FAQs

Everything we do is guided by the principle of putting clients’ interests first. We aim to provide clear explanations, transparent fees and recommendations that are suitable for your individual circumstances and objectives.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of our service, we encourage you to tell us as soon as possible. We will investigate your concerns promptly under our formal complaints procedure. Where appropriate, you may also have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

We maintain professional indemnity insurance in accordance with FCA requirements, providing an additional layer of protection for our clients.

Our IT infrastructure is independently assessed against the Government-backed Cyber Essentials standard, providing additional reassurance that recognised cybersecurity controls are in place.

We take the security of your personal and financial information extremely seriously. Our systems are protected using modern security controls, are regularly updated and monitored, and we comply with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Our planners undertake ongoing professional development to maintain their knowledge and competence. We believe financial planning should combine technical expertise with clear, practical advice.

We use robust security measures, maintain secure systems and follow recognised data protection and cybersecurity standards, including Cyber Essentials certification, to help keep your information safe.

Yes. We explain all fees before any chargeable work is undertaken, ensuring you can make an informed decision.

Fiducia Wealth Management is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This means we must meet strict standards governing the advice we provide, the way we treat clients and how we manage our business. You can view our profile here or by searching the Financial Conduct Authority Register using our firm name or FCA Firm Reference Number 408210.

You may benefit from financial advice if you are approaching retirement, have received an inheritance, are selling a business, want a second opinion on existing investments, are concerned about Inheritance Tax, or simply want greater confidence that your financial plans are on track.

Although our offices are based in Dedham, near Colchester, Chelmsford and Brentwood, we advise clients throughout the UK using face-to-face meetings, secure video conferencing and telephone appointments.

We do not apply a single minimum investment for every client. Suitability depends on your circumstances and the type of advice you require, so we are always happy to have an initial conversation.

Yes. We advise trustees and attorneys on fulfilling their responsibilities, managing investments prudently, and making decisions in the best interests of beneficiaries.

Many of our client relationships span several generations. We are delighted to advise children, parents and grandparents, helping families preserve and transfer wealth in a structured and tax-efficient way.

Yes. We regularly advise couples and families on savings, investments, education funding, inheritance planning, and protecting their financial future.

Yes. Financial planning is valuable at every stage of life. We help professionals build wealth, save tax-efficiently, protect their income, and establish good financial habits from an early stage.

We advise professionals who are looking to build long-term wealth while balancing busy careers and family commitments. Advice often includes pensions, investments, tax-efficient savings, and financial protection.

Yes. Our role continues long after retirement begins. Many of our clients are already retired. We help them manage withdrawals, minimise tax where appropriate, review investments, adapt their financial plans as circumstances change, plan for later life, and consider passing wealth to future generations.

Absolutely. For many people, retirement is one of life’s biggest financial decisions. Retirement planning is one of our core areas of expertise. We help clients understand whether they have enough to retire, how to generate sustainable income and how to structure their pensions and investments tax-efficiently.

Yes. We work with company owners and directors on areas such as retirement planning, extracting profits tax-efficiently, protecting their families and businesses, investing surplus cash, and planning for the eventual sale or succession of their business. We help business owners make informed financial decisions throughout the life of their business. 

We work with individuals, couples, and families looking for clear, independent financial advice. Whether you are building wealth, planning for retirement or considering how best to pass assets to the next generation, we provide advice tailored to your personal goals and circumstances.

We work with a wide range of clients, including individuals, couples, families, trustees, and business owners. While every client is different, they all value clear, independent financial advice and a long-term relationship with their planner.

Good financial planning aims to add value well beyond its cost – through better tax efficiency, more confident decision-making and a coordinated plan for your future. We’re happy to discuss the value we provide at your free initial consultation.

You can view our fees on our website, or our Terms of Business and Terms of Engagement provide a full breakdown of our fees and service levels.

We do not aim to be the cheapest planner, nor the most expensive. We focus on delivering high-quality Chartered financial planning and believe our fees represent excellent value for the service and outcomes we provide.

We regularly benchmark our fees against both local Chartered firms and national competitors to ensure they remain fair, transparent, and competitive.

For pensions, investments and financial planning, we do not receive commission. Certain protection products may pay commission, which is always fully disclosed, and fee alternatives can often be offered.

Initial planning is undertaken on a fixed-fee basis. Ongoing advice is generally charged as a percentage of assets, although fixed-fee arrangements can be discussed where appropriate.

Most initial financial planning reports cost between £750 and £2,500 depending on complexity. A personalised quotation is always provided first.

Our minimum fee for preparing an initial financial planning report is £750.

Our fees are transparent and agreed before work begins. You can view our fees on our website, but there is typically a fixed financial planning fee, an implementation fee where applicable, and an ongoing advice fee for clients choosing our ongoing service.

Yes. Your initial consultation is completely free of charge and without obligation.

Yes. We regularly review existing pensions, ISAs and investment portfolios to determine whether they remain suitable and whether improvements could be made.

We use a range of leading custodial platforms, selected based on cost, functionality and suitability for your circumstances, rather than being tied to a single provider. Examples include Transact, AJ Bell and Parmenion.

Portfolios are managed under the oversight of our technical team, with input from external research and fund managers where appropriate.

We build portfolios around your risk profile and capacity for investment loss, objectives and time horizon, using a disciplined, evidence-based investment process with regular oversight from our technical team. As an independent firm, we are not limited to a restricted panel or imposed top-down solutions.

We are financial planners rather than simply investment advisers. Whether your goal is retiring comfortably, reducing tax, protecting your family, leaving a legacy or achieving financial independence, we create a personalised financial plan designed around your objectives.

Yes. We advise on life insurance, income protection, critical illness cover, family income benefit, private medical insurance, and business protection arrangements, with recommendations tailored to your circumstances.

Yes. We advise on cash, stocks and shares, lifetime, and junior ISAs as part of your overall financial plan.

Yes. We can help you plan the timing and structuring of asset disposals and use of allowances and reliefs to manage your Capital Gains Tax position as part of your wider financial plan. Where CGT is an ongoing issue, we can also access alternative structures and solutions such as onshore and offshore investment bonds.

Yes. Tax-efficient planning runs through everything we do, from pensions and ISAs to Inheritance Tax and investment structuring, always within current legislation and HMRC rules. We don’t advise on anything that is not FCA- or HMRC-regulated or approved.

Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) and the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) can offer valuable tax reliefs but carry higher risk and are not suitable for everyone. We can advise on whether they have a role to play within your wider, diversified financial plan.

Yes. We can help you plan how to fund school or university fees tax-efficiently, alongside your other financial priorities, often utilising cashflow analysis.

Family Investment Companies can be a useful structure for passing wealth to the next generation while retaining some control. We can advise on whether this is likely to suit your circumstances, working alongside your solicitor and accountant in the establishment and management of FICs.

Yes. We can support executors with valuing and managing estate assets, liaising with other professionals and advising beneficiaries on how to plan for any inheritance they receive.

Yes. Trusts can be an effective way to protect assets, control how wealth passes to future generations and support Inheritance Tax planning. We advise on a wide range of trust arrangements, including discretionary, bare, interest in possession, loan, discounted gift, flexible reversionary, business, and charitable trusts, depending on your objectives.

We can advise on whether a trust is appropriate, review existing trust arrangements and incorporate them into your wider financial plan. Where specialist legal advice or trust drafting is required, we work closely with trusted solicitors to ensure your trust is established and administered correctly.

Yes. This is a core area of our service. We can advise on gifting strategies such as gifting from excess income and potentially exempt transfers (PETs), trusts, pensions, business relief, life assurance, and other strategies to help pass on wealth as tax-efficiently as possible, either during your lifetime or from your estate.

Having a Lasting Power of Attorney in place means someone you trust can manage your financial affairs if you are ever unable to do so yourself. We can discuss this as part of your wider planning and work alongside your solicitor to help make sure the right arrangements are in place.

Yes. We provide advice on long-term care funding, later-life planning and work closely with families. We can also discuss issues such as Lasting Powers of Attorney as part of wider planning.

Yes. We are authorised to advise on defined benefit pension transfers where appropriate. In many cases, remaining in the scheme will be the most suitable recommendation, and any advice will be based entirely on your circumstances.

Yes. We have extensive experience advising on small self-administered schemes (SSASs) and can assess whether they are appropriate for your business and retirement planning objectives. 

SSASs can offer considerable flexibility, particularly for business owners and directors, including a range of investment options and, in certain circumstances, the ability to lend money back to the sponsoring employer or purchase commercial property. We will explain the advantages, responsibilities and ongoing obligations, helping you decide whether an SSAS is the right solution for your circumstances.

Yes. We have extensive experience advising on self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) and can determine whether they are appropriate for your circumstances.

Yes. Defined benefit pension advice is a highly specialised area of financial advice, and Fiducia has the specialist expertise and permissions required to advise in this area.

However, we are selective about the new cases we accept. As a general policy, we will only consider new defined benefit pension transfer enquiries where the Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) exceeds £500,000.

Yes. Before recommending investments, we first seek to understand your goals and long-term objectives, so your inheritance supports the life you want to live, rather than simply being invested for investment’s sake.

Yes. We can build an investment strategy that reflects your financial objectives and personal values, whether your preference is ethical, sustainable or responsible investing, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations.

Absolutely. We consider your pensions alongside your other assets to determine the most tax-efficient order in which to draw income, helping minimise unnecessary tax while supporting your long-term objectives.

Yes. We can review your existing pensions and ISAs, explain how a transfer would work and whether it is likely to be in your interest, and handle the process on your behalf if you decide to proceed.

Yes. We regularly help clients consolidate pensions where appropriate. We review charges, investments, guarantees, and valuable benefits before recommending consolidation, and only do so if it is genuinely in your best interests.

Yes. We advise on defined contribution workplace pensions and, where appropriate, defined benefit pension arrangements, ensuring they fit within your wider financial plan.

Yes. Pension advice is one of our core services. We advise on workplace pensions, personal pensions, SIPPs, and pension drawdown, helping clients at every stage of retirement planning.

For most people, transferring a defined benefit pension will not be appropriate.

Defined benefit pensions can provide valuable benefits, including a secure income for life, inflation protection and benefits for a spouse, civil partner or dependants. Transferring means giving up the guarantees associated with the scheme and is an irreversible decision.

Our role is to determine whether a transfer is genuinely in your interests, rather than simply facilitate a transfer you have already decided to make.

Yes. As a general policy, Fiducia will only consider new defined benefit pension transfer enquiries where the CETV is greater than £500,000.

This reflects the specialist nature of the advice, the detailed analysis required and the costs involved in providing regulated defined benefit pension transfer advice.

No. The £500,000 threshold simply determines whether we will generally consider taking on a new enquiry. It says nothing about whether transferring the pension will ultimately be suitable.

Our starting point is that the valuable guarantees provided by a defined benefit pension should not be given up without compelling reasons for doing so. Following our analysis, our recommendation may be that you should retain your existing scheme.

Defined benefit pension advice involves considerably more than comparing your pension income with its transfer value.

We consider your retirement income requirements, wider financial position, personal circumstances, objectives, other assets and pensions, attitude to investment risk and your capacity to accept the risks associated with giving up guaranteed pension benefits.

This enables us to consider your defined benefit pension as part of your overall retirement and financial plan, rather than looking at the pension in isolation.

Yes. We normally begin with abridged advice, which provides an initial assessment of your circumstances and defined benefit pension.

Abridged advice can result in a recommendation that you should not transfer your pension. Alternatively, we may conclude that it is unclear from the abridged advice whether you could benefit from transferring. In that situation, full defined benefit pension transfer advice would be required before we could make a recommendation to transfer.

If full defined benefit pension transfer advice is subsequently required, our fee is 2% of the Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV), subject to a minimum fee of £10,000 and a maximum fee of £25,000. VAT may apply depending on the circumstances.

Where you have already paid for abridged advice and subsequently proceed to full advice, the abridged advice fee is deducted from the full advice fee.

Yes.

The fee is for the specialist financial advice, research and analysis required to determine whether transferring your defined benefit pension is suitable. It is not a fee for arranging a transfer.

Full advice may conclude that retaining your existing defined benefit pension is the most appropriate course of action. The full advice fee remains payable irrespective of the recommendation.

No. Fiducia does not provide a defined benefit pension transfer “sign-off” service.

Where we accept a case, we undertake the appropriate advice process, assess your individual circumstances and reach our own independent recommendation. Wanting to transfer your pension does not mean that we will recommend that you do so.

Our service is primarily designed for people with significant defined benefit pension benefits and wider financial planning requirements, where the pension needs to be considered alongside their overall retirement plans, other investments and pensions, tax position, income requirements, objectives and estate planning.

For new enquiries, we will generally only consider cases with a CETV exceeding £500,000.

If you are simply looking to transfer a pension, obtain a transfer sign-off, or your CETV is below our normal £500,000 threshold, our defined benefit pension advice service is unlikely to be appropriate for you.

No. We do not provide regulated equity release advice. However, we can help assess whether equity release is likely to be appropriate when compared with other financial planning options and refer you to a trusted specialist. Equity release is a significant long-term decision and should always be considered alongside the alternatives.

No. We do not provide regulated mortgage advice or arrange mortgage products directly. However, we work closely with trusted mortgage specialists and can introduce you where appropriate. As part of your wider financial plan, we can also assess how your mortgage fits alongside your investments, pensions and long-term objectives, including whether reducing or repaying it is likely to be the best use of your assets.

Once your recommendations have been discussed with you and a course of action agreed, we implement the advice, keep you updated throughout the process and, where you choose an ongoing service, continue to review your plan to ensure it remains appropriate as your circumstances evolve

Initial planning typically takes 4-8 weeks from our first meeting to receiving your personalised recommendations, depending on how quickly information is gathered from providers. Ongoing planning is then a continuous, evolving process.

Most clients have a formal annual review, but meetings can be arranged whenever required. We do not restrict access to our planners.

Yes. Our secure client portal allows you to view investments, documents and communications, and all our custodial (wrap) platforms also provide online access.

Yes. We can provide anonymised examples. Every financial plan is bespoke and only produced once we fully understand your circumstances.

In many cases, yes. If your investments are held on a platform such as Transact, AJ Bell or another independent platform, it is often possible to appoint a new adviser or planner without selling your investments. Where a transfer is required, we will explain the options, any costs involved, and whether remaining invested throughout the process is possible. Our priority is ensuring any change is carried out efficiently and in your best interests.

You are never obliged to remain with a financial advice firm simply because another business has acquired it. While many acquisitions are handled well, a change of ownership can sometimes lead to changes in your planner, service levels, investment approach, fees, or the overall culture of the business.

If you are happy with the new arrangements, there may be no reason to make any changes. However, if you feel the service is no longer right for you, you are free to seek independent advice and move your investments to another financial planner if you wish.

At Fiducia, we regularly meet people who simply want a second opinion following a takeover. We will review your existing arrangements, explain any charges or implications of moving, and help you decide whether remaining where you are or transferring elsewhere is in your best interests. There is never any obligation to proceed.

We understand clients build strong relationships with their financial planner. While we would never prevent a client from following a planner elsewhere, we would always welcome the opportunity to introduce another Fiducia planner to provide continuity of service.

Yes. With your permission, we are happy to liaise with your mortgage adviser or broker and provide relevant information.

Absolutely. We regularly work alongside accountants, solicitors and other professional advisers to ensure every aspect of your financial planning is joined up.

Life, regulation and taxation can all change, and we’re here to help. Whether by phone, video or in person, your financial planner will discuss the implications and recommend the most appropriate next steps.

Yes. Cashflow modelling forms an important part of our financial planning process where appropriate, helping clients understand how today’s decisions may affect their future lifestyle and objectives.

During onboarding, you will hear from us regularly as we gather information and implement your plan. Thereafter, most clients choose an annual review service, but you are welcome to contact us whenever you need advice or reassurance.

An experienced technical and administrative team supports every planner. If advice is required while your planner is away, another qualified planner will ensure you continue to receive prompt, seamless support.

Yes. Susie Laws is a Chartered financial planner, director, and co-owner of Fiducia. If you would prefer to work with a female planner or female-led support team wherever possible, we will do our best to accommodate your preference.

No. There is absolutely no obligation to proceed. Following the meeting, we provide a personalised proposal outlining our recommendations, scope of work and fees so you can decide in your own time.

Most initial meetings last around one hour, but it can take as long as is required.

We’ll discuss your circumstances, objectives and priorities, answer your questions, and explain how we work. No recommendations are made until we have fully understood your situation. While this information is helpful, it’s more important that you take the time to think about your goals and objectives – the conversation works best when we understand what you’re trying to achieve, not just the details of your existing arrangements.

Bring any relevant information such as pension statements, investment details or mortgage information if available. If not, we’ll guide you through everything required.

No. Your initial consultation is provided without charge or obligation.

You can contact us by telephone on 01206 321045, email, or through our website to arrange an initial consultation.

Chartered status is the gold standard qualification in UK financial planning, awarded by the Chartered Insurance Institute. It reflects a high level of technical knowledge, professional ethics and ongoing development, giving clients confidence in the quality and rigour of the advice they receive.

A financial planner looks at your whole financial picture – income, savings, pensions, investments, protection, and tax – and helps you build a coordinated plan to achieve your goals. This goes beyond simply recommending products; it’s about ongoing advice that adapts as your circumstances change.

Being based in Dedham, near Colchester, we naturally work with clients across Essex and Suffolk, with many clients also in London and the Home Counties, including Kent, Sussex, and Buckinghamshire, and we advise clients throughout the UK.

Fiducia Wealth Management offers the best of both worlds. We are large enough to provide the depth of expertise, investment governance and continuity of service you would expect from a national firm, yet small enough for you to know your planner personally and build a long-term relationship based on trust.

Unlike a sole practitioner, you benefit from the support of an experienced team of planners, technical specialists and client service professionals, ensuring there is always someone familiar with your circumstances. Equally, unlike many large national firms, you won’t feel like just another client. We take the time to understand your goals before providing clear, tailored advice.

As a Chartered financial planning firm, we are committed to the highest professional standards, transparent advice and disciplined investment governance, helping clients make confident financial decisions over the long term.

Yes. We have written and video testimonials on our website, and many of our planners are independently reviewed on VouchedFor. 

Fiducia is a Chartered financial planning firm and also holds the Pension Transfer Gold Standard, New Model Adviser Top 100 recognition, VouchedFor Top Rated Adviser Company Award, and Cyber Essentials certification. You can view all the awards we’ve won or been shortlisted for on our website.

We are based in Dedham, near Colchester on the Essex/Suffolk border, and advise clients throughout the UK, including London, the Home Counties, and Scotland.

We have provided independent financial advice for more than 20 years, building long-term relationships with individuals, families, professionals, and business owners across the UK.

Yes. Parking is available at all of our office locations in Dedham (near Colchester), Chelmsford, and Brentwood.

We hold meetings at our offices in Dedham, Chelmsford, and Brentwood, or at another convenient location where appropriate.

Yes. We tailor meetings to suit your preferences. We can meet at one of our offices, at your home or another convenient location, or via Microsoft Teams or Zoom.

Our FCA Firm Reference Number is 408210. You can verify our authorisation at any time by viewing our profile here, or by searching the FCA Register yourself.

Fiducia is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), ensuring our advice and services are delivered in accordance with strict regulatory standards designed to protect clients.