In this insight, Matthew Douglas Limited, our joint venture partner in Ellisons Financial Planning, provide an overview on financial planning in an ever increasingly, uncertain year.

Every industry is striving to overcome the obstacle that has been thrown their way this year in the form of a global pandemic, and financial planning is no exception. However, despite the considerable headwinds that have hit investment markets, Ellisons Financial Planning has remained as busy as ever.

As it is well known, equity markets hate uncertainty and with a number of known obstacles on the horizon such as Brexit and the US election already bringing a large amount of uncertainty to the market for 2020 and 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic brought a whole new level of uncertainty to the table.

It was March when the pandemic unleashed disruption to the financial market, consequently bringing an abrupt end to the 12-year bull market we have been experiencing since the global financial crisis in 2008. Unusually, the financial market crash in March occurred within the period of just 2 weeks, far too quick to anticipate or mitigate. This resulted in the necessity for immediate strategic change, which we implemented in April.

As markets began to stabilise again, and despite the gloom, at the time, pervading the nation, Ellisons Financial Planning continues to navigate our client’s money through this turbulent year; moving away from property and large cap UK equities in favour of the nimbler technology and bio-tech stocks better able to survive and thrive during a global pandemic.

Consequently, all of our portfolios, low to high risk, have all returned a modest profit over the past 12 months, as shown in the graph below.

 

Ellisons Financial Planning office in Hadleigh has remained open throughout and we continue to function and service clients’ needs.

Tony West, Mark Norman and Russell Brett all achieved ‘Chartered Financial Planner’ status this year. You can find out more about the team here.

In addition, due to popular demand we have instituted a suite of ‘ethical’ portfolios to run alongside our more traditional portfolios with remarkable immediate success undoubtedly helped by huge falls in short term demand for fossil fuels.

We presently look after some £250M worth of assets for our private clients within a secure and regulated environment and continue to strive to deliver the best possible returns within agreed parameters of risk.

Whether your wealth is held in pension funds, off-shore bonds, ISA’s or unit trusts we have solutions for you, supported by an excellent and dedicated team of professionals this has uniquely ensured we have remained a “Top 100”* IFA for the past 6 consecutive years.

Update by Matthew Pescott Frost, Director at Ellisons Financial Planning.

Ellisons Financial Planning Limited is an appointed representative of Matthew Douglas Limited who is directly authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Matthew Douglas is incorporated in England & Wales. Registration Number 04777743. 

(*) Top 100 as selected by New Model Adviser Magazine; we are the only IFA in the Eastern region to have this listing for the past 6 consecutive years.