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Testimonials | Mark Carter

What do you consider when you introduce your clients to a practice like Greenwood?

You need to have confidence when you’re referring long-established clients to other professionals.

I may have been acting for someone for thirty years and your clients become your friends. It’s a very close relationship, so we have to have confidence in another professional’s ability to provide advice in a professional manner but also a friendly manner – particularly with more elderly clients.

What kinds of cases do you refer to Mike at Greenwood?

It varies. There may be simple referrals related to property. So I’ve acted for Greenwood where Mike has referred private clients to me to handle their residential conveyancing.

On the other hand, I have referred clients to Mike where they have sold their business or their house and needed advice; perhaps traded down their property and need advice about the best place to put surplus funds in order to make provision for the future.

That provision may simply be a case of ensuring that clients are able to sustain a happy retirement at home. But there are other, more complex situations, perhaps where a husband or wife may no longer be able to look after themselves and need long-term care.

But it’s not just elderly client cases that you refer to Greenwood?

There are also younger clients; business clients, for instance, who may have a business partnership and need to cover the possibility of the death of their partner and ensuring that they have the means to purchase their partner’s share in the business that they have built.

In other cases, we may refer cases where someone has divorced and they’re liable for maintenance in the future and need to arrange insurance to cover the risk of early death. In those cases, it is often best to work with someone like Mike to establish the sort of cover or investment that would be required in the event that the party, who is liable for maintenance, dies because there will be a claim on their estate.

So what are Greenwood’s strengths?

There are particular strengths: sensitivity, friendliness without being overbearing; they put clients at ease and are sensitive to their feelings, particularly at those stages in a client’s life where substantial reorganisation of their financial affairs may be involved.

In those cases our clients have to have confidence in the person who we are recommending, so we have to have a great deal of confidence too. We have to be sure that their advice is worth listening to and acting upon and Greenwood are very good in that respect.

Is Greenwood’s achievement of a Chartered Financial Planning award an important step?

It provides additional credibility. We do recognise and appreciate it if a firm achieves that kind of accreditation. They’ve worked hard it; they haven’t just been handed it.

To earn it demonstrates real experience and competence.