Christmas greetings from all at Chilvester
Well yet another year passes without any major meltdown in financial sectors despite the doom and gloom this time last year. Whilst Europe seems to be holding together and the US politicians are likely to reach a last minute compromise budget, global economies remain very flat with many being propped up by their governments with monopoly money. That said, the quantative easing and other strategies have had the result they were looking for by holding economies together although I still believe that we shall all be paying for this for many years to come.
On a brighter note, at Chilvester we have had a couple of items of good news recently which I would like to share with you. Andrew Tottman joined Simon and me as an additional adviser last month. Andy comes from an advisory background and having spent the past 10 years with Nat West, he is looking forward to working in the independent sector with Chilvester. We are pleased to welcome Andy to the team and believe that his skills will complement and further enhance our proposition.
The other key development here that I am pleased to tell you about is that last week Chilvester was awarded corporate Chartered Financial Planners status by the Chartered Insurance Institute. This is a highly prestigious designation with a demanding qualification criterion. With just over 300 firms being so honoured, we now sit within the top 5% of all advisory firms across the country. This award demonstrates that as a firm we have a commitment to the highest level of professional standards and it confirms our adherence to ethical good practice. It signifies to our clients and to the rest of the market that we are very serious in our pursuit of the highest standards.
You will shortly hear much in the press about the forthcoming shrinkage in the number of firms authorised to provide financial advice. This is in part due to a hike in the threshold qualification of advisers, which will see a great number retire or leave the profession. Also, we are about to see a change from a commission based approach to one where fees are agreed with a client in advance. As many of you know, Chilvester was established in 1999 with the intention of providing affordable fee based advice to our clients coupled with a strong service proposition and our fee structure is not changing as a result of this regulatory change. Other firms are now being forced to introduce a fee based approach and without the service culture that we have developed over the years, I fear that many will struggle to survive. We are already aware of a great number of firms that are not going to remain independent but will be restricting their offering to selected products or advice areas.
Chilvester is committed to remaining independent and continuing to support you, our clients, through our comprehensive and robust financial planning practice.
Finally, I would like to confirm that the office closing at 12.30 on Friday 21 December until 9.00 on Wednesday 2 January. Our advisers will however be asked to check their email and phones for messages from time to time over this period and I will be looking in to the office on a couple of occasions between those days to check the post and answerphone, so if you do have anything urgent, please do contact us.
We would like to thank you for your support over the last year and we all join in wishing you a merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.