Financial planning is a multi-step process that provides you with two important things:

• An in-depth review of your current position.
• A roadmap that shows you how to reach your goals and objectives for the future.

Financial planning is a process as opposed to an event.

First, we focus on your goals, objectives, values, and priorities. Your immediate goal may be to reduce tax, current and future income taxes or to save for your children.

University education may be an intermediate goal and your long-term goal to save enough for a comfortable retirement is likely to be one of your most important contributions.

Another great goal is creating wealth and leaving a legacy for family or perhaps a charity. You may already be on the way to achieving your goals and simply need a new strategy, professional insight, or a sense check of your plans. Whatever your unique position is, everyone needs a regular series of reviews. That is why we do an in-depth review.

Next you need to know how to set about and working towards this. by focusing on cash flow, investments, taxes, pensions and retirement plans, loans and mortgages, estate planning, insurance matters, savings, and deposits. We can design and help implement a financial plan for you. We then manage this for you going forward.

It is vital that you find the right fit for your financial planning needs. This is critical and this relationship is important for us too. Or ideal client is a pleasure to work with, interesting both personally and financial and one that values and appreciates our professional advice.

Clients come to us because they recognise that they are not experts in financial planning or implementation and want to work with experts who do. Our ideal client understands risk, is prepared to work for the long term and believes in rebalancing investments and a balanced portfolio.

It is, but the benefit is that if you follow and review your plan in a disciplined manner you will be able to reach your goals.

Our experience is that the failure rate of this strategy is high, off the charts in fact. Our house view shaped over many years, is that we cannot recommend implementing this on your own and we will not work on this basis, the stakes are too high.

As you progress and build for the future things can seem more complicated than at first. You need to be sure you are on track. Perhaps you no longer have the time and inclination to do things yourself. We help with the financial plans and investments of many sophisticated clients and they find this beneficial.

As financial planners and investment advisers we believe that the purpose of a client’s investment portfolio is to find current and or future financial objectives. The design of the portfolios must consider financial objectives, attitude to risk, time scales, capacity for loss, needs for current income and liquidity as well as other considerations such as tax and environmental, social and governance matters.

None of us can predict the future and we do not think we and any investment managers will make the right decision every time. We do believe that by studying historical trends and approaches of successful investment managers can provide valuable insight. The appropriate degree of asset allocation for your goals and risk tolerance is the most important component in what we do, we firmly believe that having a well-diversified, well balanced portfolio, following long term buy and hold strategies and having patience will increase the likelihood of achieving your long-term goals.

Our initial meeting is free. Fees will be discussed at this meeting and if we are to proceed these will be outlined in a cot of service and fees document or in exceptional circumstances by project cost. Total fees will vary from client to client based on your specific needs or the complexity involved.

Once implementation has been completed most relationships will evolve into an ongoing wealth managed relationship with fees charged as a percentage of assets.

In all cases our work is collegiate, and all our advisers may work on some aspect of your initial in-depth review, implementation, and financial plan. At the initial stage you will be introduced to advisers and administrators but after this stage you will have a nominated adviser and admin contact. You are welcome to contact us at any time.

We will meet on a regular basis to review your plan and check that it is on track to meet your goals, no one knows the future but planning for it gives you the best change of reaching your goals.

We have been managing client portfolios since 1992. Using a variety of techniques that have been honed and improved over time.

Our policy is to decide on investment strategy and then outsource the management of this to professional fund managers.

Generally, the answer is almost certainly yes. Your investments will include UK and overseas shares, gilts, infrastructure, and other assets.

This should contain a broad spread of assets and be managed in line with our philosophy, your attitude to risk and need for risk, timelines, and goals.

Our clients’ discussions are many and varied, no two are the same. At all times we will let you know if we disagree with an action you wish to pursue if we feel this will cause you financial harm. We are not yes men.

Yes, we take environmental, social and governance matters seriously. Our portfolios and fund manager partners cannot screen out every perceived area of investment that might be regarded as non-green, but we can ensure through them that economic activity is accountable and take in issues such as sustainability, quality of life, using new technologies safely and thinking about the future.

We feel cash in the bank is the right place for 6 months spare expenditure, a holiday fund and tax purposes in the next 12 months.

Once this is covered then any spare income or capital can be invested and the simple answer is the longer the better, at least 3-5 years but preferably more. The longer you leave investments the more risk you can afford to take.

Yes, we do, we offer a comprehensive mortgage management service covering all aspects of buying a home, first time buyers, remortgage, buy to let and equity release. In most cases this will be your most important financial investment and we can also help with legal matters, stamp duty costs and surveys. We are independent and have access to the whole of market. Our mortgage adviser is Alison Mitchell, and she can be reached at alison@robmac.co.uk