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Michelle is an award-winning chartered financial planner who holds the designation 'Fellow of the PFS' demonstrating her commitment to maintaining the highest standards of knowledge, ethical conduct, and professional practice. Michelle is also an accredited member of the Society of Later Life advisers. Michelle offers a fully personalised service tailored to each clients individual needs and goals, using an approach that was recognised and honoured by the Women in Financial Advice awards in 2021. Clients working with Michelle can expect a high level of professionalism, integrity and a lasting relationship built on trust and open communication
Michelle Boakes
Chartered Financial Planner
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What exactly does a financial adviser do?
Every financial adviser will probably have a different answer, but for me, my role is to help people understand their finances and understand what opportunities or risks are involved in their financial situation.
I believe that everybody has the right to good financial wellbeing. I can help you see exactly what you’ve got and what you can do to make things better both now and in the future.
What services does a financial adviser offer?
It can be anything to do with your retirement plans or to save money for the future. Maybe you’ve inherited some money and you’d like to know what to do with it. It can be absolutely anything to do with money. There will always be a service we offer that will benefit you.
For example, we create financial plans for you, as opposed to looking at specific products like a pension or an investment. We can help you with those too, but the main thing for us is to have a look at your current circumstances and really analyse what’s going on.
Together we can explore what you could be doing to make things better or if there’s anything you might have overlooked. Maybe there’s a risk in your own financial plan that you haven’t considered. We’re here to make sure you’re fully covered for everything.
Free Introductory Meeting
We offer a complimentary introduction meeting to understand your existing plans and your financial objectives so that we can offer you the right advice and service that meets your objectives and your preferences.
Is it a tailor made service?
Yes, absolutely so. Not a single client comes in with the exact same circumstances as someone else. For example, you’d think retirement planning is broad. But when someone comes in for pension advice or retirement advice, everybody’s individual circumstances are so different that what’s right for one isn’t right for another.
When should I see a financial adviser?
I would love to see everybody at the earliest opportunity. That could be as soon as they get their first job, really. Working with a financial adviser can reap rewards in the future, and the earlier you engage with it, the sooner you see the benefits.
Generally, though, when something changes in your life it’s always a good time to reach out, especially if it involves money. That could be changing jobs, planning for retirement, after inheriting some money, receiving a lump sum payout or selling a house – anything.
We work with clients on an ongoing basis, because as soon as something changes in their personal circumstances, the whole plan needs to be reviewed. It’s really important that we think about how changes to your circumstances impact on your financial plans.
So is your life insurance still right for you? If you change jobs, you’re likely going to have a new pension – is the previous one still right for you? Or is it actually better than the one that you’re going to get? All of those things need looking at in detail. So that’s why every time something changes we’ll have a review.
Our personalised evidence-based recommendations that build on your current plans are achieved using robust research. We investigate different financial scenarios so that you can be confident in achieving your objectives
What’s the process? What would happen if somebody called you up today?
The first thing we would want to do is have an informal chat, about what you’re looking to get out of working with us. We’ll explain what it’s going to be like and what services are going to suit you best.
We follow a very structured process. After the initial conversation, if you want to go ahead and work together, we’ll have a more detailed, thorough meeting to understand your objectives and your current situation. Then, once we’ve got everything detailed down, we move on to our research and planning phase. That’s done behind the scenes here at Verve.
We look at all the opportunities for you. We’ll then get back together and give you some advice and suggestions around what you can be doing to improve things. Advice is a two-way conversation – we might recommend an approach but you might not feel it’s right for you. There might be something that we haven’t considered. So we always like to present all our recommendations and have a detailed conversation with your input too.
Once that’s done we move on to the implementation stage. So, if there are any financial products you need – a new pension or ISA or any of those things – we can set them up for you. After that we like to review and update them annually.
Get in touch
When we tell you about a fee, you will always receive a clear explanation of: The total fee, the advice service it relates to, how it's been calculated, when you need to pay it and your payment options.
Does it cost for an initial conversation with you?
No, that’s at our cost. We want to get a broad idea of how we can help you. There will of course be some instances where our services aren’t right for people, and if that’s the case we would refer you to the right place.
Our initial meetings have no cost. You would only have fees to pay if you chose to go ahead with our services, by which point you’d be fully aware of what the cost involved would be.
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