We’ve just celebrated our first birthday.
It’s been an incredible journey so far - emotional, rewarding and packed with valuable lessons.
Why we started
When we launched Blincoe in October last year, it was because we saw a need for change. We perceived that the financial services industry was, in the main, letting people down with excessive fees, reports so long that no one wanted to read them, and slow, error-prone processes.
Our mission remains the same now as it did at inception:
- Clear and high-quality advice: We provide personalised advice across the ‘usual suspects’ - investment planning, retirement planning, estate planning, tax planning, and catastrophe planning (protection). Central to our approach is comprehensive cashflow analysis, which offers a projection of your future financial position and lets us visualise whether you’re on track to achieve your goals and, if not, what needs to be done. But what sets us apart is our love for the ‘nerdier’ aspects of financial advice. We ‘sweat the small stuff’, seeking a 0.5% cost reduction here and a 1% tax saving there. Over time, these small gains compound to substantial financial benefits.
- Responsive service: Many clients come to us frustrated with unresponsive advisers—“We never hear from them” is a common complaint. To ensure great service, we maintain a manageable client base and continuously upgrade our technology and admin support to make things even smoother.
- Fair pricing: We believe in transparent, fixed fees based on the complexity of your case rather than the traditional percentage of assets approach, which sees larger clients subsidising smaller ones—a £2m client isn’t 4x the work of a £500k one and, therefore, shouldn’t be charged as such. This fixed fee model ensures you only pay for the work done, creating a more equitable pricing model.
- Cost-effective investments: Our investment philosophy focuses on what we can control—keeping things simple, low-cost, well-diversified, and tax-efficient to maximise your returns. You can read more about our approach to investing here.
Financial planning is evolving
The role of a financial adviser has changed a lot over the years.
Once upon a time, it was about picking investments and selling insurance.
Thankfully, this evolved to incorporate the following:
- Retirement planning: Making sure you’re saving enough for retirement, that your pensions are invested wisely, and structuring your retirement income in the most effective manner.
- Tax planning: Organising your investments to be as tax-efficient as possible, making the best use of available allowances, tax reliefs and inter-spouse transfers.
- Estate planning: Exploring ways to reduce or eliminate a potential inheritance tax charge on your estate and ensure your wealth passes smoothly to your chosen beneficiaries.
- Education funding: Planning how to pay private school fees or other educational expenses for your children.
- Cashflow modelling: This combines your current financial position with various assumptions, such as inflation, spending, retirement, investment returns, etc., to project that position forward. As noted earlier, this helps gauge whether you’re on track to meet future spending needs and maintain your desired lifestyle throughout your life.
Today, the role is much broader still, capturing non-financial aspects such as:
- Discovering What Matters: Helping you identify what’s most important to you and creating a plan to prioritise those things.
- Guidance Through Life Changes: Supporting you with major life decisions, like planning for retirement.
- Aligning with Your Values: Ensuring your financial choices reflect your personal values and investment preferences.
- Avoiding Costly Mistakes: Helping you stay calm during market ups and downs to avoid rash decisions that could cost you.
- Keeping Things Organised: Simplifying and organising your finances, saving you time and giving you peace of mind.
- Trusted Advice: Offering expert guidance for all your family’s financial matters when needed.
- Continuity and Support: Acting as a reliable point of contact for your loved ones if something unexpected happens.
- Professional Network: Connecting you with solicitors, accountants, and other professionals to create a well-coordinated plan.
It’s a genuine pleasure and privilege to meet with existing and new clients, helping them map out their goals and creating a holistic financial plan to turn those visions into reality.
Looking ahead
We’re not stopping here. We’re working hard to continue to improve our services.
Here’s a brief overview of what’s on the ‘roadmap’:
- Your finances in one place: A customer portal where you can view all your assets, liabilities and income sources in one place, along with a ‘live financial plan’. The portal will also offer secure messaging functionality.
- Better reports: Automating parts of our reporting to get updates to you quicker and moving from twice-yearly to quarterly (or even monthly!) investment insights.
- Content you love: Enhanced blogs, polls for content ideas, podcasts, webinars, and detailed guides tailored to your needs.
- We’re expanding: We’ve hired and will soon be hiring again. Details to be announced soon.
Thank you
Finally, a big thank you to our clients and partners. Your trust and support have been incredible. If you think we’re on the right track, please share our story with friends and family. And if there’s anything we can do better, let us know.
