Is your advisor saving you this much?
One of our main roles as your advisor is making sure that you get excellent value for the money that you spend on benefits. When it comes to our fees and costs nothing’s different. It can be a bit more subjective when we look at the value that we bring. Some of that will depend on the feedback that comes from employees who are members of the arrangements.
A good example is a recent reply to one of our LinkedIn updates that we posted. It was highlighting some research that Standard Life had done. The post basically stated that 72% of over 55s don’t think they can live on £140 a week State Pension. I got a reply from Ian Gray who was a client I advised on his retirement. Ian wrote in reply:
"Thanks to you Steve I do not have to. Many thanks for all your past advice. – Ian Gray"
We have loads more examples from clients of this kind of feedback that demonstrates that we are adding value for clients (and as importantly their employees) in everything we do.
But what about value you can measure?
Great feedback is fantastic and it shows us that we are doing something right. However, it’s hard to quantify in pounds and pence the impact that we have had.
When it comes to looking at the arrangements we look after for clients we can get this kind of quantative feedback. Forgive us for a little bit of self-publicity in looking at a recent case study involving one of our new clients that we have picked up from a national advisory firm. It demonstrates the value of what we do and the benefit of being with a pro-active advisor.
Since taking over we have done a full benefit audit. We’ve checked that everything has been set up correctly and that all of the benefits have been reviewed regularly.
So far (and there is still work to do) we’ve saved the company £25,629! Yes £25,629. This isn’t a large employer – they’ve got just over 30 employees. Here’s how we did it:
|
Description |
Amount Saved |
|
Review of Group Travel Insurance Policy |
£200 |
|
Waiver of Premium Refund Claim – Employer |
£9,787 |
|
Waiver of Premium Refund Claim – Employee |
£4,638 |
|
Review of Medical Care Scheme |
£7,252 |
|
Review of Income Protection Scheme |
£3,752 |
|
Total |
£25,629 |
That works out at a saving of over £95 for each day that we’ve been working for them! A tremendous result for the company in such difficult economic times. We’d like to think we could continue at that rate but sadly it’s not going to happen.
It’s not just about saving money. During our audit we’ve unearthed a Waiver of Premium pension
claim that had never been submitted, a temporary absence clause on the Group Life Scheme that leaves the employer badly exposed and group risk arrangements that we needed to bring into line with the Default Retirement Age "carve out".
All in all, a good few months work. We’ve not only identified and released savings but also identified and mitigated a number of very real business risks.
If your advisor isn’t doing all that for you – isn’t it time you changed. Our example shows that the biggest in our industry aren’t always the best.
To arrange an initial meeting at our expense please contact us here. It may well be the best investment you ever make!
Steve Clark
All images courtesy of Flickr – Images_of_Money, woodleywonderworks. Photos8