Finance Monthly Global Awards 2018 Edition

What would you say are the company’s top three priorities towards its clients? How has this evolved over the years? 1) To understand exactly what the client’s objectives are and where possible, create financial cashflows that we can work within to achieve said financial goals 2) Meeting BOTH their attitude to risk as well as their capacity for loss and making sure that the client understands what this means to them 3) Building in flexibility to allow the clients to change their focus and objectives over time which is often the key to success in looking after family and corporate wealth over a long period of time and understanding that, at the end of the day, it is their money. Clearly there is evolution in achieving these, none more so than the thirst for more and more information from the client and direct access to said information on an ongoing basis which, for us means constant development of digital solutions and communication. We firmly believe that there is a balance between taking away all the headache of managing client money for them and the control they wish to keep themselves. The fundamental ideology and expectation of managing client money has not changed much in decades, the client wants to make as much money as possible with as little risk as possible. What has changed is access to information and communication. What attracted you to the employee benefits field? What motivates you about working within the sector? When we first entered the employee benefit arena it was because I felt that most group benefits were quite secretive and that the client themselves had little or no influence in how they performed and or how they affected their financial future. We set about creating workshops and providing financial advice in the workplace and from there, we were able to use bespoke target analysis tools to project what their pension might look like for the employee individually at retirement and beyond. This was very quickly followed up by more individual analysis tools so today the employees can easily understand their financial position at almost any point going forward and what they might need to do to reach their chosen targets. This has been our way of thinking for a long time and so we support the efforts of both government and industry to develop open banking and pensions dashboards. What goals are you currently working towards with the company? Our current target is to be able to offer a fully integrated, easy to understand financial services model for everyone. This will come with the benefit of access to independent advice for everyone and a wealth management programme to absolutely look after all their money whether that be short term savings, long term investments or indeed borrowing. We are almost there with the final pieces scheduled to be in place within a year. Is there anything else you would like to add? We are proud of our service, our portfolio performance and most of all, I am proud of the team I have within Cobens. Q Q Q Q Contact contact@cobens.co.uk www.cobenswealth.co.uk www.cobens.co.uk 0207 11 88 777 chris.poole@cobens.co.uk Finance Monthly Global Awards 2018 www.finance-monthly.com 37 UNITED KINGDOM