Accountants for financial advisers
You spend your working life planning other people's futures. This is about yours. Know the tax before it lands, keep more of what you earn, and own a firm that's worth something on the day you sell it.
Chartered Accountants in Southport, working with advice firms across the UK. More than twenty years working with financial services businesses.
Does any of this sound like you?
- "I wasn't expecting that tax bill to be that big."
- "I didn't think I'd taken that much out of the business."
- "I'm left with some large clawbacks. How will those affect my tax?"
- "Should I take on another member of staff?"
- "Can I claim client entertaining? It's really business development."
- "How do I structure the firm so I don't lose most of the sale value to capital gains tax?"
None of these is a compliance failure. It's what happens when nobody looks at your firm between one year end and the next. Some of these answers arrive too late to act on. The rest never get raised at all, because the person doing your accounts doesn't know how an advice firm makes its money.
What changes
You see the tax coming
Forecast through the year, not three weeks before it's due.
You keep more of what you earn
Structure, profit extraction and timing reviewed while there is still time to change them.
The firm is worth more when you leave
A buyer pays for clean numbers and an owner who isn't the whole business. Both take years to build.
Financial services firms are my specialism, and you'll be dealing with me.
Not an account manager, and not a different name every year. The team handles the day to day. The advice is mine, and I'm still here years later, when the questions change from growing the firm to selling it.
An advice firm isn't a standard set of accounts with different words on it. Initial and ongoing income behave differently, and clawbacks land in a different period from the income they reverse. A generalist posts what arrived in the bank as one number. That might be accurate but tells you nothing.
No two owners want the same thing either. One is building to sell in three years, another wants a four-day week. Software can produce the numbers. What you do about them depends on your life outside the business as much as inside it.
What that means for your income
- How it usually gets recorded
- One lump from the platforms and providers each month, posted as a single figure. At the year end you know the total. You don't know how much of it recurs next year, which adviser brought it in, or whether everything you were owed turned up.
- What we can do with it instead
- Split it by type, by adviser and by provider, then reconcile it to your practice management system as well as the accounts. Then you can see what genuinely recurs, whether the ongoing fees have all been paid, and where the clawbacks landed.
How far this is worth taking depends on your firm and on what your own system already holds. We'll work out what makes sense for you on the call.
We get it. You tell clients that the decision made ten years early is the one that matters, and your own firm is the thing that never gets the appointment.
Advice firms tend to be at one of three stages, and each one needs something different.
You're the only adviser
The firm is you, and perhaps an administrator. Everything that isn't client work lands on your desk at the end of the day.
You've added advisers
A second adviser, a paraplanner, someone on admin. More moving parts, bigger decisions, and no longer possible to hold it all in your head.
You're heading for the door
Three to ten years out. What you do with structure and profit now decides what a buyer pays, and some of it can't be fixed later.
"Oliver acted for us from the day I set up the business to the day I sold it eight years later. In all that time I never had a surprise. I knew what tax was due and when, so I could plan around it. When it came to the sale, he worked through the deal with us and structured it in a way that saved a significant sum in tax."
"Oliver has acted for us for many years, from the start of our acquisition journey to the sale and beyond. He was able to advise regarding our structure, along with our company and personal tax positions. Furthermore, he was able to advise and assist when liaising with the accountants of the companies that we acquired, and the financial division of the fund management firm who acquired us.
Throughout the process we have found him to be knowledgeable, dependable and approachable. He has placed us in the most tax efficient position throughout, detailing his advice in a clear, concise manner. I would have no hesitation in recommending Oliver and his Team."
More than twenty years working with financial services businesses. J A Fell & Co are Chartered Accountants, regulated by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
How it works
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Book a call
We talk about the firm. Where it is now, what's bothering you, and where you want to be on the day you stop.
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Get a plan
What to change and in what order. Structure, how you pay yourself, what the numbers should be telling you and when.
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Run it with me
Numbers that arrive on time, and someone who brings things to you before you have to ask.
7 Mistakes That Can Cost You Profit Today, and Value When You Sell
A guide for owners of financial advice firms. The things you probably already know, but may not have made time to fix. You do not need to be making all seven. One is enough to cost real money now, or to reduce the choices you have later.