What is financial planning

Financial planning by an independent financial adviser (IFA) means receiving unbiased, tailored advice across the whole market to help you manage your money, investments, and future goals.

Lowndes Halsden’s independent financial advisers will provide a holistic approach to your entire financial situation, including income, savings, pensions, investments, insurance, and debts, to create a plan that supports both short-term needs and long-term aspirations.

Unlike restricted advisers who only recommend products from certain providers, our independent advisers can select from the whole market, ensuring their recommendations are not limited or influenced by a single company and that the advice you receive is unbiased.

Our professional advisers create personalised strategies by tailoring solutions to your circumstances, whether that’s retirement planning, tax efficiency, estate planning, or saving for a future specific event. We promote very high standards within the company and are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which requires us to act in your best interest.

We offer many services such as:-

• Pensions & Retirement Planning: Helping you calculate your retirement requirements and structuring pension contributions, drawdowns or annuities. Plus, making sure that there is nothing that needs to be performed prior to this structuring.
• Investments & Savings: Advising on all aspects of investments, including diversified portfolios, risk management, investment styles and growth strategies.
• Insurance & Protection: Ensuring you and your family are financially secure against unexpected events.
• Tax & Estate Planning: Navigating complex tax rules and ensuring wealth passes efficiently to beneficiaries.
• Mortgages: Advice on the best borrowing, ensuring affordability and suitability.

Why use an independent financial adviser

• Freedom of choice: Access to the widest range of products available.
• Trust & Transparency: Clear fee structures, transparent advice which is also given in a written report that you can peruse at your own leisure and ask all the questions you need before you make any informed final decisions.
• Develop a long-term relationship: This allows an ever-adapting plan which can be altered as your life changes, career shifts, family growth, or when approaching retirement.
• Peace of mind: Knowing your Lowndes Halsden adviser is legally bound to act in your best interest.

Working with you

Although we can provide advice on all areas of financial planning, you will be given the opportunity to prioritise your own financial planning objectives. At Lowndes Halsden, we believe the best advice is holistic advice.

Sometimes existing clients may want to review only a specific planning area, so we will provide focused advice tailored to your needs at that time. If we provide focused advice, we may not consider any other areas of financial planning. We may only advise you on the areas you have asked us to address. On this basis, our advice may have been different if we had conducted a full review or considered other areas of financial planning simultaneously. If the above happens, it will be fully explained during your appointment. However, over 99% of our appointments are conducted using a holistic approach and therefore, all areas will be covered.

Our experienced staff will monitor the processing of your application(s) through to policy issue and ensure you finally receive any related necessary policy documentation. At any point in the process, if any further charges are to apply, these will be confirmed and agreed to before any further work is undertaken.

Your experienced adviser will be able to help you with your Money Purchase Annual Allowance (MPAA), pension saving limits, previous pension lifetime allowances, ISA allowance, dividend allowance and capital gains, as well as tax-efficient saving options.

A key element of financial planning is conducting periodic reviews of your circumstances to ensure the course of action taken remains appropriate, as your objectives and circumstances will likely change over time. We advise having at least an annual review, which we believe is a crucial underpinning of our service.

Our experience, and that of many others, shows that regardless of your income bracket, clients who receive regular financial advice are consistently more likely to feel positive about their finances than those who do not.

All of the above can be discussed during an appointment with your adviser, who will explain which service is best for you.

For more information about any of the above, please email us using the Contact Us page.