Fair Value Assessment

Introduction

This document is aimed at providing you with a brief overview of Opus Gold Limited and to introduce our services.

Opus Gold Limited was founded in September 2010 by Simon Hasler, a Chartered Qualified Independent Financial Adviser.  The firm’s registered office is based in Hampshire; however, our client office is based in Brighton with an additional office in Horsham.  We serve clients in London and the southeast of England.

We specialise in providing independent financial advice services covering retirement and investments with embedded tax efficiency for clients seeking financial freedom and security.

We specialise in building long term relationships with my clients to help them meet their goals and objectives, emphasising a personal face to face service at all times.

Opus Gold Limited has over 15 years’ experience in the financial services industry, having advised and invested on behalf of clients who’s needs and objectives have been far reaching. We work together with clients, their families and other professional services as a triage in order to providing a robust delivery of services to enhance our client’s financial wellbeing.

We believe we provide our clients with high levels of value through a combination of:

• Tailored personal advice.
• Face-to-face client meetings.
• Exceptional service.
• Expert knowledge.
• Tax savings.
• Robust investment solutions.
• Financial coaching.
• Managing investment and industry risks.
• A business relationship with my PA Lyndsey Bond to provide a trusted relationship with the IFA and support staff.
• Financial freedom & security.
• Peace of mind.
• Trusted relationship.
• An adviser who is always looking at his client’s best interest.
• Extending the advice proposition to close family and friends.
• Care & professional help and guidance following life changing events.
• Triage services between client, adviser and their other professional connections, such as accountants and solicitors.
• Yearly meetings, in person.
• Working with other specialists such as solicitors and tax specialists.

 

The Value of our Service 

Simon Hasler a Chartered Financial Adviser is also the Director of Opus Gold Limited. He holds a wide array of qualifications and professional memberships, which demonstrates his expert knowledge, skills and commitment to providing the highest level of service to his clients. He has been a financial adviser since 1989.

We are committed to the highest standards of professional competency, ethical standards, and integrity. We provide our clients with deep levels of knowledge and experience, applied to them and their needs. We know this gives our clients a great deal of comfort, which extends to their close family.

Simon Hasler remains up to date in any changes to taxation or government legislation that may affect his client’s financial situation. This he imparts to the financial advice he gives to his clients.

Simon Hasler can give advice in a wide range of financial planning areas with the exception of occupational pensions, equity release, long term care or mortgages.

Best Practice Member Firm Business

Best Practice IFA Group Limited provide an institutional regulatory supervision, compliance framework and oversight service which provides us with a high level of regulatory assurance and leading-edge client management systems.

This high quality and financially sound organisation ultimately provide us with a high level of assurance and comfort around the regulatory framework of the proposition and services we deliver to you, our clients as required by the financial services regulator.

By leveraging the quality and services of an organisation like Benchmark, a Schroders plc group company, we have comfort that we will remain at the leading edge of our profession, ensuring we maintain a “Best Practice” approach to serving our clients.

Many of the benefits we derive, we see as having direct added value and relevance for our clients, including:

• The provision of an independent complaints handling process for all of our clients,
• Enhanced Professional Indemnity Insurance
• Integrated client technology systems, including the Wealth Platform systems.
• Independent compliance supervision of our advisers and the suitability of our client advice.
• Additional protection via the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) and Professional Indemnity Insurance.

 

Your Proposition – Initial Advice (Onboarding)

Below is a summary of our initial advice process which we follow with every new client and sets the baseline for an on-going value-based relationship with all of our clients.

• Initial conversation.
• Initial review meeting, in person, which will cover a full fact-finding meeting.
• Establish your needs and objectives and any gaps.
• Identify your needs and objectives and any gaps in a client’s financial plan.
• Establish clients’ priorities and compare these to our professional view of your needs and priorities.
• Establish your attitude to investment risk and capacity for loss.
• Analysis of existing planning needs.
• Obtain information on existing products and contracts.
• Research of potential solutions.
• Construct a written financial planning report.
• Meet to discuss the financial plan and recommendations.
• Agree implementation and the ongoing business relationship.

 

A great deal of time is spent with clients before they decide to engage with us in order to carry out the initial advice work. This is a period of time that we invest in getting to know our prospective clients, as well as a good opportunity for them to assess us, our services, our fees and our ability to assist them.

Where the prospective client does not see value in a long-standing business relationship with us or we feel the client does not fit within our service proposition, we agree not to continue to provide an ongoing service.

We provide clarity to our prospective clients through the provision of required disclosures, an explanation of the services we offer, how we work, our qualifications, experience and standards of professionalism, as well as our service proposition and fees.

The initial consultation is a fact-finding meeting for both the client and Opus Gold. 

Advisory Services – Annual Review Service

For Opus Gold and our clients, this is a fundamental element of our financial planning business relationship.  The annual review provides us with the opportunity to sit down with you and your family, if required, to reflect on the past year and to re-establish your needs and objectives for the forthcoming year and beyond.

The meeting is conducted in person and during our annual review we will provide a summary of your financial contracts which will include a performance review mapped against the chosen level of investment risk.

We will discuss any concerns and provide peace of mind and reassurance. If required, we will adapt your financial planning needs to take into consideration changes which may be required.

We consider the outlook for markets and the economic landscape and changing tax regulations which might impact on your current plans. We make sure everything we are doing remains suitable and is aimed at helping you and your family to achieve your financial goals.

This provides an opportunity to re-establish your financial planning status for the year ahead and beyond. This could include plans for your family, begin to consider key life stages and events and how we might need to adapt our plans for them to be funded.

Services that are included in our annual review include:

• A face-to-face meeting at least annually which we will contact you to arrange. In exceptional circumstances when requested we will conduct a telephone/team’s review.

• This will need to be conducted whilst you are in the UK and the agenda will typically include:

• A review of your current situation/update of Fact Find including any changes.

• A review of your goals and objectives.

• A review of your attitude to risk, identifying any changes in your profile and confirming the ongoing appropriateness of your portfolio against your stated attitude to risk / capacity for loss.

• A review of previously recommended arrangements and confirmation of their ongoing suitability (authorised areas only). 

• A review of your investment performance against your objectives and circumstances, including your desired level of investment risk compared to the level of risk taken.

• The provision of a quarterly investment summary detailing ongoing performance of your chosen portfolios and any changes to the portfolio composition where altered.

• Annual valuations.

• Confirmation of advice costs and charges.

• Ongoing access to your adviser throughout the year to discuss matters that arise on an ad-hoc basis.

• Full discussion regarding your current tax position and tax favoured products including available allowances where applicable. During the year you will also be provided with:

 

Advisory Services – Inheritance Tax and Estate Planning – including Wills and Lasting Power of Attorneys

• Where applicable full review of any family trust

• We work with you and your other professional advisors such as your Accountant or Solicitor to help deliver robust and wide-ranging estate tax planning.

 

Maintaining this professional relationship provides you with a greater understanding of the strategies we implement in order to help you achieve your financial goals taking into account the understanding of HMRC tax rules in relation to you and your estate’s assets.

We can help to understand the value of future liabilities and design and implement strategies to reduce this burden, often saving clients thousands of pounds in potential tax charges.  This provides real value and peace of mind that your loved ones will be looked after when they are gone.

We also assist with your Estate and Gift planning ensuring these are made in a timely manner.

Advisory Services – Retirement Planning

A key life phase. This is an area of planning which we invest a significant amount of time in. Reviewing this for our clients every year is important as you normally only have one chance at getting it right. Checking on progress of plans and investments you have made to fund your life in retirement is what we do. This includes adapting to market swings and modelling various impact scenarios.  Retirement planning is one of the most valuable services Opus Gold Limited provides for our clients.

Our clients who are currently in retirement, are following our advice and drawing on their assets to help them live a stress-free life in retirement. Our retirement planning takes the worry away from our clients.

Advisory Services – Family Protection Planning 

It may be an uncomfortable subject, but we all need to plan for the unforeseen in life and how this would impact ourselves and our family. We can help you to consider different scenarios which could occur and identify if there are any shortfalls in your protection planning.  We can explain what options you have to address these shortfalls and how they would ensure you and your family are able to maintain your lifestyle and still meet your longer-term financial goals, in the event of ill health or death.

Access to professional tools and paraplanning resources/staff to conduct analysis and research to find the best/most suitable product.  Use of trusts to provide ease of access, control etc.

Advisory Services – Tax Efficiency 

Making sure we consider tax reliefs and allowances, enables clients to maximise their after-tax wealth. If you don’t take advantage of annual tax reliefs, then you could quite literally be paying more tax than you need to. We can evidence the amount of tax you have potentially saved through our planning.

Our services include:

• An annual tax report – provided to you and your Accountant.

• Annual P60.

• A full review of Capital Gains Tax planning.

 

Where possible we ensure all clients utilise available allowance annually, these include:

• ISA allowances.

• Annual pension allowances including carried forward allowances if available. 

• Lifetime Allowance protection and management.

• Inheritance Tax mitigation.

 

We provide a diary system to confirm when gifts are made to ensure ongoing monitoring in the future.  Where appropriate family trusts can be set up for generational wealth transfer. 

Advisory Services – Market and Product Research and Analysis

To recommend the most suitable solutions for our clients, we use professional research tools to conduct research and analysis, also taking into consideration our client’s attitude to risk, provider and product solutions. This ensures we can make recommendations to best meet your needs and goals now and in the future.

Philosophy and Investment Research

Opus Gold Limited completes individual research to make sure we stay on track to meet your goals.  We tend to your investments while you give all the other things in life your full attention.

We adopt a blend of active and passive investment management strategies in our client solutions to ensure clients receive the best of both longer-term strategic asset allocations and the propensity to outperform through active management.

Where appropriate we will use appropriate indices and benchmarks as these provide a reflection of how client portfolios are performing against similar strategies.

Our investment advice is researched to provide the most suitable investment solutions to cater for our client’s needs and the appropriate due diligence on the products that we recommend. This ultimately provides our clients great comfort and peace of mind that their investments are being managed by investment professionals and their financial plans are being looked after by highly qualified financial planning experts.

This is the value that a business relationship with Opus Gold provides.

Discretionary Fund Management / Multi Asset Portfolios etc.

We can recommend discretionary investment management solutions for clients as well as the Multi-Asset portfolio structures. We believe this adds value because it allows us to monitor them and for the investment team to focus solely on investment analysis and portfolio construction. 

Our approach means that our time is focused on you. We let the professional investment managers monitor the markets on a day-to-day basis which we oversee. We feel this combination delivers you the best value.

Rebalancing

Auto-rebalancing of your portfolio on a regular basis, to reset your investments back to your agreed initial investment mix. We will also proactively consider the tax consequences of these actions and will ensure we are taking advantage of any tax reliefs or allowances that you are entitled to.  You will be provided with quarterly investments updates.

This is a proactive investment management service which helps to keep your investments on track to meet your goals and saves you money through utilisation of your annual Capital Gains Tax allowances.

Helps to ensure your investments and selection of funds / asset classes remain aligned to your chosen attitude to risk and capacity for loss.

Helps to reset your investments on a regular basis back to your strategic investment plans, by adjusting dynamically for swings in markets.

Again, we have incorporated rebalancing structure to assist with the mitigation of Capital Gains Tax.

Technology

One of the reasons we chose to work with Benchmark Capital, was for their technology, something they have won numerous awards for. Ultimately backed by Schroders, we have every confidence that the security of our client’s information within Benchmark’s client management technology systems, is in very safe hands.  This decision is something we know our clients expect us to get right. It’s incredibly important to them and a reason they feel safe working with us.

Our client management systems create adviser efficiency which ensures we can deliver our service without having to have higher charges.

We provide client technology such as a secure online portal via a wealth platform which is assessed via secured personal log in information. This enables our clients to securely access their portfolio information such as values, holdings, performance data including the risk being taken at their convenience at any time of day. 

The Wealth Platform also encompasses a secure document portal for all clients.

Continuous Professional Development.

We commit to meeting our ongoing Continuous Professional Development (CPD) requirements, and keep abreast of industry, market, regulatory and legislative/fiscal changes throughout the year. This is essential to delivering the highest quality of service and advice to our clients, who benefit from receiving up to date information and advice that is designed to constantly ensure they are best placed to meet their goals.

Working with Us

Working with a professional financial planner provides expertise and peace of mind.  We build a personal trust-based relationships with our clients. We get to know what really matters most to them and their families.  What they are trying to achieve in life and help them to achieve it.

Our relationships are often the longest standing business relationships our clients have, some in excess of 20 years. They lean on us for so much more than the financial plans we cultivate and manage for them.  This doesn’t happen without trust.

We focus on delivering exceptional levels of service to all our clients, ensuring they are getting excellent value, for example our response times to client queries and communications are a priority for us.

Our clients benefit from a consistent service where they have access to expert knowledge relevant to their circumstances and requirements.

We provide our clients with access to robust investment solutions that our clients can take comfort from knowing their investments are being professionally managed and monitored.

Our advice considers and is designed to optimise enhanced tax efficiency which provides tremendous value to our clients, year on year.

Ultimately our clients know that by working with us, their financial arrangements are being expertly looked after which enables them to have confidence about achieving financial independence and security, as well as peace of mind.

Summary

Overall, we are confident in our ability to deliver real value and service to our clients through a combination of both clearly identifiable tangible as well as intangible benefits. We remain committed to serving our clients to the very best of our abilities and to delivering exceptional client outcomes.