What Is Wealth Management?
Wealth, just like your health, must be carefully preserved. Your assets need to be protected against the potential threats of erosion by taxation, the effects of inflation and investment risks.
Whatever your level of wealth, there is nothing wrong in making the decision to prepare a risk aversion strategy. Risk aversion is a reasonable and prudent strategy for anyone who is sure that they already have ample to provide for themselves and their family into the future.
There are plenty of ways of preserving wealth in real terms, protecting against most of the uncertainties that may threaten it and allowing you to sleep at night, but the unidentified risks are a far greater threat to your wealth than tax. While tax may threaten a proportion of your wealth, poorly-identified risks can destroy it all.
Risk aversion starts with asking oneself a few questions such as:
- Is my job secure?
- What happens if my employer goes bust?
- How secure are my investments?
- What happens if a company I have invested in collapses or is unable to meet its obligations?
- Is my occupational pension safe?
- What happens if an elderly relative has to go into residential care?
- What happens if I divorce?
- Do I have enough insurance?
This is just a start and you will no doubt identify others. It may not be the most motivational task but if you work through the implications of your questions and attach a probability to them, it can help clarify the issues and will form the basis of your risk aversion plan.
A professional wealth manager is able to provide advice on how to create, build and protect your wealth and minimise your tax liability in a wealth preservation plan which will be developed and monitored over a long-term, on-going relationship.
