Client Testimonials

David Coates

“Very useful” is how David Coates describes his relationship with Birchwood Investment Management since becoming a client of the company in April 2008.

At the time, David was in the process of being made redundant from his role as a software development engineer at a Food Processing company, where he had worked for over 40 years. He had decided to use the opportunity to take early retirement and was already wondering about ways to reap the maximum benefit from his redundancy settlement.

David explains: “The company employed Birchwood to offer financial advice, firstly at a group session, which covered a number of areas that perhaps a few of us there hadn’t thought about before, such as opportunities for investments, income tax levels and pension allowances.

“The Birchwood package also included an hour-long one-to-one with adviser Jan Parkinson, which was very useful. She later came to my home for a follow up financial review with my wife Mary and me, where we discussed our financial situation, our income and outgoings and what we wanted to achieve with the redundancy money.

“She then made some proposals and confirmed in a letter the opportunities we were able to take. After talking it through, Mary and I decided that somewhere along the line, we had to take some action on our finances and as we felt that Birchwood were knowledgeable, reputable and a fairly substantial operation, we took the bull by the horns.”

David is well aware that his retirement has come at what he describes as “an exceptional time in the financial world” but he is generally pleased with the performance of his financial arrangements. Birchwood were also helpful in arranging for him to extract his money from one product after he changed his mind about going ahead, without any loss, and also advised him to transfer from another arrangement that was going through some difficult times.

Now, with extra time on his hands, he has the freedom to help his two daughters, who both need help with new houses, his son, who is getting married this year and to pursue an interest in garden history. So in retirement and in his relationship with Birchwood, he is able to say: “I am quite relaxed and happy”.