Message from FMB Managing Director, Liz Beavis

As you know from the many conversations with your Financial Planner over the years, we always take a long term view of investing. We tell people to sit tight in a crisis and certainly do not cash in any investments that you don’t need to.

However, we are seeing an unprecedented level of volatility right now and it would be unrealistic to tell you not to worry. We would like to put your mind at rest as much as we can though.

You may already be self-isolating, but even if you are not it is sensible to minimise unnecessary contact. We took the decision last week to conduct all meetings over the telephone for everyone’s safety – but most of all yours. So if you had a meeting scheduled in the near future you will have already heard from us about this.

Here are some important things we want you to know right now:-

• We want to help you achieve your long term goals and our financial plans are devised with resilience in mind, we have seen markets fall before and with time, they come back up again. The best thing to do, as hard as it may seem, is to leave things where they are.

• We are contacting clients who we have identified as having specific issues relating to the current situation, for example where we need to evaluate short term cash-flow on pensions and those currently in the process of making changes for tax year end

• We are contacting clients who may be especially vulnerable and need our support right now. Nobody wants to think of themselves in this category and it’s not just down to age, but some people need more support than others.

We are here to make sure everything that needs to happen gets done. At the moment the office is open and we have our team here, with extra precautions for their own safety. We have business continuity plans in place should there be a need to close Given the unlikely situation that all our staff will need to self-isolate at once, we hope to have people working on site as long as possible. If we do have to close, we have plenty of people who can work from home remotely to continue our operations. We have made contact with all our main providers such as investment firms and the platforms to ensure they have business continuity plans in place. Rest assured they are all prepared.

We are open for business (if only virtually for the time being)

• You can telephone us
• We can use Skype to meet with you
• You will be contacted to have your review as usual
• We are here if you just want to chat
• Our usual phone number will be diverted to a Director if we cannot physically man the phones in the office
• It would be prudent to Cc our info@finman.co.uk address in when emailing your usual contact as this email is being picked up centrally by several people so we can direct enquiries to the right person, in case your usual contact is poorly.

It’s times like this when having a financial planner really matters. We’re here to help you do the right thing and keep you focused on your long term goals. If you have any family members that are worried, even if they are not our clients we are more than happy to chat with them. The worst thing that could happen is that people are tempted to cash in investments when they are down in value.

Once again, these are challenging times, but we will get through them. We are here for you as always. We send our best wishes for your health and wellbeing from everyone at FMB.