Talking Money Summer 2017

Solomons-financial-advisor-wimbledon-blogger

Talking Money Summer 2017

The latest client magazine is now available – we only do the summer magazine as a digital version – we don’t want to overwhlem you with more reading, especially as there are so many opportunities to read some good fiction over the summer! Anyway, if you’d like to have a look, it is found in the resources section of the website under client magazine.. or just click this link.

Hopefully you will have received your personal copy of our Half Year Report 2017 in the post. If not, please let the team here know and we will get a copy over to you. Oh, and thanks for the positive feedback on it and the suggestions.

Solomons Currency Fluctuation Front Page 300 x 4235 px

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Email me to get in touch

Talking Money Summer 2017Dominic2023-12-01T12:18:27+00:00

Professional Adviser of the Year Awards 2017

Professional Adviser Awards 2017

I’m pleased to inform you that Solomons has been short-listed again as a finalist for the Professional Adviser Awards 2017 in the category for firm of the year – London. That’s now the fourth year in a row! Once again we are keeping some very good company with some of the best firms in London. Last year we were runner up (again) and once again I am not expecting to win – though of course I would love it if we did! This year’s short-list is also a little longer – twelve firms were short-listed.

As I have been asked in the past about how we were short-listed, in order to get this far a case study had to be submitted to the examiners. This year it was set by Jacqueline Lockie, who is the current Deputy Head of Financial Planning at CISI (Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment).

You can see the detail of the announcement here, should you wish to do so.

Professional Adviser is one of the better information services for UK-based regulated financial advisers, offering swift and comprehensive insight into developments in the financial services sector and aimed at those that generally advise “ordinary investors”. PA advise that the event is one of the industry’s best attended (and most respected) awards ceremonies every February.

Short-listed

The awards are broken into geographic regions; I have broken these down as best as I can from previous FCA information about the number of firms in each region. The FCA break the regions down a little further, with Yorkshire, West Midlands, East Midlands and Eastern all being separate categories. This is based on 5,718 firms in total throughout the UK. There are roughly 24,000 qualified advisers working at these firms.

LONDON – 899
SOUTH EAST – 598
SOUTH WEST – 768
MIDLANDS & EAST ANGLIA – 1,342
NORTH EAST – 645
NORTH WEST – 592
SCOTLAND & NORTHERN IRELAND – 641
WALES – 233

There is also an award for the overall firm of the year. Last year this was won by the firm that pushed us into second place. In all honesty, my view about awards is that they are largely a marketing gimmick, however, the PR and acknowledgement, even if somewhat questionable is welcome and hopefully conveys to our clients that we are well regarded within the field.

The award ceremony isn’t held until Thursday 9th February 2017.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Professional Adviser of the Year Awards 2017Dominic2023-12-01T12:18:59+00:00

Email Encryption – Better Security

Email encryption, better security

I wanted to let you know that we are now using ShareFile, an email encryption service from Citrix. We are now using this when we send documents to you as attachments.

We are also able to encrypt the body content of an email as well – but will endeavour to send a normal email first to warn you that it really is us.

Finally, you can also send us documents and attachments by clicking a link that we provide. This means that you can have rather more peace of mind.

Have a look at the piece within the blog as an example. I’m conscious that there are lots of different email solutions, so appearances may differ. So the image below is an example of what I hope your in-box would look like. The email from me shows attachments with an .html in the message line, you can see the green “button” to click to download the email. Then there’s just my standard stuff at the bottom of an email. Hopefully the image below is clear enough.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Email Encryption – Better SecurityDominic2023-12-01T12:19:21+00:00

Second Place Again…

Second place again

The Professional Adviser awards 2016 were held in London on Thursday evening. I didn’t attend, frankly for a firm our size, spending around £4,500 on an evening meal up the road, just doesn’t stack up as much of a worthy use of resources, which I would rather use to invest into improving our services to clients.

It was our third year in a row as being short-listed as firm of the year for London, the largest and perhaps more fiercely competitive category. It is highly improbable that we would win given our size, the other ten short-listed firms are simply much bigger, some are national firms. Anyway, I am delighted to let you know that we were highly commended – second place, again!

So, we didn’t win, but that’s a pretty good effort isn’t it! Confirmation of the result can be found by clicking this link. #paawards2016

Thank you to the team, all those that we work with and of course our clients. There are of course lots of categories, in essence the awards are there to encourage and promote excellence. Thanks to the judges for recognising what we are trying to do.

Congratulations to London winners John Lamb, who pipped us to the post and also won the overall UK firm of the year.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Second Place Again…Dominic2023-12-01T12:19:25+00:00

Website Video Error

Website Video Error…

Its Friday evening and I have just checked the website to find that for some reason the various embedded videos are all missing. We are attempting to identify why this has happened and fix the problem. Sorry. Have a good weekend.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Website Video ErrorDominic2023-12-01T12:19:36+00:00

Autumn Statement 2015

The Autumn Statement 2015

As ever, the Chancellor said a lot, made some unexpected changes and announced things that will happen and re-announced those that were already planned (all Chancellors seem to do this). In any event, the short story for most is that landlords are on the radar. Stamp Duty will be rising by an extra 3% for those buying a second property (or more) in addition to the changes already announced about interest relief.

In addition capital gains tax looks set to be something that is now much more closely inspected by HMRC and the payment for Capital Gains Tax on property appears to be moving to a pay at the time, rather than wait until the following January, which in some instances means bringing forwards the payment date to HMRC by potentially 22 months. The details are to be finalised.

The rumours about changes to tax relief on pensions changing were given further credibility with research into the impact of changes to the current 20%, 40% and 45% relief being finalised by March next year, so we would expect an announcement in the Budget next March. If I were a betting man (I’m not) I’d suspect that tax relief will become a single rate, of either 25% (which would be more logical – at least this has some link with the 25% tax-free cash) or 33% (you pay £2 we [Govt] pay £1).

In any event, our APP – the one you and your friends can have for free on iPad, iPhone or android platforms has been updated with changes appropriately.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Autumn Statement 2015Dominic2023-12-01T12:19:45+00:00

Short-Listed for 2016 Professional Adviser Awards

Short-listed for 2016 Professional Adviser Awards

I am delighted to report that we have been short-listed again in the category of “Firm of the Year for London” for the Professional Adviser Awards 2016. We now have a hat-trick of finalist appearances for the Professional Adviser awards. Like most award ceremonies, we don’t find out who wins until the winner is announced, but frankly for a firm of our size, I am honoured to be short-listed.

It’s usually a good evening out, mixing with some of the top firms in the UK. One of the most unexpected pleasures about my work is the relationships with other advisers. Many of us share best pratice ideas at a level that is rare in most fields… admittedly we all have a vested interest, we all want to do our best for our clients and we also appreciate that it is in everyone’s interest to have a better educated, better advised, better serviced UK market, leading to more people being financially independent and less reliant upon the State. Better advice means fewer complaints and reduced need for redress and hopefully lower regulatory fees.

The ceremony takes place on 11th February 2016.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Short-Listed for 2016 Professional Adviser AwardsDominic2023-12-01T12:19:48+00:00

Talking Money

The latest edition of Talking Money that we sent to clients generated a lot of interest and discussion. Our clients all receive a hard copy of this, but it is also available online in our resources section.

“Excellent latest magazine!”

Dominic Thomas: Solomons IFA

Talking MoneyDominic2023-12-01T12:39:15+00:00

Blog Makeover

You may have noticed that the blog has had a small makeover to celebrate its first birthday (we had a serious makeover of our website in October 2012). This was due to some issues that prevented me from making it look a bit better with images. Previously in this blog (which is my second) I was struggling to successfully add pictures, they would end up too large or in the wrong place. This was partly out of my control due to the techy stuff that I don’t understand that well, but was to do with the site theme and structure. So hopefully from this point forwards images can be inserted to make it look rather better. The old blog is still running, and as of now has had over 50,000 views, but I don’t update it at all and the original content has been moved to this one.

Social Media

We have also added my twitter feed and expect to add Linkedin, Facebook and various other social media formats for you to hook up to, should you choose to do so. Social media seems to be rather addictive and it is a good way to share useful information, the trick is separating the wheat from the chaff.

A good user experience

Finally, whilst my marketing team work hard to ensure a good user experience, it would be helpful to have any feedback about pages that don’t load up properly or you cannot view etc. Of course you may not know what it is meant to look like, but if it looks odd let me know. We have made considerable efforts to enable you to view our site and all of its content on your desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile smart phone. There are as you may know, hundreds of different formats and it is wise to keep yours up to date.

Dominic Thomas: Solomons IFA

Blog MakeoverDominic2023-12-01T12:23:57+00:00

DomTom

Pensions for over 50’s

We have a unique system, which we call the DomTom system, (it’s a little tongue in cheek). Our approach does to financial services what SatNav did to maps and it is nothing short of revolutionary. Our approach connects your values and motivations to identify the route to reach your desired outcome, which for most people is a specific lifestyle. The best SatNav systems update regularly, helping you to avoid congestion and recalculates the route based on the latest information.

Financial Plan

Your Financial Plan needs to adapt its approach as circumstances alter, but if done properly, the principles behind your plan will not alter, because they reflect your personal values.

A great financial plan is a “living” document, something that requires updating and monitoring. It is true to say that “life is a journey” but we believe you need to know where you want to go and how to best get there. You can select the speed and whether you take the scenic or quick route, our job is also to monitor what lies ahead. Our approach provides you with the truth about your financial position.

We believe that you can only make two mistakes along the road to truth, not going all the way, and not starting.

DomTomDominic2023-12-01T12:22:43+00:00