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.

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.