Altrincham based Smart Financial Planning Group has expanded its portfolio by welcoming Zone Financial to the Group.  This new venture sees the launch of a new mass market fee-based financial planning service, incorporating and adapting Smart’s technical expertise, guidance, investment strategies and commitment to continued excellence.  Zone Financial’s first office is located in Glasgow.

Zone Financial will be offering independent financial advice, whether on a one off basis or if clients wish, on an ongoing basis for regular advice, reviews and implementation. The service will be based on a personal values approach, helping clients to achieve their personal goals without the selling of commission-generating financial products or policies.

Unlike the existing private client service offered by Smart Financial Planning, which is solely aimed at high net worth individuals, Zone Financial will offer impartial financial planning advice to everyone, irrespective of their current financial position.

Very Impressive budget delivered by George Osborne. The highlights are as follows.

·         Compulsory annuity purchase to be abolished! – not mentioned by GO.

We are delighted to announce that we will be joined on Monday 14th June by Christine Hobbs. Christine will take the responsibility of PA to our Managing Director and assist with the overseeing the office. This is fantastic news and will allow us to provide an even greater level of service to our clients and allow Steve to spend more time with our existing and new clients and helping Stuart become established in our Zone Financial Planning Ltd office in Glasgow.

As part of Smart's belief in 'Healthy body, Healthy mind' we have committed to a new challenge. In 6 weeks Stuart, our new adviser in our Zone Financial Planning Ltd business, and Steve plan to be able to demonstrate their new found skill and will record the result and post on You Tube. You can follow our progress via twitter updates, @stevemartincfp and @stuartwhiteIFP or via our pages on the Smart and Zone Websites.

Smart Financial Planning is delighted to announce that Terry Hewes has made taken the first step to Certified / Chartered status by passing his first professional exam. Huge congratulations from the rest of the team and we hope he enjoys his Football Team tour to Newquay this weekend with his exam passing bonus before return to start preparing from exam 2 on Tuesday!!

As part of our drive to constantly improve the service we offer we are looking to recruit an additional member of staff. Working as a PA to the Managing Director and taking the responsibility for the general office administrator our new recruit will be the next piece in the jigsaw of providing the very best service to our clients at all times.

If you wish to join the Smart Financial Planning team please contact us at info@smartfinancialplanning.co.uk.

A huge thank you to those of you who took part in our client questionnaire. I know many people find filling in questionnaires a bit of a pain so we really appreciate the time you took to tell us what you think. This feedback has been extremely useful and we have already started to make improvements to our business as a result of what you told us. We said we would share the results, so here are some highlights from the questionnaire;

We were absolutely delighted to hear that;

• 100% of those who responded felt that the expectations you had when you started working with Smart Financial Planning had been met.
• 100% of you would recommend us to other people.
• 100% of you agree or strongly agree that we provide you with quality reports that you find valuable.
• 100% of you are very satisfied or satisfied with the overall service we provide.
• The elements of our service you value the most are; the fact you can trust us, our technical expertise and our ability to give you sound advice and peace of mind.

Thank you for this feedback, it is very encouraging to know that you are happy with the service we provide. There is no room for complacency however and we have looked carefully at the feedback which tells us where we can improve. Outlined below are the key areas concerned and details of the improvements, many of which we have already started to make

You told us;

• That you don't view our video blog - this confirms what we had suspected, that those who do are generally rival firms or insurance providers.
• That we could perhaps improve how quickly we respond to requests - we recognised that at certain peak times we didn't have the necessary resources to respond as quickly as would like. To help with this we recruited Terry Hewes, our new Administrator, who joined us last month.
• That there was room for improvement in the way we present our information - you said that whilst you find our detailed reports useful, there may be better ways to present the information. We have invested in this area and are introducing a more illustrative way of presenting. This will involve using graphs and pictures to illustrate situations rather than just words.
• The majority of you do not use the online facility to view the progress of your plans or investments - we believe that providing this online facility is important so that at any time you can see where you are up to. Obviously viewing this is a personal choice and whilst we recognise this, we will always look for ways to improve our online facilities.

And finally, we asked you whether we could provide any other services that would be of value to you. The top three services suggested were; Mortgages, wills and provision of inheritance tax advice for relatives. We have already taken steps to provide these - soon we will announcing the launch of a new business in the Smart Group which will provide mortgage advice amongst other services. We have also developed local partnerships with lawyers to provide a wills, power of attorney and trust writing service. Finally, inheritance tax advice is a key part of the service we offer but as many of our clients are pre-retirement age, this part of our planning will not yet be applicable. For any of these services, if you would like further information, please do give Steve a call.

So, that concludes the results. Thank you once again, the feedback has been extremely useful for not only confirming that the service we provide is what you need and expect but more importantly for identifying how we can make it even better.

Good morning and welcome to the 12th of April Smart TV Review of the weekend's papers.

A few things have caught my attention. Last weeks news was of course that Gordon Brown and the Government of the day believe that business leaders don't know what they're talking about, that they've been mislead, some might suggest that they're suggesting that they might be stupid and that they don't understand the impact of the 1% national insurance rise on employers national insurance.

For me, it is the worst, worst suggestion that I have ever heard of, how can we be in the situation where we know that we need to generate more money as an economy to pay off our debts and make it more difficult for us to do that. What we need is this country and every small business to think it's a good idea to take on one more person, and every decent sized business to think it's a good idea to take on a few more people. If we put businesses in a situation where their national insurance costs have gone up already, then the capacity that they had to spend the money to employ the staff, that we need to generate the growth, to grow our way out of this problem, has been spent, and has been spent by the government.

Easiest article that I have ever prepared. Who do you trust with £6 Billion? Companies in the UK or the Government, irrespective of colour. 

How straightforward, a 1% increase in national insurance will create 1% less jobs, a 1% increase will create £6 Billion for the Government to spend on job seekers and disability benefits for the people who don't have jobs!!

The election should not be fought on whether to increase employers NI to 13.8% from 12.8% it should be about how much we cut employers NI to give employers more money to employ more staff and therefore reduce the state benefit costs.

Good morning and welcome to the 29th of March Smart TV Review of the weekend's papers and in particular a review of the impact of the budget.

I hope you've had a good week. I'm sure you've been inundated with all of the various changes and non-changes that you've been presented with; clearly there is no point in us revisiting those. So what I thought I would do is just point out to you again some of the other things you can do to help mitigate either the current rules or some of the new rules that are going to come into force as affected by the budget.

So some simple things to start with, always remember that you can transfer assets between husband and wife and you should always try to hold the assets, if all things are equal, in the name of the spouse who pays tax at the lowest rate. So for example, if you own a secondary property and you have a basic rate tax paying husband and a higher rate tax paying wife, make sure the property is held in the name of the husband in order than any rent that you receive from that pays tax at the basic rate rather than the higher rate. Relatively simple things, but people often forget them because they psychologically feel the need to hold things jointly, because they're jointly owned, it doesn't matter if you're married, you can move things between yourselves as often as you like.

Unless you've been hiding somewhere, you can't have failed to notice all the chatter about the impending public service cuts and the debates surrounding how big they will be, when they will happen and whose approach you support, Conservative or Labour?

What strikes me is that all this discussion and even the arguments amongst economists are all distracting from one key fact. That is, that regardless of which party you support, never before in history will we have experienced such huge public sector spending cuts. The economists have in fact all agreed that the cuts are inevitable, they have simply been arguing over the finer details such as how big the cuts are (only a few billion pounds difference between the two approaches) and whether they should begin in 2010 or 2011.

These cuts have to be made and doing nothing is not an option. Change is going to happen and front line services will be directly affected. It will ultimately come down to those who have the responsibility for taking the tough decisions to make sure the appropriate changes are made and to decide where the savings will come from.

Good morning and welcome to the Monday 22nd of March Smart Financial Planning Review of the Weekend's papers.

All of the papers are concerned the weekend about making sure that you've taken every possible advantage you can before the conclusion of the tax year.

So there are 3 massive things that you need to think about. Firstly, as of April, there will be a new 50% tax rate that will be applicable to all earnings above £150,000. If this is a category that you're going to find yourself in, you may wish to think very carefully about awarding yourself an additional bonus or dividend payment, making any efforts you can to draw money into this tax year where you'll pay tax at 40%, as opposed to the next tax year, where you'll pay tax at 40%.

Welcome to this weeks review of the weekends papers.

The main thing that caught the eye this week was the announcement from the Nationwide, that we've had the smallest increase in house prices since records began. What that seems to indicate, without doubt, that there is a slowdown in the residential property market.

The concern is that it is an indication that money is being extracted from the system and that we are looking at this much fabled double-dip recession. In case you didn't know, for the last 9 months residential property prices have actually increased, which tends to contribute to the feel good factor that people have and they begin to think that their properties are worth a bit more than they have been in the past.

With the end of the financial year approaching fast, you've under a month to make sure you have taken advantage of all the tax allowances that exist.

So, make sure you have filled up that ISA to get the maximum tax free savings or sold any assets that have increased in value to allow you to utilise your Capital Gains Tax allowance.

Smart Financial Planning is proud to announce the appointment of Manchester Metropolitan graduate Terry Hewes to the new position of Financial Planning administrator. Terry will join us on 1 March to provide support and assistance to the clients of Smart Financial Planning as well as becoming part of Steve's Client Team. Terry will be sitting the Certificate in Financial Planning exams during 2010 with the option to move into a Paraplanning role in 2011.

Smart is delighted to have recruited such a high calibre individual and is looking forward to the benefits that he will bring to the team.

Investment news' Jeff Benjamin published his view that in future Financial Planning firms will be encouraged by their clients to charge fees commensurate with the investment performance that they achieve. http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100214/REG/302149992

I feel that this entirely misses the point of a Financial Planning firm. Financial planning is about aligning clients assets and goals and work on getting from one to the other. Where in that process is investment performance mentioned? Financial Planners have three roles, to design a plan of action, to select appropriate products for the client and then create in investment strategy to achieve the goals. Why should the clients payments be related to the least important area of the three?

Steve Martin CFP, is the Managing Director and a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) / Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) at Smart Financial Planning

On Tuesday I wrote a letter to the Association of Independent Financial Advisers, on Tuesday afternoon Professional Adviser, an industry magazine, decided to do a story on it http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/ifaonline/news/1592154/aifa-shame-pandering-gcse-level-advisers. 

By Wednesday night 30+ people have strongly disagreed with eveything i have said and have me lined up as the new bogeyman! I have never been more proud. My letter was intended to move the IFA industry forward with higher standards, higher qualifications and an open an honest charging policy. Apparently many in the industry do not want this. They do not want to commit themselves to study to improve the advice they give, they do not want to tell their clients what they are doing for them and how much they are charging, they do not want to give advice which doesn't result in the sale of a product.

The commentators on the article thought that they would silence me by disagreeing so forcefully and in such a personally insulting manner with my views, far from it. Smart Financial Planning will champion the rights of the client / consumer to be charged openly and honestly by someone who is capable of giving them the advice that they need. Where that is not the case we will expose these 'advisers' for what they are and help their poor clients to find an adviser who can look after them properly.

Open letter to Chris Cummings, Director General of the Association of Independent Financial Advisers (AIFA), Thank you for your letter dated 5th February 2010 following my attendance at the New Model Adviser conference in January. 

I will not however be taking up your kind offer to join AIFA as I feel that your organisation in no way represents the highly qualified, fee based, Financial Planning profession to which I belong. For as long as AIFA continues to promote the interests of advisers who do not wish to continually improve their professional abilities or companies that do not demonstrate that they have sufficient capital to trade without putting their customers at risk, Smart Financial Planning will not become a member.

I find it shocking and disappointing that AIFA continues to seek ways for GCSE level advisers to circumvent the drive to professionalism and I feel you should be ashamed of your proclamation that had it not been for AIFA the minimum standard would be level 6 rather than level 4.

Good morning and welcome to the 15th of February Smart TV review of the weekend papers.

A couple of things this week, it looks increasing likely that the VAT rate is going to be increased to 20% over the next election. This is not a great surprise, the increase from 17.5 to 20% is expected to generate something between 20-30 billion pounds of additional revenue, and it has historically been seen to be easy revenue to take, because it is only revenue when people actually choose to spend their money, as opposed to income tax or national insurance which would be taken before you even had the ability to save your money. So I think that is an absolute nailed on certainty.

What there has been less talk about, is any potential increases in the capital gains tax, I am absolutely certain that the capital gains tax will be increased after the next election. So if there is anything you have that you would be looking to dispose of over the next few months, I would very much encourage for you to get the process going and make plans sooner rather than later, because the 18% rate that we have at the moment is completely incompatible with the VAT rate of 20%, with the basic rate of income tax at 20%, a higher rate of income tax at 40%, and a super rate a 50%. So I would very much cash those chips in now, and take advantage of paying tax at the lowest rate.

Another thing that caught my attention and it always happens at this time of year, is the ISA season nonsense. This is where the talking heads of the investment industry describe to you what they think you should be investing your money in. Now if you’ve followed our Smart TV updates in the past you will by now probably understand that I don’t have much regard for these people, and don’t think very much of the recommendations and I’m absolutely certain that if in general you follow them you will end up probably worse off than if you hadn’t done anything at all, because of the rational that they take to what they recommend.

Through our blog section, we aim to keep our website users updated with the latest news from the financial world and from within Smart Financial Planning. We aim to provide news updates, advice, links to helpful documents and more. So if you want to learn more about making the most out of your money, bookmark this page and check back regularly.

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