Everlake Approach to Financial Planning

Introduction

We are a specialist financial advisory practice formed by the merger of Global Wealth and Ethical Financial in 2022, providing expert financial and wealth planning services.

We trace our roots back to the founding of Ethical Financial in 1998 as the first Irish financial advisory business with a responsible investment focus. Global Wealth was formed in 2015 to provide clients with a fee based financial planning and investment consulting service.

The combined expertise of both businesses now allows us to provide a comprehensive range of expert financial and wealth planning services to professionals and business owners.

We take pride in our responsible approach to our advisory services. For us this means treating you fairly. In our dealings with you we seek to provide you with the benefit of our experience, knowledge and insights in all areas of impacting your personal finances. In particular our specialist areas of expertise include, Financial Planning, Responsible Investment, Tax and Estate Planning. We take care to provide financial planning and investment solutions that are aligned to your values.

We are a Director led Advisory Practice. All client engagements are provided under the expert oversight of Marc Westlake and John McNicholas. Both Marc and John have extensive experience in delivering financial planning and investment advice for a range of clients with complex and diverse needs including business owners and professionals.

All advice is focused on your individual circumstances and requirements with solutions tailored to your individual goals. We are totally focused on delivering a caring, proactive and personalised service to our clients. Our small team of highly qualified professionals have complementary skills and expertise. The team also works with our network of tax, legal, accounting and other experts to deliver advanced planning and structuring.

Our guiding principle is that our advice will always be in your best interest We do this by:

• Offering fee based financial planning service

• Fully disclosing any potential conflicts of interest

• Providing a client centric service

• Presenting investment advice that is based on academic research

• Providing a high level of personal attention to our clients

• Investing our personal assets based on the same set of principles recommended to our clients

• Providing comprehensive financial planning integrating investments, tax and estate planning and risk management solutions

Our advice is always goal oriented evaluating each decision not in isolation, but in terms of its impact on the likelihood of success of the overall plan

Our comprehensive financial planning service is provided by professionals of Chartered and Certified standing.

Our Role as Your Financial Planner

Our role is to ensure that your family’s most important financial issues are addressed as needed. We serve in a critical co-ordination role as your personal Financial Planner.

Working with you we set the foundation of your financial security through your Financial Plan. Your Financial Plan will include a summary of your present position, a statement of your objectives, a statement of our understanding of your attitude to investment risk, an assessment of your existing arrangements and recommendations for any changes that we think necessary in pursuit of your objectives.

We aim to add value by helping you to make the best financial decisions consistently over your lifetime. In a study, the Vanguard Group1 showed that competent Financial Planners typically add around 3% a year to their clients’ investment returns compared to the returns an average investor might achieve on their own.

Our services can incorporate the needs of a Company, a Trust or Partnership and/or several generations of a family2

Our Comprehensive Financial Planning Services can include:

• Risk profile analysis

• Investment and asset allocation strategies

• Lifetime cash flow analysis

• Co-ordination of your total net income and net worth to your objectives.

• Pension and retirement strategies

• Insurance and protection analysis

We will keep your plan under review to afford the best chances of meeting your objectives. We will provide you with a summary valuation of your investment portfolio at least every twelve months. On an annual basis, we will confirm if there have been any changes in your objectives and recommend any changes to your portfolio as necessary.

1 “Putting a value on your value: Quantifying Vanguard Adviser’s Alpha in the UK”

2 We work with our Wealth Advisory client’s children on a pro-bono basis until they reach age 30.

Once this is in place, we are able to address additional components of your financial picture as needed. With your personal Financial Plan to guide us, we focus on five broad areas of your financial life:

• Saving for retirement aims to provide you with enough savings for a comfortable retirement

• Wealth enhancement aims to produce the best possible investment returns consistent with your level of risk tolerance and to minimize the tax impact on those returns.

• Taking care of heirs intends to find and facilitate the most tax-efficient way to pass assets to succeeding generations, and to do so in a way that meets your wishes.

• Asset protection is aimed at protecting your wealth against potential creditors, litigants, children’s spouses etc.

• Charitable gifting helps fulfil your charitable goals. It is most effective when coordinated with the three services above.

In accordance with your stated priorities, we will discuss these issues with you, make our recommendations and engage with appropriate specialist advisers as necessary. Over time, this allows us to implement a comprehensive financial roadmap for you.

Your Personal Financial Plan

In working with you we are acutely aware that no two individuals are alike. Each has different circumstances and aspirations. As financial planners, we can meet your needs only when we know you and your unique life situation well. We believe it is important for us to deeply understand not only your investments and other assets, but your most important values, goals, relationships and interests.

Sound financial planning is the process of empowering you to make decisions about the four budgets you control and how you deal with the conflicts between them. Specifically:

• How you live - at work or at leisure.

• How you spend - now and in the future

• The level of insurable risk you carry personally

• The level of financial risk you are willing, able and have the need to accept.

We will spend sufficient time to understand your personal goals and your approach to the various tradeoffs in your planning choices. This level of insight provides several important benefits:

• It allows us to construct a Financial Plan that will maximise the probability of achieving all that is most important to you and your family.

• It sets the foundation for our long-term relationship.

• It enables us to work with you in precisely the ways which you prefer.

As with any aspect of life your family, your home, your education, your career, your business the best results are achieved by carefully constructing a plan and then following that plan consistently over time. A well-crafted Financial Plan provides a broad context for making important financial decisions and achieving your long-term goals. That said, we don’t think that most people have Financial Goals, but rather Lifestyle Goals that have financial implications.

We explain below our consultative process and how we work with you to assess a range of critical factors that affect your financial decisions, including your goals and time horizons, your tolerance and capacity for risk, and how your personal values about investing should be reflected in your portfolio. Taking these critical factors into account, we work with you to establish a personal Financial Plan for you.

Clearly articulating your critical factors and our recommendations for achieving your personal goals and objectives in a Financial Plan has a number of important benefits:

• It helps provide long-term discipline to your investment decision-making. A well-conceived plan helps assure that rational analysis is the basis for your investment decisions, making you less likely to act on emotional responses to short-term or one-time events.

• It encourages our effective communication. Because it clarifies both the issues that are most important to you and the investment approach and strategy that will be used, it minimises any misunderstandings that may arise.

• It allows both of us to accurately review your critical factors as they may change over time. Such evaluations may indicate that corresponding changes to your investment plan are called for.

In addition, your Financial Plan will provide us with the ability to address the complete range of your financial challenges beyond your investments. Having a comprehensive Financial Plan in place allows us to systematically manage each of your major financial issues, which in turn maximises our ability to help you achieve your most important financial goals.

Our Financial Planning Process

We use the following systematic consulting process for uncovering your most important goals and for designing and implementing appropriate solutions.

1. Initial Consultation. Before commencement of any engagement we will have an initial consultation to determine your requirements and whether we are best positioned to assist you. Our initial consultation is without obligation and no fee is payable in respect of this service. Following this initial consultation we will ask you to provide some information about yourself to prepare for the Discovery Meeting.

2. Discovery Meeting. At our Discovery meeting, we seek to find out more about you. We examine your current situation, the goals you would like to achieve and how we can maximise the possibility of achieving those goals. This helps us identify the challenges you face in achieving all that is important to you. Before moving to the next stage, which is preparing a Financial Plan for your review, we will ask you to sign a Letter of Engagement with us which outlines our approach, our standard services & fee schedule, and our terms and conditions.

3. Financial Plan Meeting. At this meeting, we present our diagnostic of your current situation and our recommendations for how we can help you bridge any gaps in order to reach your goals. This plan may also include a suggested referral to a third party for specialised advice on some aspect of the plan implementation (e.g. specific legal or tax advice). Following discussion with you, we will seek your commitment to this plan, as it forms the foundation for all of our future work together.

4. Plan Implementation Phase. Once the plan is agreed we move on to plan implementation. This can be the most complex part of the process. Some aspects of this stage are relatively straightforward. We will review all your existing mortgages, pensions, life assurance and investments to ensure they are in order. We help you organise all that paperwork. Depending on your requirements we may need to put in place certain legal structures such as trusts, partnerships or company structures. This will typically involve working with other advisers such as your lawyers, tax advisers, actuaries, accountants or other specialist advisers as required. This can be time consuming and require multiple meetings and consultations. Nonetheless this is key to establishing a sound plan for the medium term. A key part of this phase is establishing your investment plan and policy.

5. Monitoring Progress. The key to ensure the success of your plan is consistent implementation and ongoing monitoring. As time passes your circumstances will change and new challenges will emerge. We will work with you to manage and adapt your plan as required.

Your Investment Plan

Securing your savings and investments, building your wealth and facilitating wealth enhancement involves the development of an investment plan specific to your needs and objectives. Our aim is to be stewards of your investment portfolio. The key is that the plan needs to be adhered to regardless of shorter-term market movements or the volatility it sometimes exhibits.

Many investors come to us with existing investments but often without a coherent investment strategy. This makes it difficult for us to assess the following:

• Why the client has the investment

• What the investment is intended to deliver

• How the investment helps the client to achieve their goals and objectives

We believe that having a written Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is more important than the selection of particular investment products. That's because creating an Investment Policy Statement forces you to put your investment strategy in writing and commit to a disciplined investment plan.

It's both a blueprint for how you will achieve your goals and a report card to see how well you are doing. Not having an IPS is like cooking without a recipe, but it's really worse. It's like trying to build the house without blueprints. Cooking without a recipe could sometimes turn out ok whereas building a house without blueprints will rarely turn out well. An IPS lays out what you're hoping to achieve with your investments what type of investments you are holding, and what you're looking for in each of them.

And it also gives you a document for monitoring that portfolio on an ongoing basis. So how often you'll check-up, what you'll be looking for when you check up, and also, when you'll make changes, so what will be the catalyst to make changes.

To the extent that you focus on portfolio performance, you want to focus on how your portfolio is doing against your long-term goals rather than getting overly concerned with how individual investments are performing.

We believe that for most of our clients, the focus should be on ensuring that they have sufficient personal security to meet their needs, sufficient lifestyle security to meet their wants and that their longer-term focus should be on wealth preservation and ultimately leaving a meaningful legacy to the next generation.

Putting in place an IPS requires a coherent investment framework. Our investment approach is clientcentric. Everything we do is built around seeking to act in the best interests of you. We seek to take a responsible approach to investing and to align your investments with your values.

In our view:

1. Your Investment portfolio should be built around your goals and values. Your circumstances and preferences are the most important considerations when designing investment portfolios. We also treat as a priority your unique need, willingness and capacity to take investment risk

2. Ownership of Assets and Taxation. We believe that for all investors how you own your assets is one of the most important considerations when building an investment portfolio.

3. Asset Allocation. Time and time again the mix between safe (cash and bonds) and risky (equities and real estate) assets have been shown to account for the lion’s share of investment returns. Getting the right mix for you is vital.

4. Diversification. Diversification is the closest thing there is to a free lunch. Proper diversification increases the likelihood of earning expected returns and may reduce risk by eliminating risks you are not paid for taking.

5. Rebalancing. Over time your portfolio will drift away from the desired asset allocation. Rebalancing by selling things that have gone up and buying things that have gone down is an important activity and emotionally difficult for investors to do themselves.

6. Costs Matter. All things being equal we prefer to invest in the lowest cost passive or “smartbeta” funds. However, if client circumstances e.g. taxation or preferences e.g. Ethical investing, dictate, we will consider more expensive investments. However, keeping costs down puts the odds of success in your favour.

7. Emotions. Investors often exhibit behavioural biases that can lead to poor investment decisions. Overconfidence, self-attribution, mental accounting, searching for patterns, hindsight, regret, and fear are cognitive biases and emotions that an advisor can help overcome in order to promote both wealth and well-being.

8. Working with an adviser helps investors achieve their goals. Because we are emotional, studies show that DIY investors tend to do worse than investors working with an adviser. The media is partially to blame; but in the face of that marketing noise, investors must maintain their discipline and stick to a long-term investment strategy. Some studies conclude that individual investors underperform the market by as much as 3%, likely due to a lack of discipline that results in chasing hot stocks or hot funds or by attempting to time markets.

9. Capital markets do a fairly good job of pricing risks. Capital markets are not perfect and prices are not always right, but markets are so competitive that it is unlikely an investor can systematically profit from mistakes in the market at the expense of other investors. It’s a zerosum game with costs, where the amount by which the winner wins, is equal to the amount by which the loser loses.

10. We invest, we don’t speculate Our approach to investment is based on academically proven principles that are at the core of a successful investment strategy. You are not paying us to act on our hunches or attempt to predict the future

Staying on Track

Your Financial Plan provides the foundation for the successful management of your financial affairs. Very often putting in place the plan is the easy part.

The key to realising the benefits of your plan is to ensure that you follow the plan consistently over time. Helping you with the ongoing management and implementation of the plan is a key part of our relationship.

To help you with this we provide ongoing review, monitoring and support which sets out to answer these simple questions on an ongoing basis:

• How am I doing - the values of funds we hold (including withdrawals), your cash/property position from last review

• What am I paying you for - any tax and financial planning or investment management issues that have arisen since our last review

• What do I need to do now? - our recommendations to keep you on track

• What do you need from us now?

RegularClientReports

We provide you with regular valuation reports on your investment portfolios and we are available to discuss them with you at any stage.

From time to time markets may be extremely volatile. We are always available to advise on the correct response to these events. Our focus will be to ensure your investment plan remains on track.

AnnualProgressMeeting

These meetings provide us an opportunity to review any major changes in your personal or financial situation since our last meeting. Significant milestones such as marriage, separation or divorce, the birth of a child or a family bereavement can have important implications for your Financial Plan. We will advise you on any changes that need to be made to your Plan.

Part of our role is to keep you up to date with significant tax, legal and regulatory developments. Where these have implications for your Financial Plan we advise accordingly.

We also review your overall progress toward your long-term goals using an agreed Benchmark. This relates to what you need to do to meet your personal goals and objectives.

This meeting is also our opportunity to consider and implement additional planning solutions that may be appropriate for your situation. We will present to you any planning opportunities so that we can prioritize those areas of greatest importance to you and then begin to address them systematically.

As issues arise we will ensure that all aspects of the issue are given due consideration.

LiaisingwithyourProfessionalAdvisers

In this regard we will, at your discretion, take the lead in consulting your other professional advisers. We find that a collaborative approach with your key advisers leads to the optimal outcome.

AnnualGovernance

Where you have certain ongoing management and governance obligations in respect of your partnership, trust or company structures we will provide ongoing support with these requirements.

SupportingyourFamily

We are committed to supporting your family as they progress through their education and careers. We will provide advice to family members as required. This is a critical stage for ensuring that good financial discipline is established and we are happy to provide our advice on the fundamentals and assisting with mortgages, pensions and savings.

OngoingPhoneConsultation

In between our regular meetings we are available for consultation by phone on any issues you wish to discuss. Staying on track requires you to maintain “peace of mind” and we are happy to discuss your concerns at any time.

Working with Us

We see the financial planning process as a collaborative effort. Our objective is to bring discipline to the planning process in order to create structure and a strategy.

Our approach is to take the time to define the strategy. Once established, to maintain discipline and don’t change it too often - otherwise it is not really a strategy. Patience and planning go hand in hand.

Investors who lack patience are not really investors, they are speculators. We seek to establish realistic long-term expectations of performance and ignore short term market ‘noise’. We manage risk via appropriate insurance and adequate diversification.

Whatyoucanexpectfromus

• A customised plan that includes clear, concise recommendations which have been developed in light of your current circumstances, legislation and economic conditions.

• An understanding of the general principals of accounting, tax and the legal systems that operate in Ireland.

• A commitment to a regular review process providing a forum to discuss the plan you have in place as well as any changes that may have occurred in the interim.

Whatweneedfromyou

We rely on the completeness and accuracy of the information you provide to us. Only in this way can we build appropriate planning strategies for you.

Please be mindful that we undertake to review your plan with you at least annually, we do not monitor the daily performance of your portfolio. However, if your portfolio is managed by a discretionary manager, it will be monitored daily. This is an important distinction.

Personal circumstances, legislation and economic conditions can sometimes change quickly. For this reason, our recommendations will remain current for three months from delivery of your financial plan. After that time, or if in the meantime any changes occur that affect your personal circumstances, economic conditions or applicable legislation, you should contact us before acting on our recommendations.

Whatwedonotdo

• Guarantee returns. Any income and growth projections included in the plan are intended only as a guide. The nature of the investments is such that a particular rate of return cannot be guaranteed and some fluctuation in the income can be expected. Similarly, the underlying value of the securities will fluctuate, and the value of your investments can be expected to rise and fall.

• Provide legal, tax or accounting advice. Where appropriate, we will endeavour to illustrate the likely legal, taxation and accounting implications of our recommendations, based on our understanding of your particular circumstances and the law in Ireland. We can introduce you to our panel of recommended tax and legal advisers if required. However, we do not purport to be solicitors, taxation or accounting experts. On this basis we recommend that you consult your legal counsel, taxation adviser or accountant in relation to all relevant matters.

Our Fees

The question “how much is this going to cost me?“ is naturally uppermost in the minds of our prospective clients. Here’s the good news, we believe in complete transparency in how we charge for our services. Our commitment to you is that we will always disclose the cost of our advice in a clear Euro amount before you purchase a product or service.

The Financial Services world does itself no favours when it comes to complex and misleading fees, commissions and penalties. Regulators over the years have tried to address this through disclosure rules which simply mean that huge documents are required to be provided where a simple Euro amount is all that prospective clients desire. These documents are complex and opaque and very often only provided after the transaction has concluded.

Impartial Advice

How do you know you are receiving objective, impartial, independent advice? One way is to pay a fee for it.

The first stage of our advice process is to ask you to sign a Letter of Engagement which sets out the areas where you require advice.

We then provide you with a written Statement of Advice completely independent of the sale of any financial products.3 This our best thinking about what you need to do to ensure that your lifetime objectives, how you wish to live the rest of your life, is aligned with your finances.

Our financial planning advice aims to assist you to answer these questions for a clear, transparent agreed fee. This is a professional financial planning service and as such attracts VAT at a rate of 23%

Plan Implementation

In the financial planning advice to you we may recommend financial products or trusts, partnerships, corporate structures or pension structures to meet your objectives. Should you decide to follow our recommendations then we may assist you to implement these recommendations. For this work we always charge a clear agreed implementation fee as set out in your letter of engagement and our Schedule of Services and Fees.4

Ongoing Fees

Our annual advice fees are disclosed in a clear Euro amount annually so that you can see that you are receiving value for money on an ongoing basis.5

3 The Central bank of Ireland does not regulate financial planning or tax advice, and this is not a statement of suitability as defined in the consumer protection code.

4 As per 3 above

5 Implementation fees and ongoing advice fees may take the form of intermediation commissions and are generally collected from the financial product. This has the benefit of reducing your fees by the VAT saved.

The purpose of this guide is to provide investors approaching retirement with an understanding of their retirement options and some of the more important issues to consider.

It also sets out generic guidelines for advisers seeking to advise their clients on retirement planning matters.

Clients looking to access their retirement plans have a number of options available to them and should make some key decisions well before reaching retirement. These decisions are complicated and best served by a discussion with a qualified and experienced financial adviser.

Recommendations in this document may not be suitable for all investors. Individual circumstances should be considered before a decision to invest is taken. In any event that the content of this brochure may conflict with an individual’s unique personal circumstances, the client’s circumstances should be weighed more heavily.

Advisers are expected to use their Professional skill and judgement to resolve any conflicts between the content of this brochure and a particular client’s requirements.

Although this guide is intended to deal with the main questions facing those about to retire in general terms. As such, it does not attempt to cover every issue which may arise on the subject. It does not purport to be a legal interpretation of the statutory provisions and consequently, responsibility cannot be accepted for any liability incurred or loss suffered as a result of relying on any matter published in it.

The information provided in this brochure has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable and is based on our understanding of Irish Tax legislation at the time of writing (October 2022). We cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. It does not constitute a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any investment. Any person acting on the information contained in this document does so at their own risk.

The rates and bases of taxation may change in the future. We recommend that you obtain specific tax advice for your own personal situation.

It should be noted that we are not tax consultants, but we will refer you to a suitably qualified tax consultant on request.

As with any investment strategy, there is potential for profit as well as the possibility of loss. Past experience is not necessarily a guide to future performance. The value of investments may fall or rise against investors’ interests.

Income levels from investments may fluctuate. Changes in exchange rates may have an adverse effect on the value of, or income from, investments denominated in foreign currencies.

We do not guarantee any minimum level of investment performance or the success of any model portfolio or investment strategy. All investments involve risk and investment recommendations will not always be profitable. Fermat Point Ltd trading as Everlake is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. The Central Bank of Ireland does not regulate tax advice