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Safe as houses

21st Oct 2016
Brought to you by
ICPA

ICPA is a professional organisation for accountants in practice.

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One ICPA member’s wife wanted investment advice – so she went to see Roddy Kohn. Here’s her story

We are fortunate to have some money that we wanted to invest, but this brings various questions and decisions that I was finding difficult to make. What did we actually want it to do for us? Where should we invest it? What type of investment or product? And the biggest question for me, who to trust to guide us through the myriad of options and which company to use? I do not have a financial background, my partner is an accountant but concentrates on tax. I do read, or perhaps I should say skim, the financial pages, but all this had done was confuse and, frankly, scare me, leading to complete inertia, meaning our savings were not working for us at all.

Roddy Kohn of Kohn Cougar was recommended to my partner by Tony Margaritelli of the ICPA at an event he was attending. My partner spoke to him at the event and when he returned home I was very surprised at how enthusiastic he had become to finally resolving this issue. While still sceptical, I agreed to him discussing our situation with Roddy, and sending all the information required by Kohn Cougar so that we could perhaps move forward.

I was delighted that Roddy wanted to ensure he understood both our concerns, our plans for the future and views on risk before proposing to give any advice. A meeting was arranged at the Kohn Cougar offices in Bristol, so the added bonus was that we decided to have a short break in the West Country.

We arrived at Kohn Cougar having spent the car journey discussing what we wanted to achieve but not arriving at many answers. We were shown into a spacious office, seated on comfortable sofas and chairs and initially it felt like just having a chat over a cup of coffee. However, Roddy was very well prepared and had an agenda and a list of questions for us based on the information previously sent. Also, as I had not spoken with him before he was very careful to ensure that I clearly understood all that was being discussed and was in complete agreement with all decisions and outcomes.

The conversation soon began to bring into focus what we needed to achieve for our future plans, and I was relieved to feel it was very realistic and flexible to possible changes. Roddy then suggested ways to work towards achieving this. He clearly explained how the company was set up and how it worked and his passion to produce the best results for his clients.

He explained how our investment would be managed, how the risk would be ‘spread’ and investments needed to be long term over six years at least, to ensure we had adequate cash reserves. I was in complete agreement with him that we must enjoy the ‘now’ as well as investing for a long and happy future.

He also showed us the clear updates we would regularly receive. Topics such as tax planning and pensions were also covered. 

It was obvious to me that any investments he made would be geared to us and not from a pre-defined list that other financial advisers had tried to promote to us.

At the end of the meeting I felt that Roddy had taken the time to really understand our situation and our wants and needs for the future. For the first time I felt we were dealing with a financial advisor who deserved our trust and felt very comfortable that we would be putting our savings into the right hands. I am also pleased that he will deal with everything once all the papers are signed, but it was made clear we could be more hands-on if we wished.

To sum up, I found it a pleasure to discuss the dreaded topic of finance and came away from the meeting happy that we had finally arrived at the answers to our questions regarding investing our savings. We found we were able to get on with enjoying our short break without having that nagging worry of whether we had we made the correct choice that usually follows any financial decision.

After we got home I contacted the ICPA, and they asked if I wouldn’t mind writing about the experience for this magazine – they said it would be great to get a non-accountant’s take on the experience. So here it is, and for all you accountants reading this, sorry it’s not full of numbers and the like!

This article is taken from “Accounting Practice” the ICPA quarterly magazine. Dedicated to supporting and promoting the needs of the general practitioner. You can find us at www.icpa.org.uk or email [email protected] or by phone on 0800-074-2896.

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