AES Wealth
FAQs

AES International provides a range of international investment, international financial planning and international health & protection solutions.

Our approach is characterised by a unique focus on reducing costs, and improving the returns and benefits that our clients get.

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We only advocate a personalised financial advice service for those with sufficient wealth to make our fee-based service worth the investment.

Studies show that un-conflicted and unbiased investment advice and lifestyle financial planning services, like our own, generate substantial value.*

Our full service combines investment advice and financial planning to help you understand, protect and build your wealth.

This is an holistic approach: it helps you lead a successful financial life – it's not just focused on maximising your investment returns, but improving your overall financial well-being and knowledge.

International financial planning is a professional approach to planning your financial future. It helps those who live overseas (expatriates), those with complex cross-border tax arrangements (non-doms), and those who own assets in multiple tax, legal and regulatory jurisdictions.

Based on your personal risks, aspirations and financial demands, a good financial planner will produce an effective road map to help you reach your desired financial destination.

The true value of a financial adviser often manifests itself as being a ‘behavioural investment counsel.’  To that end, we are here to help bridge the behaviour gap – that is, he difference between investment returns, and the returns of the average investor.

This gap exists because of the human tendency to allow emotions to overwhelm rational thinking when making investment decisions.

Clients who benefit the most from our services understand something very important about successful investing, that has been proven time and time again:

Investors are not hardwired to make rational decisions when confronted with emotional, challenging facts in relation to their investments.

In other words, individual investors are often the worst persons to manage their own finances.

In offshore financial services, the situation is slightly different.  With just a helping hand, self-investing is normally better than becoming the victim of a rotten offshore financial adviser or salesperson or local bank.  But the evidence shows it is still sub-optimal…

Our chartered financial planners and chartered wealth managers create a great deal of value by understanding this. A large part of our job is to act as a barrier between investors and their own worst instincts.

In particular, AES International helps safeguard investors and clients from an industry of retail banks, IFAs and insurance salespeople who want to sell their toxic wares to unsuspecting and poorly protected expatriates.  We try to warn you about financial scams, and guard both your ‘Buy & Sell’ buttons.

We know that over our clients’ lifetimes there will be economic, political, and market events that will create significant emotional hurdles that will trip up the unwary. We help you clear these hurdles.

But, you don’t only employ a financial practitioner to talk you off the ledge during inevitable bouts of global financial or political turmoil. You hire them to guide you towards achieving significant financial goals, such as:

• Being able to live the life you've earned when you come to retire. You may be nearing retirement and unsure of when, how and to what extent you can draw sustainable income from your investments. A well-qualified financial adviser will help you plan for this, and will ensure that you don’t get in your own way of success.
• Determine if, and how, you are able to pay for your children’s or grandchildren’s education.
• Identify and plan for expenses above and beyond the day-to-day, such as travel, a second home and any other life goals.

Most of our clients are expatriates, non-domiciled individuals, or those with other cross-border or offshore financial requirements.

Our process begins by taking an holistic approach to your financial life.

We then construct a blueprint for your financial plan, that becomes the basis of your relationship with our organisation.

Yes – but the evidence suggests that most DIY investors who track down the cheapest platforms end up reaping themselves negative returns…

Author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the concept of the 10,000 hour rule as the amount of time required to gain competence within a specific field.  Applying this rule to investing - someone who has little experience such as a DIY investor is likely to make many mistakes — which is normal when learning any new skill.

We aren’t tax advisers so we can’t give guidance on your tax exposure.

International investors may benefit from very low, or zero tax rates in the countries where they live.  But tax, especially where it involves cross-border issues, is increasingly complex and you should be very careful to take tax advice from a reputable, properly qualified tax adviser who is qualified to give opinions on the tax exposure you will have in the countries that are relevant to you.

Whatever you do, make sure you understand and follow the tax laws, as the penalties for tax evasion may involve very large fines or even imprisonment.

There are tax advisers with whom many of our clients work, and we can give you their contact details, just ask us - this does not serve as a recommendation however, or tax advice.

Your other main option is to build and manage a portfolio yourself, but as explained above, this can prove time-consuming and risky. 

However, if you are confident in your skills as an investor, then there is a wide range of low-cost investment and trading platforms where you can manage your own wealth.  You might also like to consider our Smart Account™.

We don’t know!

But we do know that talking heads on CNBC and elsewhere have successfully got it wrong time and time again!  

So we ignore this market noise and focus on identifying simple, cost-effective solutions that, within a defined asset allocation, offer the best chance for investors to meet their long-term investment goals.

We think this is pretty easy - and we don’t want to make it any harder, or more expensive for our clients by making speculative decisions based on baseless predictions that will probably turn out to be wrong!

Not all financial advisers are the same.

Good financial advice relies on the professionals who give advice having relevant qualifications, experience and integrity.

These advisers need to operate within a corporate framework which provides a regulatory umbrella, compliance supervision, good management, systems and controls, all of which operate towards treating clients fairly.

In our view, the culture and values of a company inform the type of advice and service you are likely to receive. 

We strongly recommend that you run through this due diligence checklist on how to choose a financial adviser before committing to using us, or any of our competitors.

Sometimes, clients are unhappy: we under-deliver against something, or they are simply unhappy with the way that we performed our tasks. Where that’s the case, we are quick to raise our hands and take responsibility.

We have a well-codified complaints process that, regardless of jurisdiction, is run to UK service standards.

If we can’t resolve an issue quickly and satisfactorily, we suggest that clients follow our formal complaints process. We will always make sure that you are aware how to complain to the relevant regulator in your jurisdiction.