We have been interviewing for additional staff in recent months and will appoint soon. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any concerns or questions over this news.

This is a presentation I have now done in various locations around the country, but have been playing around with Prezi’s and having recently introduced my 3rd son Fred to them as a way of presenting his Year 7 history project, I thought it was about time I revamped the presentation from powerpoint to a Prezi.

I really like the look and feel of the resulting Prezi and makes Powerpoint feel the poor, tired and out-dated cousin – certainly can’t imagine using Powerpoint any more. Have a look for yourself here and let me know your thoughts. The feedback I got from the delegates afterwards was very positive – I found it a more enjoyable way to deliver and the videos all work seamlessly which can’t be said for Powerpoint!

Again, the Institute have commissioned a YouGov consumer survey in conjunction with National Savings & Investments (NS&I).

Check out the FPW facebook page to see the different activities planned throughout the week and to find out how to get involved.

One of his key messages was that with a very few notable exceptions (more in a second) the only way we can gain the necessary insight into what consumer’s products & services they need to achieve what they want to achieve is to engage with them as intimately as possible.

He gave two examples of the “rare genius” individuals that had the talent and innate insight to bypass this engagement process. The first was Henry Ford who is famously reported as having said “if I had asked them what they wanted, they’d have told me “faster horses”!”.

The other was Steve Jobs. As we all know, yesterday Mr Jobs passed away. In the plethora of eulogies, I came across the following video of a speech he gave in 2005 at a Stanford graduation ceremony. I believe this should be obligatory viewing in every school.

How different would the world be if everybody internalised these ideas and lived a life they love!

If you want to short-cut, fast forward to 8:50 and watch from there.

Enjoy

We have just returned from attending the IFP’s annual conference at Celtic Manor, further to which we are delighted to report:

Accredited Financial Planning Firm

The conference saw the IFP launch a register of Accredited firm’s where consumers can be assured of receiving the very highest quality of financial planning. In the IFP’s words: “The Institute of Financial Planning recognises these firms as leaders in the profession”. We are pleased to report that we are one of the first firms to pass the IFP’s rigid entry criteria (only 25 have!). We hope our clients are reassured to see that we are recognised as a firm that “does the job properly”.

David Norton Award

In addition we came a very close second in the much sought after “David Norton Award for Building Excellence” – a national award for firms who are en-route to excellence, judged by a team of our peers and greatly competed for. We were very pleased to have progressed as far as we did, but encouraged that somebody else obviously has more work to do than us!

Paraplanner of the Year

Gary receiving Paraplanner of the Year Award from IFP President Marlene Sharlton & Martyn Harrison (Axa)

Our financial analyst (or paraplanner to those in the profession), Gary Tunstall is a key part of the Brook-Dobson Brear team. We are very proud and delighted for him personally, that he was awarded the coveted Paraplanner of the Year Award 2011 – also a national award against stiff competition.

IFP Board

Last but by no means least, Andrew was appointed to the board of the Institute – voted by its membership.

All in all not a bad week. Hopefully this serves to reinforce that Brook-Dobson Brear are serious about the job of assisting our clients in planning for now and the future. We recognise that to continue as our client’s Personal Finance Director we need to remain at the top of our game and if there are any ideas about how we could improve then we would be delighted to hear them. At the same time if you have friends, family or colleagues who you think could benefit from a Personal FD then we would welcome the introduction.

I hope you will join me in congratulating Gary and Andrew

I explained the form that Lifestyle Financial Planning takes at Brook-Dobson Brear, that we explain it as providing a “Personal Finance Director service that helps ensure your material success translates into true success” and our two niche markets that we deliver this service to is Executive’s of large retail businesses such as Asda, Sainsbury’s, House of Fraser, Iceland, Asos etc and owners of successful small / SME businesses (Business owners).

The slides are here, the opening video, middle and closing.

Yesterday, we had an annual “Forward Planning Meeting” with one of our clients (we don’t do reviews as by definition they are backwards looking and there isn’t much any of us can do to change that. As I tweeted earlier in the week “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there” – Charles Kettering).

As per normal we started off with them completing our “Spiders Web” to help evaluate how happy (or otherwise) they currently are with various different aspects of their lives. This provided some interesting insights and a great discussion about what was really important to them (because its not about the money) and some things that needed to change.

We then went on to consider their cashflow and stress tested several different scenarios as well as some housekeeping issues re getting better returns on cash etc. They left with homework to come back to me with the joint vision of their ideal future lifestyle, rather than the compromised one that they currently have (a realisation from this meeting).

A great meeting, lots covered and a clear plan of action to provide even greater clarity for their future lives and organising the money to make this a reality.

The icing on the cake, however, arrived this morning in a follow up email from them. As you may have noticed, we have been asking clients for some feedback / quotes that we can use and attribute on the website. Well this is what they said:

“We came from London to Yorkshire in 2000, leaving a trail of financial advisers behind us, but it was far too long before we came to BDB. We regard them as the source of advice we were so badly lacking. We find Andrew clear, thoughtful, ethical, patient and precise, alert to our true personal wishes, expert at extracting those from us, utterly reliable in helping us to achieve them. A great team!”

What a great job I have!

The feedback from previous sessions has been fantastic and today’s also seemed to go down well.

For those interested, the slides are here, and the video’s Five, BDB and Lost Generation. 

Annual Allowance

The annual allowance determines the limit on contributions that may be made in a tax year and benefit from tax relief. From 6 April 2011 the annual allowance will reduce from £255,000 to £50,000; this includes both employer and employee contributions.

There is potentially an opportunity for clients who wish to contribute in excess of this amount to take advantage of the newly introduced ability to carry forward unused allowance from the previous three tax years.

Contributions over £50,000 and not covered by the Carry Forward facility, will incur a charge linked to the individual’s marginal tax rate.

Lifetime Allowance

The lifetime allowance is an individual’s total permitted tax-relieved pension savings and from 6 April 2012, this figure falls from £1.8 million to £1.5 million. Any pension fund over this amount will suffer a charge of effectively 55% whether taken as income or as a lump sum (assuming higher rate taxpayer status).

Fixed protection will allow those who suspect their total pension worth to be over £1.5m when they take benefits to fix their lifetime allowance at £1.8m. The downside is that no further contributions can be made after 5th April 2012.

Individuals who previously registered for enhanced, primary or lump sum protection of pension benefits at the time of the ‘A day’ changes in 2006 will not lose this, although it will only be based on a lifetime allowance of £1.8 million going forward.

Annuity Changes

As part of the changes the Government has announced the end of the requirement to buy an annuity at age 75. These measures come into effect on 6 April 2011. Unsecured Pension (USP) and ‘Alternatively Secured Pension’ (ASP) will be replaced by a single type of income withdrawal called ‘Drawdown Pension’. There will no longer be a requirement to take a minimum pension.

Welcome to the new Brook-Dobson Brear website – we hope you like it!

The News section will be an important way of keeping our clients (current and potential) updated on interesting developments in the world of financial planning and beyond.

Please do let us know if there is anything you would like to see in this section.