FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

There are many times in life when you may ask yourself “Do I need financial advice?”. A qualified financial adviser gives you access to a wealth of skill and expertise to help you plan or overcome a range of different situations. For example, planning your retirement, buying a property abroad, dealing with a change in personal circumstances, (divorce, inheritance, downsizing), helping to fund children through university, giving money away efficiently etc.

We often say that we are here to help if you don’t feel you have the skills, time or inclination to manage your affairs yourself.  Our clients appreciate the time-saving, peace of mind and added protection that a qualified adviser offers. Clients also like the support from someone who has their best interests at heart and who can provide a range of the most suitable options for their circumstances and personal objectives. This helps clients make an informed choice.

There are many others ways a financial adviser can offer support – this guide here outlines ten ways a financial adviser can help you.

Castlefield provides restricted advice which means that whilst we will advise on a broad range of client needs, the products that we will recommend to meet these needs are restricted to a range of providers. We are confident that this range is comprehensive and suitable for our clients’ needs and is drawn from leading providers and in-house expertise.

We rely upon our investment team’s knowledge to manage our clients’ investments, so whilst we will recommend they look after your money on a day to day basis, they have access to a full range investments – limited only by our thoughtful investment values.

Tax advisory and tax compliance and wills services are not regulated by the FCA.

At Castlefield, we help many of our clients with their existing pension arrangements and other investments. As part of our Initial Advice process we would review your current arrangements and goals to ensure that you have the most suitable policy for what you’re trying to achieve. We look at things like the cost, risk, potential returns and the impact on your tax situation, along with ESG and ethical factors to determine if your current arrangements are still be suitable for you.

We generally offer best value to those looking for an integrated financial planning and investment management service with at least £400,000 to commit, but don’t be put off if you currently have less. We can offer guidance on a wide range of investment options from as little as £50 per month. What’s key is that all our clients and investors would like their money to do good.

This usually comes with the caveat of not wanting to spoil them, but the answer is almost always that it is a great way to put your hard-earned money to good use in a tax efficient way.

This should always be done alongside a carefully considered lifelong financial plan and robust cash flow forecast in place, so you understand how much you can afford to give away with certainty that the proposed gift will not impact your future financial security.

This tends to be a question typically asked by our newer clients, who haven’t received financial advice previously or where their previous financial planners have focused on investment performance in isolation.

At Castlefield we focus on developing an in-depth understanding of our clients and their goals and objectives in the first instance, which helps to develop their lifelong financial plan. These goals and objectives then become central to client meetings and the most important target for our clients. One common interest that most clients share is using their money to do good - or 'thoughtful investing', as we call it. Clients are generally very interested in how ethical their investments are and want to understand more about our ethical approach. Having said that, we compare our performance to that of benchmarks that include ethical and conventional portfolios, so we can see how we are doing compared to a fully diverse peer universe.