The Republic of Ireland’s Only Chartered Financial Planners, Providing Financial Planning Advice, Commission-Free Investment Management and Retirement Planning Advice
Dedicated to Providing Personalised Investment and Retirement Planning Solutions
Whatever your investing or retirement planning requirements; tax efficiency, environmental sustainability, taking care of your heirs or just the comfort of knowing you are dealing with an experienced professional, at Global Wealth we ensure that our clients receive a personalised service.
As Ireland’s only Chartered Financial Planners, we collaborate closely with our peers in third-party accountancy and legal professional service firms to deliver unique and highly tax efficient solutions for our clients.
Since 2008, we’ve developed an innovative positioning in the Irish market, challenging the status quo of a largely commission-based product sales environment. We put our client’s best interests first and at the core of everything that we do.
Our mission is to change the way people safeguard their long-term financial success by working together to create tailored solutions.
We achieve this by:
Bringing clarity to the the planning process in order to create structure and a strategy based on your needs.
Providing insights into how markets work and how investor’s emotions can be the greatest barrier to a successful investment experience.
Building realistic, long-term expectations of performance and ignoring short-term market “noise.”
Managing the drag on performance, namely taxation and investment fees.
A professional partnership with other professional service firms such as accountants, lawyers and tax consultants.
How Are We Different?
We don’t act as an agent of a product provider, selling financial products in order to earn commissions. We act as our client’s agents, with a personal letter of engagement in common with lawyers and accountants. We are different because we always approach the advice process with the client’s needs at the centre, focusing on improving after tax returns, developing solutions in-house as well as outsourcing in order to solve complex problems for investors.
Whether You’re An
Accountant
Tax Consultant
Lawyer
Private Investor
Looking for objective commission-free investment or retirement planning advice for your client or for yourself.
We offer a tailored approach to financial planning and aim to provide you with a solution that is best suited to your unique circumstances. We look forward to learning more about you.
Global Wealth traces its history to 2008 when our founder, Marc Westlake, developed a commission-free financial planning business in Dublin.
Our philosophy has always been client-focused, innovative and embodies a willingness to challenge the status-quo. When it comes to investment planning, we’ve always been clear that keeping costs and taxes down is more important than trying to “beat the market”.
Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.
We are committed to pro-actively evolving our business and creating a better future for our clients in an ever-changing landscape. By embracing innovation and seeking out global best practice, we provide tailored client solutions to achieve the goals of our clients.
Connecting with partners, clients and each other drives long-term success. We can only ever achieve truly great things by working together, sharing the same vision and values.
We believe that Financial Life Planning is not just about providing the right advice but also about transforming that advice into reality. Delivering on our promises to our clients is key to our personalised service.
We believe in clarity about conflicts of interest and costs. We communicate with our clients and our team in a way that is fair, clear and not misleading.
Chartered, Certified & European Financial Planning Professional™, Registered Trust & Estate Practitioner, Managing Director
Since 1994, Marc has worked as an Independent Financial Planning Consultant and is a specialist in portfolio management, pensions, tax and estate planning. He works hard to provide the very best service for his clients and is tenacious about keeping them on track to achieve their goals.
Marc moved from the UK in 2008 and is the first Chartered Financial Planner in the Republic of Ireland. He is a proud member of the Chartered Insurance Institute and Personal Finance Society in the UK, having been awarded the Advanced Diploma in Financial Planning. In addition to his membership of the Life Insurance Association, Marc is also a registered Trust & Estate Practitioner and member of the prestigious Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. Working closely with estate planning lawyers allows Marc to assist clients in successfully managing their wealth transfer to the next generation.
Marc earned his bachelor’s degree in economics, politics and American studies from Leeds and Pennsylvania State Universities. An advocate of continued education, Marc was awarded first class honours in the post-graduate diploma in financial planning from the Institute of Bankers/UCD. This led to him obtaining the internationally recognized distinction of CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™.
A co-founder of the Society of Financial Planners in Ireland, Marc lectured the Diploma in Investment and Capital Markets at Dublin Business School and is an Associate Faculty Member for the National College of Ireland Diploma in Personal Financial Planning.
Gerry has tremendous experience in industry and financial services and his career as a Chartered Accountant began with Arthur Andersen before entering the financial services. Gerry established the Irish investment management and banking operations of Hypovereinsbank for over ten years before joining Intel as Assistant Treasurer. He also joined the Jacob Fruitfield Group as Group Finance Director as part of the management buy-in team, following the purchase of the Irish FMCG brands of Nestle and Danone.
In addition to being a Chartered Accountant, Gerry is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. He is an independent, non-executive director of a number of internationally owned Irish entities in the banking and insurance industries and is immensely proud of the work he assists his clients with.
Andrew is a Chartered Financial Planner, Certified Financial Planner and a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society. Andrew provides a direct link to the UK in order to provide advice to Irish Residents with UK Assets and to UK Residents with a connection to Ireland.
Financial Life Planning with Purpose
Guiding you on a path toward a sound financial future is our ultimate goal. By utilizing a team-based approach, we’re able to combine our experience to address your unique financial needs. As we assist you to articulate your personal goals and specific concerns, we’ll continue on a journey toward helping you achieve financial clarity, as well as the quality of life you desire for you and yours.
We use the following systematic consulting process to uncover your most important goals in order to design and implement appropriate solutions.
During our initial meeting, we want to learn about you. This helps us identify the challenges you face in achieving all that is important to you. We’ll examine your current situation, the goals you would like to achieve and how we can maximize the possibility of achieving those goals.
We will present our diagnostic of your current situation and our recommendations for how we can bridge any gaps in order for you to reach your goals. This plan forms the foundation for all of our future work together.
When you have multiple investment accounts, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of paperwork you receive. During this meeting, we help you organize the details. We’ll also answer any questions you may have so that you understand exactly what is happening with your money.
These meetings, which we typically schedule at six-month intervals, provide us with an opportunity to review any major changes in your personal or financial situation. If these transitions mean that we need to make adjustments to your Financial Life Plan, we will do so. We’ll also review your overall progress toward your long-term goals using a Personal Benchmark, which relates to the returns you need to achieve in order to meet your goals and objectives rather than some arbitrary index like the ISEQ.
This meeting is also our opportunity to implement wealth management solutions that may be appropriate for your situation. We will present to you our wealth management plan at our first Regular Progress meeting so that we can prioritize those areas of greatest importance to you and then begin to address them systematically.
An Ongoing Relationship To Address Your Needs
This consulting process serves as our framework, but it is only the beginning. To ensure that your family’s most important financial issues are addressed as needed, we also serve as your Professional Wealth Manager.
In this role, we set the foundation of your financial house through your Financial Life Plan. Once this is in place, we address additional components of your financial picture as needed. With your personal wealth management plan to guide us, we focus on four broad areas of your financial life:
1.
Wealth enhancement aims to produce the best possible investment returns consistent with your level of risk tolerance and to minimize the tax impact on those returns.
2.
Wealth transfer intends to find and facilitate the most tax-efficient way to pass assets to succeeding generations, and to do so in a way that meets your wishes.
3.
Asset protection is aimed at protecting your wealth against potential creditors, litigants, children’s spouses, etc.
4.
Charitable gifting and social impact investing helps fulfill your charitable goals. It is most effective when coordinated with the three services above.
Ready to Get Started?
In accordance with your stated priorities, we will discuss these financial areas with you, make our recommendations and engage with appropriate specialist advisers as necessary. Over time, this allows us to implement a complete wealth management solution with you.
When selecting a financial adviser to help you with your financial planning it can be hard to know where to start. Chartered status can be an effective way of narrowing your options down, as it provides an independent validation of the knowledge and standards that a person or firm have met. The Corporate Chartered Firm status is seen as being a mark of distinction in the financial planning sector, only awarded following an independent assessment by the Chartered Insurance Institute in London. Global Wealth is the only financial planning business in Ireland that has successfully achieved this distinction. We make a public commitment to upholding the highest standards of professional conduct. As part of that commitment to professionalism, our firm upholds a code of ethics that sets out the standards of behaviour required of people working for our firm.
Committed to Providing Service of the Highest Quality
What Sets a Chartered Financial Planner Apart?
Additional study and qualifications taken to obtain the status, equivalent to a bachelor’s degree with first class honours.
They must pass a variety of exams covering different aspects of financial planning.
Five years of experience within the financial services industry.
Our advisers also hold the Professional Designation: CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional in Ireland, giving our team exceptional capabilities when it comes to guiding you through the financial planning process. As Certified Financial Planner® professionals, we are bound by a code of ethics, which we apply for the work we do for all our clients.
Code of Ethics
Principle 1
Best Interests of Clients - Act in the best interest of clients.
Principle 2
Integrity- Provide professional services with integrity.
PRINCIPLE 3
Objectivity-Provide professional services objectively.
Principle 4
Fairness-Be fair and reasonable in all professional relationships. Disclose and manage conflicts of interest.
PRINCIPLE 5
Professionalism-Conduct themselves in a professional manner at all times.
Principle 6
Competence- Maintain the knowledge and skill necessary to provide professional services competently.
Principle 7
Confidentiality - Protect the confidentiality of all client information.
Principle 8
Diligence- Provide professional services diligently.
Professionals You Can Count On
With Chartered status, we’re recognized as a firm with wider commitment to encouraging and supporting professional development, providing high standards of services and adherence to ethical good practice.
As a solicitor, you have your client’s best interests at heart when providing legal advice. Our New Matter review process ensures that this advice considers the relevant financial aspects of the legal advice for a new matter. What’s key is for lawyers to coordinate with financial professionals proactively to offer their clients comprehensive advice that best positions them for long-term success.
A collaboration and partnership that focuses on the transformation of good legal results to great life results.
An efficient method of addressing the potential financial aspects of each new matter you’re involved with, by taking into account the important issues and facilitating referral where appropriate.
As an accountant or tax consultant, your clients will often approach you for tax planning advice in relation to their investments and retirement plans. Our goal is to assist you to leverage our services to enhance the impact of your tax planning advice.
Financial planning isn’t a one-off activity; it’s a journey which spans a lifetime, aligning your personal goals with your money.
We begin with the end in mind, and recognise that you cannot take your money with you.
Financial Life Planning is a process which joins together your money, your values and your personal goals. We don't actually believe that people generally have financial goals, but instead they have lifestyle goals that have financial implications.
For over 10 years, we’ve enjoyed building great relationships with our clients. We work with them year after year to keep them on track, assisting them to achieve all that is important to them.
We believe that two of the greatest risks in life include dying too soon and living too long. Our role is to assess these risks in light of your personal circumstances and develop a plan accordingly.
Through the main financial planning cornerstones of risk management, investment, retirement planning and estate planning, we work with you to build a plan that protects your wealth, your capital, your income, your livelihood and the lifestyle of your family.
We also specialize in working with foreign nationals currently living in or considering moving to Ireland, and in particular U.S. citizens and U.K. nationals.
A customised plan that includes clear, concise recommendations which have been developed in light of your current circumstances and in particular relevant tax legislation.
An understanding of the principals associated with the accounting, tax and legal systems that operate in Ireland and with respect to cross-border planning.
A commitment to regular progress meetings providing a forum to assist you to achieve the objectives set out in your plan with as well as any changes that may have occurred in the interim.
We offer an initial meeting at our offices at our expense. If our service isn’t right for you, it will only cost you your time to find out.
A minimum fee of €2,500 plus VAT applies to all plans. Additional fees may be payable for specific modules (see our costs for details), which can be added initially or over time. Financial Planning fees are subject to VAT.
Working with tax-consultants we can advise you how to structure your assets before moving to Ireland and in particular before becoming tax resident. As an ex-pat himself, and having made the move from the UK to Ireland for family reasons, Marc Westlake is exceptionally well-placed to consult in this area.
Our specialist niche, is advising non-domiciled families and individuals moving to or living in Ireland to assist them in taking advantage of the favourable tax treatment of investment portfolios subject to the remittance basis of taxation. Note that we aim to restructure an existing portfolio prior to becoming Irish tax resident so forward planning is important. Restructuring after moving to Ireland is also possible but may be more complex or less effective.
We’ve all heard the phrase, "we don’t plan to fail, but we do fail to plan."
As Chartered Financial Planners, we are well-placed to work with you to ensure that your lifestyle, your money and your deeply held values are held together in one cohesive plan.
We will work with you to help you identify where you are now, where you want to be and what is holding you back from achieving all that is important to you.
Financial Life Planning isn’t just about money, it’s about finding out what really matters to you and helping you to take control of your future.
Reasons why you might benefit from the services of a Chartered Financial Planner:
Establishing or selling a business
Planning for retirement
A windfall (such as a lottery win or inheritance)
A second opinion about decisions you have already taken
Taking care of heirs (see Tax and Estate Planning)
Divorce or Separation
Philanthropy and charitable giving
The benefits of financial planning:
Saving your time, holding you accountable to your own values about money and the peace of mind from knowing that your finances are taken care of and you can get on with your life.
Please note that the Central Bank of Ireland does not directly regulate the Global Wealth Financial Life Planning Service which may include general guidance or information in relation to your pension and retirement planning needs, protection policies, investments, or Tax and Estate Planning.
Information on this website is not and should not be construed to represent financial advice as it does not take into account the objectives, knowledge and experience or circumstances of any particular person.
Prospective clients should make their own assessment of the information provided and obtain advice suitable to their own individual circumstances. Global Wealth Financial Life Planning may include general guidance or information on tax and estate planning. Please note that Global Wealth does not provide tax or legal advice, nor accept liability for it. Our service is intended to integrate with tax and legal advice from third-party professionals
Inheritance tax has been described as "a voluntary tax paid by those who distrust their heirs more than they dislike Revenue."
We will ask you to describe what you believe should dictate how your wealth is passed on to the next generation. We call it "consciously taking care of heirs."
We will help you to answer questions such as:
How much?
When?
What about charity?
In our more than 25 years of experience providing estate planning advice we can say, without fear of contradiction, that money is an emotive subject.
“A wealthy person is someone who knows they have enough.”
We say that there are three kinds of investor:
Those without enough,
those with enough, and
those with more than enough.
We act as a sounding board to help you quantify if you have enough to do all that is important to you, however long you (both) might live, under any reasonable set of assumptions, without fear of ever running out of money.
Investing a significant lump sum such as at retirement is one of the "big rocks" in your life like getting married or having children. These are life changing events that require an objective and professional assessment of what is in your best interests. We believe that these decisions are too important to be subject to the insidious conflicts of interest presented by the commission-based sales model.
We also believe that your focus should not be on the brands of products but rather on the things that matter to you, like how much income you need and the things that are within your control like how much risk you take.
Managing your financial affairs can be a confusing and time consuming business, so much so that many of us put off making important decisions about our family finances.
As a business owner and Chief Financial Officer of a successful business, I was used to dealing with competent professional advisers. Following the sale of the business I set about reviewing my own family’s finances and I looked for the best professional advice. I found good legal and tax advice but I struggled to find good investment advice. There is no shortage of financial institutions, intermediaries and stockbrokers offering, often conflicting, advice on the best product to invest in. This advice seldom takes regard of an individual’s tax and legal implications and usually involves substantial commissions payable to the broker. I could not find an advisory practice in the Irish market with the range of expertise and independence that I sought. As a result, I spent considerable time working with my advisers to put together a solution that met my objectives.
On the back of this experience I decided to establish a wealth management business to cater for clients like me. In Marc Westlake I found a seasoned business partner with international experience who shared my passion for client focused wealth management, which avoids the conflicts of interest associated with commission based products. We have put together a small team of professionals who are committed to working with clients and their professional advisers to develop the best long-term strategies individually tailored for their needs.
Impact investing is an exciting new approach for investors who want to generate social and environmental impact as well as financial returns.
We are all aware of the negative impact that we are all having on the environment and more of our clients are looking for a dedicated Socially Responsible investment strategy that we have taken the decision to acquire a boutique Wealth Management business, Ethical Financial, with the specific aim of increasing our capability in this area.
When it comes to Philanthropy, we have considerable experience of working with the Community Foundation for Ireland over the last decade to assist our clients to establish donor advised funds.
Our aim is to always be doing the right thing for you and your finances. We take time to listen to you to understand your values, lifestyle goals and aspirations. Together we create a financial plan which evolves with you over time.
One of the greatest challenges we face when meeting with prospective clients is that we are totally upfront and transparent about all the fees that our clients pay. We have always disclosed Total Expense Ratios and Ongoing Fund Charges (when, until recently, there has been no legislative requirement in Ireland for our competitors to do so), we are able to quantify all custodian, trustee and transaction costs and we also reflect taxes and levies paid by clients in our progress reports.
We do not intend to arrange any contracts with product providers via a commission-based payment as our fees are agreed individually with each consumer via our letter of engagement.
For details of remuneration from Product Producers click here
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.”
- John Ruskin
Example: Typical ongoing charges for a taxable investment account of €100,000.
Aligning Your Interests with Unmatched Quality of Service
Financial Planning Service
Base Cost Plan €2,500 plus VAT
Additional Fee
Financial Personality Assessment and Report
Complimentary
N/A
Lifetime Cash-Flow Analysis: Define and help meet your primary objectives
Included
N/A
Investment Portfolio Asset Allocation Strategies
Included
N/A
Co-ordination of Your Total Net Worth: To your objectives including savings, investments and your current money purchase pension scheme
Included
N/A
Life Assurance Analysis
Included
N/A
Review of Deferred Money Purchase Schemes
N/A
€300 per scheme
Review of Deferred Irish Defined Benefit Schemes
N/A
€1000 + additional fee to Actuary
Review of Deferred UK Defined Benefit Schemes
N/A
€1000 + additional fee to a UK pension specialist
Wealth Management Services
Wealth Management Services
Additional Fee
Irish Estate Plan: Including family partnerships / Irish wills / enduring power of attorney and living wills/advance healthcare directives
€2,500 plus VAT
Resident Non-Domiciled Planning Strategies
€2,500 plus VAT
US Citizens and US Planning Issues
€2,500 plus VAT
International Pension Transfers
€1,500 plus VAT
UK Financial Planning: Issues including; will writing and estate planning service for UK assets and Irish resident / UK domiciled individuals
€1,500 plus VAT
Corporate Restructuring: Coordinating with tax consultants, lawyers and accountants as necessary to restructure your business for tax efficiency, succession, retirement and other planning relating to business as distinct from personal assets
€2,500 plus VAT
Charitable Gifting and Philanthropy: Turning your success into significance through the use of planned giving, donor advised funds or charitable foundations
€2,500 plus VAT
Please note that our minimum fee for Financial Planning is €2,500 plus VAT. However, there is no requirement for all clients to pay for a Financial Plan as some clients may proceed directly to arranging an investment or pension (intermediation) see Terms of Business for more details.
We provide detailed content on a range of issues to help you increase your own knowledge and understanding of complex financial planning issues in your own time and at your own pace.
We look forward to working with you in person at our offices in Dublin, or if you can’t get to our offices, over the phone or via an online video conference.
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