Agnes & Wai-Chan: International overseas residents

Why did you seek financial advice?

“Just like many families who’ve built up their hard-earned savings over time, we put our savings in some investment funds. We were advised by a UK financial advisor in Hong Kong. Later, we found out that he had given us poor advice while he took heavy commissions without us realising.

After the financial advisor left Hong Kong, we found that no one would manage our funds. To buy another advisor’s recommended funds we would have had to liquidate them, and in doing so, would lose half of their value.”

How did we help?

“We were lucky to find David who undertook a lot of investigation to find out what went wrong with our portfolio. He uncovered the huge hidden charges, the untold commissions to our old advisors, and the limitations of the setup that made it difficult to unwind our position. Gradually, David helped us turn it around, rebuild our portfolio and put us back on track.”

How have you benefited from our advice?

“Not only is David good at financial management, he gave us advice on different ways to protect ourselves. He explained how different types of funds work; which ones work best for us, how to structure the funds to avoid penalties for early withdrawal and minimise various charges.

He also advised us on how to prevent our children from being hit by inheritance tax in the future. In addition, David advised us on tax planning as we planned to move from Hong Kong to the UK in 2020. He patiently explained to us how various UK taxes work and how to protect our retirement funds. Without him, we would have easily fallen into many of these traps!”