Our Fair Value Statement is aimed at providing you with a brief overview of Betterment Wealth Limited and to introduce our services.
Betterment Wealth specialises in building long-term relationships with clients to help them meet their goals and objectives.
Betterment Wealth was founded in 2024 by Richard Fearn. It consists of Richard Fearn, a Chartered financial planner, and Jamie Panter, a mortgage and protection adviser. 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, mortgages, and equity release, with embedded tax efficiency, for clients seeking financial freedom and security.
Richard Fearn has over 25 years of experience in financial services, advising and investing for clients with diverse needs and objectives, including their families and legal entities.
Jamie Panter has over 13 years of experience as a mortgage and protection adviser, advising clients on their home finance needs.
Fair Value Assessment
Betterment Wealth Limited is committed to meeting the FCA’s Consumer Duty, ensuring that our clients receive fair value from all products and services. We regularly assess our proposition against FCA guidance to ensure good outcomes for all clients.
Fair value is reviewed regularly by our compliance team and through independent oversight, ensuring our proposition remains competitive and compliant with FCA standards.
We provide all clients with a fair value declaration that summarises the benefits, costs, and outcomes associated with our services.
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
Our fee structure is transparent, and we share clear examples of the value we deliver, including potential tax savings, investment performance, and peace of mind.
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 that demonstrate his expert knowledge, skills, and commitment to providing the highest level of service to his clients.
Our advisers also undertake ongoing professional development to ensure their knowledge remains up to date.
We are committed to the highest standards of professional competence, ethics, and integrity.
We provide our clients with deep knowledge and experience tailored to their needs. We know this gives our clients great comfort.
Our advisers keep up to date with any changes to taxation or government legislation that may affect their clients’ financial situation.
Richard Fearn provides advice in many areas of financial planning, including equity release. Richard Fearn does not give advice on occupational pensions. Jamie Panter specialises in mortgages and protection. This allows clients to maintain a relationship with a single financial planning company.
Network: Best Practice IFA Member Firm Business
Best Practice provides an institutional regulatory supervision and compliance framework and oversight service, which delivers a high level of regulatory assurance and leading-edge client management systems.
This high-quality, financially sound organisation ultimately provides us with a high level of assurance and comfort regarding the regulatory framework of the proposition and the 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 confidence 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 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
- 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.
Initial advice & onboarding
Below is a summary of the initial advice process we follow 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 provide the initial advice. This is a period we invest in to get to know our prospective clients, as well as a good opportunity for them to assess us and our ability to assist them. When the prospective client does not see value in an advisory relationship with us, we part ways. It is only when we have clearly communicated the value of our service that clients choose to engage us.
We provide clarity to prospective clients by sharing the required disclosures, explaining our services, how we work, our qualifications and experience, our professional standards, our service proposition, and our fees.
Annual review service
For Betterment Wealth and our clients, this is an integral part of the financial planning journey and of our ongoing annual 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 ensure everything we do is suitable and helps you and your family reach your goals.
An opportunity to think about the coming years and plans for your family, and to begin considering key life stages and events and how we might need to adapt our plans for them.
We monitor client outcomes through annual reviews, client satisfaction surveys, and performance benchmarking. We regularly review our advice to make sure it remains suitable and delivers the intended benefits.
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
Cash flow planning
Cash flow forecasting shows how a client’s investments and wealth will evolve over time, based on the financial plans we create to meet their goals, using assumptions and accounting for any life events. This gives clients considerable comfort, knowing that our advice is underpinned by mathematical rigour and will help them meet their goals.
Cash flow planning lets us test your plans against past market events and show how your goals could be affected. It allows us to show how risk events might impact portfolios. It’s a really great way to help you better understand investment risks and how they translate into 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 analyse provider and product solutions. This ensures we can make recommendations to best meet your needs and goals.
Holistic financial planning
It is not just about monetary goals; this is about life, 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 that deserves significant time for our clients each year, as you normally only have one chance to get it right. Often in the background, checking on the 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 that Betterment Wealth provides to our clients.
Our clients who are currently in retirement are following our advice and drawing on their assets to live a stress-free life. Our retirement planning takes the worry out of our clients’ minds.
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 show you how much you may have saved through our planning.
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 help clients avoid falling into common mistakes
Education planning
Many clients want to support their children/grandchildren through university, and we can help you put a financial plan in place to cover these costs, in whole 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 discussions at annual reviews and ad hoc conversations throughout the year.
Maintaining professional competency
As Financial Planners, each year we evidence the learning activities we have completed to maintain our competence in our role and improve our knowledge. This allows us to continue providing suitable, up-to-date advice to our clients year on year.
Vulnerability identification and support
Our advisers are trained to identify and support clients who may be vulnerable, and we ensure their needs are met with care and consideration. We follow FCA guidance on vulnerability and adapt our advice and communications accordingly.
Client feedback
We actively seek client feedback and use it to improve our services, ensuring that our proposition continues to deliver fair value and meets evolving client needs.
Investment philosophy and research
Betterment Wealth completes individual research to ensure we stay on track to meet your goals. We tend to your investments while you give the rest of your 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 for our clients’ needs and to conduct appropriate due diligence on the products that we recommend.
This gives our clients confidence that their investments are managed by investment professionals and their financial plans are handled 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. This adds value by allowing us to monitor them while the investment team can focus solely on investment analysis and portfolio construction.
Our approach means that our time is focused on you. We let 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 ensure we take advantage of any tax reliefs or allowances to which you are entitled.
This is a proactive investment management service that helps you keep your investments on track to meet your goals and saves you money by utilising your annual capital gains tax allowances.
Rebalancing helps ensure that your investments and fund/asset-class selection remain aligned with your chosen attitude to risk and capacity for loss.
Rebalancing helps regularly reset your investments to your strategic investment plans by dynamically adjusting for market swings.
Technology
One of the reasons we chose to work with Benchmark was its technology, which has won numerous awards. Ultimately backed by Schroders, we have every confidence that the security of our clients’ information within Benchmark’s client management technology systems is in very safe hands. We know our clients expect us to get this right. It’s incredibly important to them and a reason they feel safe working with us.
Our client management systems improve adviser efficiency, enabling us to deliver our service without charging higher fees.
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 analyse provider and product solutions.
Adviser and staff training and development
We commit to meeting our ongoing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements and keeping 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 up-to-date information and guidance that helps them meet their goals.
Benefits of 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 learn 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 our clients’ longest-standing relationships, some over 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 deliver exceptional service to all our clients and ensure they get excellent value. For example, our response times to client queries and communications are a priority for us.
Our clients benefit from a service that provides them with expert knowledge tailored to their circumstances and requirements.
We provide our clients with access to robust investment solutions that give them confidence that 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 managed, which gives them confidence in achieving financial independence, security, and peace of mind.
Independent research suggests that the value of advice can be as high as 3% or even 5% per annum. This helps frame the tangible value of our service relative to the cost, quite aside from any intangible benefits. The sources referenced here are Vanguard Quantifying Advisers Alpha 2020 and Russell Investments Adviser Value 2022.
Summary
We’re confident we deliver real value and service to our clients through tangible and intangible benefits. We remain committed to serving our clients to the best of our abilities and delivering exceptional results.