If you’re a long-term Charlton House client, you may have recognised the advances we have made in terms of streamlining the way we run our business, and our ongoing commitment to the highest levels of professionalism.
In a recent newsletter I wrote about our plans for the coming year, and highlighted key issues such as our business efficiency and adding value to our interactions with you.
Another key objective is to increase the number of clients we deal with, but in a sustainable way that doesn’t detract from the service and advice we currently provide. With this sustainable growth in mind, I have worked out that we have capacity to take on a further 28 families over the next 18 to 24 months
I’ve long found that the best source of new clients is through referral recommendations from people we already work with. This has worked well for us, with our recommendation rate (the percentage of clients recommended by existing clients) at 25% in 2023, and a still very credible 17% last year.
In this article, you can read about the sort of person who we believe could benefit from our advice, and how you might go about introducing any friends of colleagues you feel may benefit from dealing with us.
What does a Charlton House client look like?
Clearly all clients are different, and the financial circumstances of two people are never the same.
However, in my experience, there are some common characteristics that clients of Charlton House tend to share. For example:
- They will primarily be British expats, or internationally mobile people.
- Despite being abroad, they often have a UK footprint, likely to include assets such as property, investments, and pension arrangements there.
- They may have worked/lived in the UK previously or plan to return to the UK at some stage – perhaps after an existing contract finishes, or to retire.
- They are generally wealthy – the clients we look after have investment portfolios with an average value in excess of US$1 million.
- They are often busy professionals (entrepreneurs and executives) who lack the time and inclination (although not necessarily knowledge) to give their finances the attention they deserve
Importantly, we are authorised to give advice in both the UK and Hong Kong, which allows us to provide continuity in our client’s overall financial planning.
The demand for financial advice is primarily driven by key life events
We’re realistic enough to appreciate that few, if any, clients of any financial advice company will wake up one morning and think “today I’m going to find an adviser”.
In reality, the need for advice, is often prompted by specific events, which can generally be split into two distinct phases of someone’s financial journey.
In phase one, advice is liable to be transactional, based around clearly defined needs. The three most common of these tend to be:
- Starting to save money regularly
- The financial requirements around buying a property
- Providing for loved ones in the event of your death.
The second phase comes once you’ve started to find some financial security and begin to look at your long-term financial future, and this phase is more relevant to our target client market.
This means that the three most common reasons for clients making initial contact with us are:
- You are thinking of moving from one tax jurisdiction to another, which for us is primarily, though not specifically, from Hong Kong to the UK.
- You have already moved to work overseas, and are looking to take advantage of your high earnings and lower taxes.
- You’re approaching the time you intend to retire, or you have been thinking about the idea of stopping work.
All the planning we do tends to emanate from at least one of those scenarios, if not all three!
How you can introduce a client to us
If you’re talking about our services to friends and colleagues, it’s likely that you will relate your personal experience of working with us.
Another key underlying point to our business, which is often seen as a positive trait with new clients, is that our approach is geared to working out what your money is for, rather than creating wealth for the sake of it.
An illustration of this is that, unlike many other advice firms, we tend not to boast about the total of client assets we have under management (AUM).
To my mind such an approach is more about self-aggrandisement that any actual commitment to advice and planning. You also have to wonder how seriously a company that highlights AUM will deal with your investment portfolio if it is simply seen as adding to a top-level figure.
Two other important points to note are that:
- We’re independent, and not part of or beholden to any larger advice firm or company.
- We are a fee-based business, rather than raising revenue from clients through charges. I feel this is a far more professional way to operate.
From a logistical point of view, if you know someone who you feel could benefit from working with us, ask if you can introduce us to them through an email, and we’ll do the rest. And of course, you can always sense check it with me in advance if you wish.
Get in touch
If you know someone who you would like to introduce to us, then please get in touch.
Likewise, if you would like to talk about your own financial planning arrangements, we’re here to help.
You can contact us by email or, if you prefer to speak to us, you can reach us in the UK on +44 (0) 208 0044900 or in Hong Kong on +852 39039004.
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