Harvest Wins Independent Pension Broker of the Year for 3rd Consecutive Year

Harvest Financial Services Limited is delighted to be awarded the prestigious title of ‘Independent Retail Pension Broker of the Year’ for the 3rd consecutive year at the Irish Pensions Awards 2017.  Having won this award in 2015 & 2016, we are delighted the continued innovations and improvements we have made in 2017 were recognised at the pension awards.

Having won this award for the last two years, the pressure was on us to keep our standards high to retain it. We’re delighted that this hard work and dedication has been rewarded.

Financial Broker Services –

Pensions – Pre Retirement

Pensions – Post Retirement

Investments

Wealth Management

Financial Planning

Property though Pension

Why Harvest won the 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:

1. Seeking investment returns in a low risk, low interest rate environment
2. Understanding risk to deliver an income in retirement
3. Managing investment costs to maximise investor return
4. 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.

Published November 2017