Independent financial advice, from Bath.
Six areas of long-term planning, handled by one adviser for clients across Bath, Bristol and the towns between. Each one matters on its own. Done well, they reinforce each other — which is why I work across all six in a single, considered conversation.
Book the free 30 minutesNot products. A plan.
What follows is a description of the areas I advise on. It is not a menu to pick from. The work begins with your life — your obligations, your goals, your worries — and the recommendations flow from there. The categories are how the regulator sees it. The plan is how you’ll experience it.
Two things are worth saying before you read any further. I am independent, which means I recommend from the whole of the market rather than from one firm’s list. And you will see my fee in pounds and pence before you commit to anything — not a percentage you have to work out for yourself.
Retirement planning in Bath.
Retirement planning answers one question properly: can you afford to stop, and for how long. I model your income, your spending and every pension you hold across the rest of your life, stress-test that model against poor markets and a longer life than you expect, then set a withdrawal strategy that keeps tax as low as the rules allow.
The biggest decision-set most clients face. When to retire. How to draw income. What the next thirty years actually need — through markets, longevity, and a tax landscape that doesn’t sit still.
- Lifetime cashflow modelling, stress-tested
- Drawdown strategy and tax-efficient withdrawals
- Pension consolidation review (where it helps)
- State pension forecasting and gap analysis
- Annual Allowance and Scheme Pays guidance
- Sequence-of-returns risk planning
- Five years out and wanting to know if you can
- Recently retired with multiple pots to pull together
- Considering early or phased retirement
- RUH, university and public-sector scheme members
- Armed forces and ex-forces clients with AFPS benefits
- Business owners selling and crystallising wealth
Cashflow modelling is the foundation. We map your income, your obligations and your goals across the rest of your life — then stress-test the plan against market shocks, longevity beyond your expectation, and the tax changes that history says are coming. You walk away with a plan that holds up under scrutiny, not one that only works if the next thirty years go to script. Most of this work happens in Bath, over two or three meetings, at whatever pace suits you.
Investment management.
Investment management is the work of matching a portfolio to your goals, your timeframe and the losses you could genuinely live with. Because I am independent, I select from the whole of the market on the evidence rather than from one firm’s list. Clients in Bath and Bristol get the comparison in writing — what was chosen, what was rejected, and why.
A clear strategy aligned with your goals, your timeframe, and what you can live with when markets move. No stock tips, no fads — evidence-based portfolios run with discipline and reviewed quarterly.
- Attitude-to-risk profiling and capacity-for-loss review
- Strategic asset allocation
- Fund selection — active where it earns its keep, passive where it doesn’t
- ISA, GIA, SIPP and bond wrapper structure
- Ongoing rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting
- Quarterly portfolio reporting
- Anyone with investible assets to put to work
- Inheritors of a lump sum needing structure
- Cash savers who know inflation is the slow leak
- Self-directed investors who’d rather hand it over
- Clients with workplace pensions and SIPPs to coordinate
Because I’m independent, the portfolio is chosen from the whole of the market on the evidence, not from a house list. In practice many clients end up in low-cost, globally diversified mandates run by Saltus, our discretionary management partner — because they hold up well on cost, philosophy and execution when compared against the alternatives. Where another manager fits better, that is what gets recommended, and the comparison is written down either way. My fee is for advice and ongoing planning, never for stock-picking I can’t do better than the market.
Tax-efficient planning.
Tax-efficient planning means using the allowances Parliament has already given you, in the right order. ISAs, pension contributions, the capital gains exemption, the dividend allowance, salary sacrifice. The same money behaves differently depending on which wrapper it sits in. I review the whole picture once a year, before the 5 April deadline, and tell you what to use before it disappears.
ISAs, pensions, the right wrappers in the right order. Quietly, every year, the same money grows or shrinks depending on which envelope it sits in. This is the part of a plan you control completely.
- Annual ISA strategy and allowance use
- Pension contribution planning (including carry forward)
- Capital Gains Tax — annual exemption and disposal sequencing
- Dividend allowance and salary/dividend mix for business owners
- Bond gains (top-slicing, deferred encashment)
- Salary sacrifice review
- Higher and additional rate taxpayers
- Anyone losing allowances they didn’t know they had
- Business owners deciding between dividend and salary
- Clients with non-wrapped investments approaching CGT thresholds
- Anyone with a bond gain coming up
Tax planning is annual work, not a one-off. Every January I send clients a tax-year-end checklist — use it or lose it. The aim is never to chase exotic schemes; it is to make full use of the allowances Parliament has already given you, in the right sequence. Allowances are the part of a plan you control completely. Most of the rest, you don’t.
Three services in, and none of it means much until it is applied to your numbers. That is what the first thirty minutes is for — free, in Bath or by video, and you will know by the end whether I am any use to you.
Arrange the free 30 minutesInheritance tax and estate planning in Bath.
Inheritance tax is charged at 40% on the part of an estate above the nil-rate band — £325,000, or up to £500,000 where a home passes to children or grandchildren. Estate planning reduces that bill using gifts, trusts, reliefs and life cover written in trust. I do it as part of a regulated financial plan, working alongside your solicitor rather than instead of one.
The conversation most clients put off. Gifting, IHT, life insurance in trust — protecting what’s been built for the people who come next. Done properly, it removes a tax burden the next generation should never have to carry.
- IHT estimate and projection over twenty years
- Lifetime gifting strategy (PETs and exempt gifts)
- Gifts out of normal expenditure (the under-used exemption)
- Trust planning — bare, discretionary, life-insurance
- Business Relief and AIM portfolios where appropriate
- Life cover written in trust to meet the bill
- Pensions and the April 2027 IHT change
- Bath and Bristol estates likely to exceed the nil-rate bands
- Anyone with adult children or grandchildren
- Business owners considering succession
- Clients expecting an inheritance themselves
- Recently widowed clients with combined estates
Search inheritance tax planning in Bath and most of what you find is a will-writer or an estate planning company. Wills matter, and I’ll tell you when you need one. But a will decides who gets what; it does not reduce the tax. That is financial planning work, and it needs a regulated adviser who can see the pensions, the investments and the cover in the same picture. I work alongside your solicitor, not in place of one. I’ll model what your estate looks like in twenty years if nothing changes, then show you the levers you can pull. The conversation is harder than the maths; the work itself is straightforward once we’ve had it.
Protection planning.
Protection planning works out what your household would actually need if you died or could not work, then buys that cover as cheaply as the underwriting allows. Life cover, critical illness, income protection. I have whole-of-market access and no reason to prefer one insurer over another. Most people I meet are over-sold on one policy and under-covered on the rest.
The right cover, sized properly, without the upsell. Life, critical illness, income protection — in plain English. The least exciting part of a plan, and the one that matters most when it matters at all.
- Income protection (the most under-used policy in the UK)
- Term and whole-of-life assurance
- Critical illness cover and severity-based options
- Family income benefit
- Business protection — keyperson, shareholder, relevant life
- Existing-cover review (often: cancel and replace)
- Anyone with dependants or a mortgage
- Self-employed people with no sick pay
- Business partners and shareholders
- Recently married or starting a family
- Anyone whose income would be hard to replace
Whole-of-market access. Recommendations show why a particular insurer is right for your circumstances — never the one paying the highest commission. Where a policy does pay commission, I tell you the amount in writing before you sign anything. The simplest test of a good protection plan: when something goes wrong, the family gets paid quickly, without arguments about the small print. Everything else is detail.
Mortgages and remortgaging in Bath and Bristol.
Mortgage advice covers purchase, remortgage and buy-to-let across the whole of the market, including lenders who only accept business through brokers. I show every recommendation against what your existing lender has offered you, in pounds and pence, so the decision is yours to check rather than mine to assert. Bath and Bristol property brings its own complications, and I know them.
Independent advice on the largest financial commitment most clients ever make. Purchase, remortgage, buy-to-let. Whole-of-market access, including lenders who don’t deal with the public directly.
- Residential purchase — first-time and home-mover
- Remortgage at the end of a fix
- Product transfers with the existing lender
- Buy-to-let and let-to-buy
- Adverse-credit and complex-income cases
- Joint borrower / sole proprietor arrangements
- First-time buyers with deposits ready
- Anyone coming to the end of a fixed rate
- Self-employed and contractor clients
- Landlords building a portfolio
- Buyers of listed and period property in central Bath
- Couples whose plans have changed since the last mortgage
Whole-of-market — including lenders only available through brokers. Every recommendation is shown against your existing lender’s offer, so you see the difference in pounds and pence. Listed buildings, flats above shops and the older stock around the centre of Bath all narrow the lender list, and it is worth knowing that before you make an offer rather than after. I don’t push protection alongside the mortgage as a condition; if cover is right for your situation, it’s a separate conversation handled in service five.
Where these services overlap is where the work happens.
A pension contribution is a tax decision and an investment decision. A life policy in trust is a protection decision and an estate decision. A mortgage on a buy-to-let is a borrowing decision, an income decision, and a tax decision. Most clients don’t need every service, every year. But the questions that matter rarely sit inside a single category — which is why one planner working across all of them tends to produce a better answer than six specialists each working in their own silo.
Nine years in uniform before this.
I served nine years in the British Army — Royal Military Police first, then military intelligence. Intelligence work is the business of giving someone a straight answer on incomplete information, saying plainly how confident you are, and writing it down so it can be checked later. That is most of what financial planning turns out to be.
It also means armed forces pensions are not a foreign language to me. AFPS 75, 05 and 15. Preserved pensions, Early Departure Payments, the resettlement grant, and the question everybody asks about commutation. MOD Abbey Wood sits north of Bristol and Corsham is a short drive east of Bath, so a fair number of the people I speak with are serving, recently out, or married to someone who is. If that is you, you will not have to explain the acronyms.
Talk it throughFees in pounds and pence, before you commit.
The most common reason people put off calling an adviser is not knowing what it will cost. So here is how I handle it.
The first conversation is free.
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation and no pitch. If you don’t need a planner, I’ll say so and you’ll have lost half an hour.
A written figure before you decide.
You see the fee as a number in pounds and pence, not only as a percentage you have to work out yourself. Nothing is charged until you have agreed it in writing.
No commission on advice.
Investment and pension advice is fee-based; commission on it has been banned in the UK since 2013. Protection and mortgages can still pay commission, and where they do I tell you the amount before you sign.
Bath, Bristol, and the towns in between.
I am one adviser, not a national firm with a Bath branch. That is the trade. You will not be passed to a paraplanner you have never met, and the person who writes your plan is the person who sits opposite you. Meetings happen at my office on Queen Square in central Bath, at your kitchen table, or by video if that is simpler.
Most of my clients are within half an hour of the city. Some are a good deal further — the work travels perfectly well over video once we have met properly.
Widcombe, Lansdown, Larkhall, Combe Down, Bathwick, Weston, Oldfield Park and Newbridge.
Bradford-on-Avon, Corsham, Chippenham, Melksham, Frome, Radstock, Midsomer Norton, Keynsham and Saltford.
Clifton, Redland, Bishopston, Long Ashton, Keynsham and the Chew Valley villages.
Saltus, Queen Square House
Queen Square Place
Bath BA1 2LL
Evening and weekend calls by arrangement, if the working day doesn’t suit.
Every enquiry gets a reply within one working day — whoever it is from and whatever it is about.
Send me a questionCommon questions.
How do I find a good financial adviser in Bath?
Are you independent, or restricted?
What will it cost me?
Do you advise clients in Bristol, or only Bath?
Can you help with inheritance tax planning in Bath?
Do you work with armed forces and ex-forces clients?
Do I need advice on all six areas?
Can you advise on just one area — say, my pension?
What about my workplace pension — do you take that over?
What if I already have an adviser for some of these?
What happens in the free 30 minutes?
How are you regulated?
Begin with a conversation.
A complimentary 30 minutes, in Bath, in Bristol, or by video. No obligation, no pitch. We’ll talk about where you are now, and whether a planner is the right next step.
Arrange a conversationAndrew Daw is an Appointed Representative of Saltus Wealth Partnership Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. FRN 449607.
This page is general information, not a personal recommendation. What is right for you depends on your own circumstances. The value of investments can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change in future. The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate estate planning, inheritance tax planning, trusts, will writing or tax advice. Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. Figures quoted for inheritance tax are those published by GOV.UK and are correct at the date of publication.