FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Ultimately we may introduce investments and Trust / Estate planning solutions to you that you might want to include in your Wealth Build & Protect Strategy. However, that’s always some way down our engagement with you. Initially our role is to help you understand the issues, challenges and options open to you in creating a structured plan. We do this by assisting you to prepare a very detailed statement of your current financial position and defining your objectives from now to full retirement. We try and avoid the use of jargon, to make everything as simple to understand as it can be.

We don’t provide “Financial Advice”.

We will provide you with information, education, support and explanations, of all of the things you should know about your pensions, so you can decide if you need advice. Some of our Know Your Options clients want to enjoy the expertise of an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA), but some will enjoy their new found understanding and prefer to manage their own pension strategy without advice. Most of our clients want to learn more about pensions in general, before deciding whether to take advice

It’s not a fixed process. It’s the commencement of an education process which will ensure you get to understand your financial planning and tax mitigation options. It will assist you to ‘look forward’ to the key dates that you expect / would want to retire, and have a much clearer expectation of what your likely retirement income is going to be.

You may well conclude that nothing needs to change, however you may well see that relatively minor restructuring of your finances may have a huge impact – especially when you plan to maximise available tax allowances / relief in your planning. At the end of the review, you may feel empowered to take more control, and have far more involvement in how your wealth position changes. You could equally conclude that you really do need professional advice, in which case we will introduce potential providers to you.

There is no charge for a review of your pensions, even if this is undertaken by one of the regulated IFAs that we work with. However, it’s important to understand the role of each party and where fees could be payable, either directly or indirectly IFA Fees The IFA will make no charge for the initial review, or the production of the IFA Report. However, if you choose to engage the services of the IFA following the review, then the IFA will have a fee structure for the services you wish to use. This is likely to be an initial fee, and then an annual renewal fee for the continuation of their services. In most cases, clients choose to have these fees met directly from their pension funds, although you can settle these outside of your funds if you prefer this option. No fees will be charged or incurred without your direct authorisation. Know Your Options Commissions We do not charge any fees to you, or to your pension funds. We receive commissions from investments that we may introduce to you. We do not receive any commissions from any other party i.e. not from IFAs that we work with, nor from pension companies or SIPP Trustees.

Normally a review takes between 2-4 weeks. This varies based on the length of time it takes your existing provider(s) to respond to the information requests we submit to them.

The review is completed within 2-3 days of the final providers information being received.

If any existing provider is slow to provide the information we request, we may ask you to make contact directly to expedite their response.

The annual statements sent to you by your current pension providers give lots of useful information. However, we will write, with your authorisation, to each pension company requesting an up-to-date position, ensuring we have the key facts needed to make certain your pension planning is properly addressed in your overall Wealth Build & Protect strategy.

Any and all of them. You may have a range of Personal Pensions and you may have Occupational Pension Schemes (aka Final Salary Schemes). Collectively they will represent your overall retirement provision, so it’s essential that you understand them all.

It’s an absolute commitment for us to help you for as long as you need us to – which for most people will certainly mean at least to the point where you formally retire. We have a specific team at KYO available to help you track the progress of your Wealth Build & Protect Strategy and answer any questions as and when they arise

We are paid by investment companies and Trust providers for the client introductions that we make. We do not make any charge to you or your pension at any time. There is no one-off fee and no annual fee. There is never any obligation for you to invest in, or implement anything we introduce, which of course means sometimes we don’t get paid. This isn’t a problem, because once a client has a good understanding of the options open to them, it’s very likely that they will want to implement some or all of them.