About David Gascoyne

I believe in helping clients make an informed choice, so I explain the disadvantages, as well as the advantages of the various options my clients have and I try to do this in a way that anyone will understand, no matter how little prior experience they have.  I also believe in being diligent, so when I say that I will do something, I will always try to keep that promise.  Being fair and open with people is another principle to which I try to adhere, so I quote what I feel is a fair price for my work, so that it corresponds with the benefit that my clients will get from it and reflects the amount of work and skill involved and I try to be up-front about it, so that my clients can choose whether or not they wish to proceed.  I am also discrete, so any private information that my clients give me remains confidential.

About my ongoing service and why I stay in regular contact with my clients

I learned from the experience of a family member that it is important to stay in touch with my client.  This relative retired and invested a lump sum with another adviser, as this was in the early 1990s and I didn't become an IFA until 1999.  As part of this advice, my relative had an investment that matured after five years.  It was quite a reasonable sum and even if the adviser hadn't stayed in regular contact, it would have made sense to get in touch when the plan matured, but he failed to so and so he missed out on the opportunity to reinvest that money.  

This failure taught me a valuable lesson about how I should go about looking after my clients. By having reviews at regular intervals, not only do my clients benefit from my oversight and from being updated, but it also enables me to get to know them better and better.  And it stands to reason that an IFA who really knows his clients is best placed to give them good advice.  It also helps build a relationship and it gives me great job satisfaction when my long-standing clients tell me that they trust me implicitly.

It is also true to say that advice needs to be reviewed as circumstances change.  For example, pension legislation has changed unceasingly for the last 25 years, so clients have had to adapt to these developments, so even the best advice all those years ago was soon out-of-date.  Sadly, many advisers are only interested in making a sale and then the client gets no ongoing service.  I commonly have clients telling me that they've got this policy, or that investment, but the adviser who set it up is nowhere to be found.  My clients don't have this problem; I keep them updated regularly.