Your LifeTalk Insider #85

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Welcome back…

From LifeTalk and the Adviser Growth Community this week:

Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to LifeTalk Insider - Let’s get stuck in…

LifeTalk member and 50 others: I am looking for some advice please. I am a relatively new IFA RI and my principal has approached me with a proposal to ‘purchase’ 90 of his clients, as he wishes to reduce his workload and only focus on the higher value ones. Question…

Rob and 21 others: Thought I'd post to help some less experienced or 'new to self employment' advisers.

I picked up a new client last year in October, ideal age, amount of wealth and literally a 5 minute walk from me. Fast forward to now, they message me late at night or on Saturdays, I have had 3 meetings with them and all of them have been rearranged by them, they have not yet signed up even though saying they definitely will. So I have taken the decision to not to proceed with them.

You have to listen to your gut and my gut tells me these are trouble. It will be disappointing to me, from a financial point of view, but there are clients with their level of wealth who respect the relationship so much more. Click…

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LifeTalk member and 33 others: I’m a paraplanner in a small firm and joined already Level 4 qualified (Diploma through LIBF). Recently, both myself and a colleague were asked to obtain CII membership so the firm could renew its Chartered status. My colleague's membership was paid for by the company (she is admin and won't be taking any exams) but mine hasn’t been.

I was under the impression that when CII membership is required for business purposes—especially to support Chartered status—it’s usually covered by the employer as a business expense. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? What’s the general expectation around who pays for CII membership in these cases? Click…

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Phil and 29 others: I just met a guy in the pub, in fact I'm still with him. He told me that the best piece of advice he was ever given was from his dad who was a huge believer in savings from a young age. He said his dad 'forced' him to save money ever since his first pay packet and it turns out it was the best thing he ever did.

He's trying to encourage his grown up children to take out a pension for/on behalf of their own children (both in their early 20s). Both the youngsters are working but he feels they should do an additional personal pension.

Apparently a parent can start a pension for their kids and there is some tax incentive for doing so. I don't know the answer so I thought I'd ask you - what is the best way of going about this? Any particular providers? Click…

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Andrew and 26 others: We are planning to trial condensed working at work. Allowing staff to work full time hours in a 4 day week. Has any other firm done this ? If so how did you find it? Click…

LifeTalk member and 11 others: Small firm about to take the plunge with Intelliflo. We have a large bank of historical data to migrate after running our own system.

Before we press the button, as its not cheap, are there any better alternatives that are a CRM, portal, workflow, income reconciliation, etc in one? I looked at Xplan too but just curious if these are the best in practice. Many thanks! Click…

Marco and 15 others: I’m a Timeline user and have dipped my toe in the water with them but I’m a bit reluctant to go full-in because I’m not sure how comfortable I am committing to a DFM. If things go wrong (for whatever reason), untangling clients from them could be a MASSIVE faff. Question…

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Jim and 12 others: I have a family member who wants to play the markets a little with some surplus cash, and they've asked me what investment platform they should use and which to avoid. This is an informal conversation and not a "recommendation", of course.

I have no idea on D2C stuff. Can anyone here give any suggestions? Click…

Eugen and 24 others: Be careful what you wish for President Trump! The US Dollar could become an emerging country currency soon!

I do not think he evaluated correctly what to expect, the market is applying the rule of emerging countries to the US, currency down, rates that shoot up. Before Liberation day, when the yields went up, as the World reserve currency, the US Dollar went up too, as people wanted to earn more and bought more US Dollars. Read more…

LifeTalk member and 29 others: Hi, looking for opinions please. New to advice and self employment. I want to understand if I'm getting a good deal.

Offer is to work alongside a firm, self-employed and will be given clients to service. Receive a flat fee each month for servicing these clients, but when I start to write new business the company get half until I cover my annual fee for servicing (in theory, not getting paid for servicing). All existing OAC is paid to the company. This also applies to any new clients I bring over until I cover my retainer. Concerned that I'll struggle to make enough money/build any ongoing for myself and will be doing a lot of work for not much reward. Don't want to get bogged down in servicing for someone else.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, do you have any guidance? Click…

Louise and 20 others: I have a client who has inherited £115K but is on Income Related ESA and PIP no other income. They originally wanted to get a small mortgage to buy their first property with this inheritance (they are in a housing association property) but unfortunately, due to affordability issues no lenders wanted to know except one where their rates were 13.67% for 5 years and 14.44% for a 2 year fixed deal which is just shocking and on a loan amount of £30K

So another option I was looking at as a possible for the client, was investing that £115K for a min 5 years, however there is the issue with the income related ESA and savings exceeding £16K which means the client would not be entitled to ESA anymore. I wanted to pick some brains to see what options we have. Click…

From the Adviser Growth Community:

News from the Adviser Growth Community

👉 We now have a map feature in the group so that you can see where other members are located. Why not arrange impromptu meetups?

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👉 The Classroom area of the group has hundreds of hours of fantastic content.

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👉 There’s no algorithm that decides which posts you see!

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