We are delighted that Harvest Financial Services has been shortlisted at the Irish Pension Awards for the Independent Retail Broker /Pensions IFA of the Year for the 3rd consecutive year. Having won this award in 2015 & 2016, we hope the continued innovations and improvements we have made in 2017 to help our clients secure their financial future will be recognised.
We have also been shortlisted in the category of Property Manager of the Year.
Our associate company, Harvest Trustees Limited, have been shortlisted for the Independent Trustee Firm of the Year award.
The Irish Pension Awards honour excellence within the pension industry, and acknowledges our advice led approach to working with our clients to meet their retirement and investment planning needs.
Why Harvest are shortlisted for Independent Pension Broker Award –
Our aim has always been to put our client’s interests first in everything we do. We focus on the creation and maintenance of long-term relationships with our pension clients, during the accumulation phase through to drawdown and succession planning.
Over the last number of years, the challenges facing our clients who are funding privately for retirement have become increasingly more complex and we have adapted our service offering, developing innovative solutions to deal with these issues.
These challenges have included:
- Seeking investment returns in a low risk, low interest rate environment
- Understanding risk to deliver an income in retirement
- Managing investment costs to maximise investor return
- Technical pension issues around retirement planning.
- Seeking investment returns in a low risk, low interest rate environment
As deposit interest rates have plummeted across the world, the wisdom of holding long term cash deposits for retirement planning purposes has come in to serious question. We have effectively reached a point now in the developed world where inflation is running ahead of deposit interest rates.
- Understanding risk to deliver an income in retirement
As part of the solution to help clients understand the risks of holding cash deposits as a long term investment strategy we produced a brochure ‘Harvest Financial Services Guide to Retirement Income’. This document sets out the options available to clients at retirement and helps them to understand the main risks to securing their income in retirement, i.e. inflation, longevity and investment returns.
- Managing investment costs to maximise investor return
All quoted investments on our recommended list are accessible through a low cost online stockbroker. This allows us access the institutional share class (‘clean share class’) for investors which can result in a significant discount on the retail price. When advising our clients we quote the Total Expense Ration (TER) as the cost of the investment. We believe that this gives greater transparency to our clients and the savings will result in a better outcome in retirement.
- Technical pension issues around retirement planning
From dealing with Excess Fund Tax liabilities, to structuring pensions to avoid the annuity trap on death in service, we have been working with our clients to put in place structures and plans to ensure that they, and their dependants, get the maximum benefit from their pension schemes.
Our approach to dealing with our clients is advice lead. We believe that listening, and helping them determine their needs and objectives for retirement leads to better income outcomes in retirement and happier clients.
Published September 2017
