How did we save our readers £108,000 in hidden fees in the last week?

Sam Kelly DipPFS, EFA, BA (Hons)
Managing Partner Chorus Financial

Now that Spain is returning to some semblance of normality, many of you are deciding to take control of your financial affairs. This inevitably means exploring your options with the various financial advisory companies working here in Spain.

One of the most popular products for Brits overseas looking for a more tax efficient, appropriate way to hold their investments is a Spanish compliant investment bond. There are a number of providers of these products, including Quilter International, Prudential International, Lombard, SEB & STM.

Spanish Compliant Investment Bonds are recognised tax wrappers, specifically designed for those who are tax resident in Spain. Within them you can build a diverse portfolio of regulated investment funds, including across different currencies like GBP, EUR and USD. If you don’t make withdrawals, your portfolio can grow effectively tax free.

When you withdraw money, this is very tax efficient, and the tax is actually calculated for you, and paid to the tax authorities here on your behalf in most circumstances.

Many of you will have seen we recently created a video explaining exactly how these products work, and how they can save substantial amounts of tax over UK investments like UK investment bonds, ISAs and investment platforms. In fact, in many cases these products can save more than 20% of the tax due on your investments each year, so are well worth considering.

Towards the end of this explainer video, the one thing I recommended was that if you are considering signing up to one of these products, to give Chorus a quick call or email first, just to double check the recommendation you are being given is fair and transparent.

Well, over the last week alone we were asked to check 7 recommendations for this type of product, and within those recommendations we were able to identify £108,000 of hidden fees and commissions. That’s over £15,000 per recommendation!

Rather than quoting a transparent, up-front fee, and not tying the clients into these bonds, the IFAs were negotiating artificially inflated annual bond fees with the providers, as much as 4 times the going rate, and tying the clients into their bonds for up to 10 years. From this, they would be paid an initial commission from your investments of up to 8%.

Thankfully with these 7 people we were able to identify this by looking in more detail at the recommendations and saved them for a very uncertain financial future.

If you’d like to learn more about Spanish compliant bonds, or have had a recommendation for a Spanish compliant investment bond from Quilter International, Prudential International, Lombard, SEB, STM or others, we strongly recommend you visit the Chorus Financial website at https://www.chorusfinancial.es/how-are-spanish-compliant-investment-bonds-taxed to learn more.

If you want to save money and increase the quality of your investment portfolio on any kind of product, including Spanish Compliant Investment Bonds, or pensions transfers into a SIPP or QROPs, please contact me on +34 664 398 702, email s.kelly.chorusfinancial.es or visit www.chorusfinancial.es