Keeping it in the family
Succession Planning
Frank was from the third generation of sons running a family engineering business. His son, Jack, now felt ready to make that the fourth generation and take on the day to day running of the business.
Frank had three main issues, though:
- he wanted to be able to step away from the business without having to rely on it to meet his own personal overheads in the future
- he wanted to make sure that Jack would be able to draw a reasonable income to provide for his young family
- he was concerned about the ongoing costs from having to deal with his existing financial advisers
How we helped
We looked at Frank’s current pension pot, which included a Small Self Administered Pension Scheme (or Family Pension Fund). This was run by a firm he’d never met, based over a hundred miles away.
Frank had some other pension plans too which had been set up many years ago. The Family Pension Fund was invested in a portfolio, recommended by his existing advisers, who’d just been taken over by a large national organisation.
After reviewing Frank’s financial position, we came to the following conclusions:
- he could afford to retire
- the costs of the investment portfolio were more than 2% a year
- the level of risk was higher than Frank was comfortable with and higher than he needed to achieve the income he wanted
- he’d got an additional pension fund that neither he or his previous adviser had taken into account - this meant he had an extra £125,000 than he thought - a welcome surprise!
Responding to the challenge
As a result, we did the following:
- took on the running of Frank’s Family Pension Fund
- combined his other pensions by moving them into the Family Pension Fund, making things much simpler
- made sure the pension fund’s investment strategy matched the level of risk he wanted and needed to take
- reduced his overall costs by over £9,000 a year
- showed Frank and his wife, Judith, that they’d got more than enough money to meet their future needs without relying on the company at all
- demonstrated that they could afford to (and, in fact, should) spend far more than they were
- made Jack a member of the Family Pension Plan so the same opportunity would be open to him when his son Paul took over the business
The end result
The new financial plan has provided Frank, Judith and Jack with real peace of mind. As well as the significant overall cost saving, they now only have to deal with one set of advisers - and we’re looking forward to giving them more proactive advice for many years to come.
