This document is aimed at providing you with a brief overview of Betterment Wealth Limited and to introduce our services.
Betterment Wealth was founded in 2024 by Richard Fearn and is a solo adviser practice. The firm’s registered office is based in Cambridge, however we serve clients across the UK. We specialise in providing independent advice services covering retirement, investments, equity release and mortgages with embedded tax efficiency for clients seeking financial freedom and security.
Betterment Wealth specialise in building long term relationships with clients to help them meet their goals and objectives.
Richard Fearn has over 22 years’ experience in the financial services industry, having advised and invested on behalf of clients who’s needs and objectives have been far reaching and different, their families and legal entities.
Richard Fearn is a Chartered Financial Planner with additional qualifications in equity release, and mortgages advice.
Contents
- Value
- Network
- Advice
- Reviews
- Cash flow planning
- Financial planning
- Other services
- Investment
- Technology
- Benefits
1. Value
We provide our clients with high levels of value through a combination of;
- Tailored advice
- Exceptional service
- Expert knowledge
- Tax savings
- Robust investment solutions
- Financial coaching
- Reducing industry risks
- Avoiding unwanted mistakes and missed opportunities
- Financial freedom & security
- Peace of mind
- Trusted relationship
- An adviser who is always looking at his client’s best interest
- Giving advice to family and friends
- Support with nonfinancial matters if needed
Expert knowledge, experience and qualifications for a financial planning business
The Director of Betterment Wealth, Richard Fearn, holds a wide array of qualifications and memberships, which demonstrate his expert knowledge, skills and commitment to providing the highest level of service to his clients.
Richard Fearn also undertakes a continued professional development to ensure his knowledge is kept up to date at all times.
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.
Richard Fearn keeps up to date in any changes to taxation or government legislation that may affect his client’s financial situation.
Richard Fearn can give advice in many areas of financial planning including mortgages and equity release so that clients can have a relationship with one adviser.
Richard Fearn does not give advice on occupational pensions.
2. Network
Best Practice provides an institutional regulatory supervision and 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 value add 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
- 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.
3. Advice
Initial advice & onboarding
Below is a summary of our initial advice process followed with every new client, which sets the baseline for an ongoing value-based relationship with all of our clients.
- Initial conversation ‘Discovery’ meeting
- Establish your goals and objectives/needs and wants
- Identify needs and objectives and any gaps in a client’s financial plan
- Establish client’s priorities
- Establish your attitude to risk and capacity for loss
- Analysis of existing planning needs
- Obtain information on existing products and solutions
- Research of potential solutions
- Construct a financial plan or advice letter
- Meet to discuss the financial plan and recommendations
- Agree implementation
A lot of time is spent with clients before they decide to engage us 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 and our ability to assist them. Where the prospective client does not see value in an advisory relationship with us, we part ways, so it is only when we have been able to clearly communicate the value of our service, that clients choose to engage us.
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.
4. Reviews
Annual review service
For Betterment Wealth and our clients, this is an integral part of the financial planning journey and our annual ongoing advisory service. It allows us to sit down with you and your family, reflect on the past year, look forward, and consider what might be on the horizon for you in the coming years. To give you reassurance and peace of mind about how your investments are tracking against your goals and to review our plans in the context of any changing circumstances in your life, new goals, changes in your objectives or government legislation.
We consider the outlook for markets, the economic landscape, and changing tax regulations that might impact your current plans. We make sure everything we are doing remains suitable and is aimed at helping you and your family to achieve your goals.
An opportunity to think about the coming years and plans for your family, begin to consider key life stages and events and how we might need to adapt our plans for them.
- Ensures your current position is still appropriate for you. Services that are included in our annual review include:
- A video or face-to-face meeting at least annually, which we will contact you to arrange. 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
- 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
- Current tax position and tax favoured products
- Estate planning including wills
5. Cash flow planning
Annual review service with cash flow planning
Helps us to show you visually how your plan has been set up to meet your objectives.
The cash flow forecasting provides a visual illustration of how a client’s investments and wealth will move over time in relation to the financial plans that we formulate to meet their goals using certain assumptions and taking into account any life events. This gives clients considerable comfort knowing that there is some mathematical rigour to our advice and how it will help them to meet their goals.
Cash flow planning allows us to scenario test your plans against historical market events and simulate how our clients’ goals could be impacted by these types of events. It allows us to show how risk events might impact portfolios. It’s a really great way to help you understand more about investment risks and how it translates to the plans you have in place. It helps you to feel more informed and comfortable about your plans.
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 of provider and product solutions. This ensures we can make recommendations to best meet your needs and goals.
6. Financial planning
Holistic financial planning
It is not just about monetary goals; this is about life and family and a consultative approach. This enables Betterment Wealth to help clients think about things they may not have considered and how plans can work together to create a cohesive timeline of advice.
Inheritance tax and estate planning
We work with your other professionals who have a deep knowledge and understanding of HMRC tax rules in relation to clients and their 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.
Retirement planning
A key life phase. This is an area of planning which deserves significant time in reviewing for our clients each year as you normally only have one chance at getting it right. Often in the background, checking on progress of plans and investments you have made to fund your life in retirement. Adapting to market swings and modelling various impact scenarios. Retirement planning is one of the most valuable services Betterment Wealth provide our clients.
Our clients who are currently in retirement, are following our advice and drawing on their assets to live a stress-free life in retirement. Our retirement planning takes the worry away from our clients.
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 you have potentially saved through our planning.
7. Other services
Life goals planning
Helping clients consider their short / medium / long term goals in life and provide financial solutions to help them in their plans to achieve these goals.
Financial coaching
Financial Coaching can add value at various times throughout the financial planning journey and help you to make considered financial decisions.
- Amounts to invest to meet your goals
- How and when to release capital or take income
- Reassurance in volatile market conditions
- Understand how markets work and the journey you can expect
- Understanding legislation and tax changes
- Financial coaching – professional sense check – behavioural guidance – we help to take the emotion out of financial decision making and helping clients avoid falling into common mistakes
Education planning
Clients may want to support their children / grandchildren through university, and we can help you put in place a financial plan to meet these costs in full or in part. This will provide you with the knowledge and peace of mind that this very important goal is in hand and will be reviewed year on year to make sure you are on track.
Market briefings
We provide regular updates to clients to supplement any discussions at annual reviews and ad-hoc conversations throughout the year.
Maintaining professional competency
As a Financial Planner, each year we evidence the learning activities we have completed to maintain competence in our role and improve our knowledge This allows us to continue providing suitable and up to date advice to our clients, year on year.
8. Investment
Investment philosophy and research
Betterment Wealth 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.
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 gives our clients great comfort that their investments are being managed by investment professionals and their financial plans are being looked after by highly qualified financial planning professionals.This is the value that a relationship with our firm provides. It’s what our clients pay for.
Discretionary fund management
We recommend discretionary investment management solutions for clients.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. 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.
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.
Rebalancing helps to ensure your investments and selection of funds / asset classes remain aligned to your chosen attitude to risk and capacity for loss.
Rebalancing helps to reset your investments on a regular basis back to your strategic investment plans, by adjusting dynamically for swings in markets.
9. Technology
Client and service management
One of the reasons we chose to work with Benchmark, was 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.
Clients have access to an online portal via a wealth platform. This enables our clients to securely access their portfolio information such as holdings and performance data, at their convenience.
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 of provider and product solutions.
Adviser and staff training and development
We commit to meeting our ongoing 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.
10. Benefits
Working with us
Working with a professional financial planner provides expertise and peace of mind
We build multi-decade trust-based relationships with our clients. We get to know what 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 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 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 optimises for tax efficiency which has 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 and enables them to have confidence about achieving financial independence and security, as well as peace of mind.
Independent research suggests that the value of advice can be in the region of up to 3% or even nearly 5% per annum. This helps to frame the tangible value of our service related to the cost, quite beside any of the intangible benefits. The sources referenced here are; Vanguard Quantifying Advisers Alpha 2020, and Russell Investments Adviser Value 2022.
Summary
Overall, Betterment Wealth 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.