At Birchwood, our aim is to help everyone make the most of their money. That includes people who already have existing financial arrangements in place.

Whether you made these arrangements independently, or have been working with another Independent Financial Adviser (IFA), you may be feeling that you’re not getting the returns you hoped for and would like someone to look at your portfolio with a fresh pair of expert eyes.

We will take time to thoroughly understand your current financial arrangements, your attitude to investment risk and what you want to achieve. Then we’ll take an objective, unbiased view of your existing financial arrangements – which may include insurance, investments, pensions and savings – and how they are performing.

We’ll also look at your investment goals to make sure that they are realistic and achievable. Your circumstances may have changed since your financial arrangements were originally put into place, so this is an opportunity to think again about your goals.

We’ll analyse your circumstances and objectives, then use this information to recommend suitable investments that will match your requirements in terms of your attitude to risk, tax efficiency, accessibility, costs and growth expectations. This process is known as asset allocation.

You may find that we recommend only minimal changes or that we suggest more significant changes to help you develop or diversify your portfolio. Whatever we recommend, you can be sure that because we are completely independent of any financial institution, we are free to choose the most suitable investment or protection product from any source.

You won’t be under any pressure to do anything that you are not comfortable with, and we encourage you to challenge and question our advice whenever you feel it is appropriate.

If you choose to work with us, we will continually monitor the performance of the funds used in your investment plans and make proactive suggestions for better alternatives when we believe this to be the case.

We’ll send you regular reports on how your investments are performing and will continue to schedule regular reviews with you to make sure that your money carries on working in the most effective way to achieve your personal goals.

Your first meeting will be free in order that can obtain a clear understanding of how we may be able to help you achieve your personal financial objectives. You will also receive clear information on the nature and scale of fees that we charge for our services before we agree to undertake any work on your behalf, as we cannot receive commission from any providers we place new business with following the provision of our advice.