£4 million. Help please.

[BikerintheDales]

Lucky me! I'm due to inherite £3.8 million.
Do l first see.
A) A solicitor.
B) Bank manager.
C) Money advisor.

Or someone else all together?
I'm widowed and just became an OAP.
Kids grown up.. own houses.
Thankyou.

You don’t want it all in one bank. Spread it across different accounts.

OP just another one saying no to SJP, can recommend True Potential for good, honest, sound and straight forward advice. Good luck!

agree becareful who you choose, i got shafted few years ago my bank made out it was a free chat, i struggled to escape the meeting at the bank, said i would think about it, then had texts/phone calls that night after 8pm hounding me, went for second meeting sign here god i was annoyed cost me about 4 hundred pounds, for a load of bad info i did not really want, evan took bank to complaints people i felt so set up, so think before you see anyone

I 2nd True Potential! Very impressed with them

What’s better? I thought it was good because for something under 5k you get bundled advice. I know someone with jp private bank but she had 20 + not 4, my other friends gave mixed success with the other pbanks , mainly their investment advice is poor

How do people with millions protect their money against the bank going bust as they can’t just put £85k in each account?

You'll need somewhere to put it while you sort out in your mind what you're doing to do with it.

I agree with others who've suggested that you need to approach a wealth management company. I have personal experience of this one and am happy to recommend them.

I was a private banking manager for many years but retrained into IT.

Agree with what PP's have said.

A solicitor to write your will and an accountant for tax returns.

If you have a private pension you can backdate contributions for a couple of tax years so you have until April to do this. There are restrictions based on earned income too.

If you don't need the money a deed of variation can pass a chunk to your beneficiaries so it bypasses your estate for IHT / care home fees. A rule of thumb would be to think about what you need every year for your bills / car / travel / etc. I used to find my clients didn't change their habits of a lifetime if they came into wealth so multiply that up until you're 90 and anything above that is 'at risk' of IHT and care fees.

Agree a trust can be time consuming etc but most banks with a private banking team will have this in-house and administer for you so you can enjoy making further gifts over your lifetime with some control (and protection).

When it comes to investing, be aware that some advisers charge a fee to give advice but most will have reviews online now anyway. Banks may be tied to their own funds but it can be good to compare a couple of options so you are comfortable.

I would have thought

A solicitor so you can get all the paperwork which you can take to the other two

Three financial advisors so you get a variety of opinions

The financial advisor you decide on for a more in depth meeting

Then a recommended accountant (if you do t have that then meet a couple) to make sure you can take advantage of any tax schemes you want and to sense check what your financial advisor says.

Then the bank to set things up

Then back to a solicitor to make a will.

Congratulations BTW, you lucky thing you. Enjoy it.

Willing to bet this poster is affiliated with SJP in some way

@BikerintheDales

Some have suggested a Deed of Variation and others have mentioned Trusts. I am no Financial Adviser but I have read about Family Investment Companies and this may be another option to explore.

As pp have suggested take your time, do your research and ask questions, lots of questions. Think about your and your families lifecycle and what is important at each life stage.

Most of the private banks will require around £3m deposited, so it might be difficult to spread out the accounts too much if you want private banking.

I agree with separation between legal advice, tax accounting, banking and wealth management. If you have friends who are HNW, it's worth it to ask them for recommendations for wealth management - imo the best tend to manage smaller numbers of people and often won't be taking new clients on but can be a good source for recommending others. The good independent advisors do take a pretty healthy percentage of what they manage but will get good returns and should be very diligent in exploring your appetite for risk vs more conservative strategies and balancing the two.

We've used http://brecher.co.uk for wills and trusts and general inheritance planning and been happy with them.

As someone else said, do not go anywhere near any financial adviser linked with St James Place. They are known as the cowboys of the industry and have recently earmarked hundreds of millions to refund clients they incorrectly charged. Make sure if you find an adviser you look at the small print on their website as they might have a different company name but be linked to St James Place. They can also only recommend St James Place products.

Make sure you find a Chartered IFA and one that is independent. This means they can advise on all products.

You don’t need to be setting up trusts at least for the moment. They’re expensive and time consuming to do.

My father put my grandfather's estate in trust 20 years ago. Honestly, it's the bane of our lives. Even just setting up a simple bank account takes ages as it's a different department that always seem inordinately slow. Moving the account from one of the mainstream banks (who decided to cease offering trust accounts) to Barclays took the best part of a year.

Similar problem on the investments side, not all providers offer trusts. We moved the account to AJ Bell and you can't trade online so it's painful changing investments.

If you trust your kids (and they're not likely to divorce), I think a better option is to gift the money into their name into a ring fenced savings or investment account that they promise not to touch. After 7 years it's out of your estate for inheritance tax purposes but you still have access to the money if needed.

I know lawyers recommend trusts but the legal fees of administering it shouldn't be ignored, as well as the hassle factor for the trustees.

Beware annual percentage fees. 2% per annum may not seem like a lot but over time it will eat into your returns. I wouldn't pay more than 0.75% per annum including advice for an investment portfolio.

If you do a Deed of Variation redirecting some of the money to your beneficiaries, I believe it is treated differently to a gift and not subject to the 7 year rule, although you should obtain professional advice.

You are incorrect. I don't work in financial services of any kind. Just been with SJP quite a few years and get a good return overall.

You can’t expect firms to run your investment portfolio for free. If the fund is well managed it will grow (particularly if you can reinvest the return as you don’t need it). Return depends partly on risk level which depends on the % of equities.

Give some to me 😉

Lots of good advice on this thread. The first thing to do is very simple though. Go for a long walk, probably by yourself, or maybe with your spouse if you really trust them. During this walk, think hard about what the money is for. It’s nice to have it, but money is pointless unless it has a purpose. What do you want to do with it? Do you want to reduce your hours at work? Provide for a nice retirement? Move house or help your children buy their first homes? Give to charity? Maybe all of these? Work out your priorities. Then go home and write them down. From that you can work out a plan, and what professional help you might need or not need.

Don’t go hiring professionals just because you think that’s what rich people do. Only pay someone if you have a clear idea of what you want them to achieve for you. Your money will last much longer that way.

100% agree with this. Don’t go paying anyone for advice until you do this.

£100k is way below SJPs target market though, so I’d be surprised if you were getting much in the way of useful advice, and 15% return over the last year is poor. As a comparison an off the shelf passive ethical fund at L&G (PMC Ethical Global Equity Index 3) is up nearly 22% in the last year, with a management charge of 0.3%. Non ethical funds have probably gone up more 😂

Some good advice in this thread, and all I’d add is don’t rush into anything. £3 or £4m is a lot, but a series of sub optimal decisions will soon make a big dent in it!

I have similar funds. I have an IFA (nice independent firm found from unbiased.co.uk not one of the big expensive ones like Brewin Dolphin). And an accountant who does my taxes.

I agree with the tone and philosophy of this one (although they missed the bit about your being widowed) and also about the many who cautioned you regarding wealth manager fees, particularly St James Place but there are many other wealth managers who overcharge.

However at the same time, unless you understand investing, you probably need a financial advisor of some sort in order to help you work out what to do with the money. You probably also will want a tax advisor to help you understand tax implications of available choices. A solicitor, I am less sure about: they charge high hourly rates, and unless you know specifically what your objective is they tend to go into lots of detail (for which they bill) on any issue that you might raise with them.

I would probably not pursue trusts, at least for now, but probably not ever. They are basically a tax dodge that has faced increasing crackdown from successive governments. With a trust, you typically give up control of the assets and pay a lot of fees in order to (legally) reduce inheritance taxes for when you pass the assets on to your beneficiaries. But governments keep changing the rules, the fees are high, and you typically lose at least some control of the assets when you put them into trust.
For reducing inheritance taxes, it would probably be far more cost-effective and tax-efficient to work out what you need or want for yourself, and what amounts if any you would be prepared to give up, for instance for your daughters - and then start giving money directly to beneficiaries while you are alive. As long as you survive for 7 years, such gifts are typically tax free in the UK (you’d need to check this against your specific circumstances with a qualified tax advisors), and there are some gifts you can give that remain tax-free even if you do not survive 7 years. A good IFA or tax advisor can help you to understand this.

In the short term you probably want a way to keep the money safe while you work out to do with it. If you don’t know much about investing, then a good financial advisor ought to be able to help you with that without charging too much. For a low-risk portfolio I personally think that anything over 1% of assets all-in INCLUDING FUND FEES, PLATFORM FEE AND ADVICE FEES is too much.

One approach might be to meet with two or three financial advisors at different firms, and see what feels right. Good signs would include:

1. they do NOT promise you very high investment returns
2. they explain things in ways that you can understand.
3. they explain all of the different layers of fees that you would end up paying, in terms that you can understand
4. they are good listeners

I put “listening” last in the list because some financial advisors who listen well are good salespeople, but poor advisors. However “listening” is absolutely essential and if it’s not there then they are not right for you.

If that sum of money is deposited in a UK bank account they will be contacting you fairly sharpish!

I'd echo what others have said here and wait for a while before you rush into anything. Read up as much as you can about money, tax, fee structures, and all the things you're likely to come across. The, when you have a clear idea of what you want to do consult several advisors.

One thing to do, however, if you're going to keep it as cash in the short term is to spread it across at least four separate banking licenses. The £85k FSCS guarantee is temporarily (six months) raised to £1m for 'qualifying life events', of which inheritance is one.

Finally, a note about St James' Place. I have an elderly relative who set up a plan with them 15 years ago. As she was already 80 at the time the advisor insisted that a relative attended all meetings etc to ensure she wasn't having the wool pulled over her eyes. I now have POA over her finances. I have to say that I have never seen any sign that they are anything other than the most utterly professional set up, and from my experience with them I simply do not recognise the reports about the maltreatment others have received. Clearly there are problems there, but they are definitely not universal.