FINANCIAL PLANNING AND MORTGAGES
In Scotland, solicitors have long been providers of quality independent financial advice to their clients. We believe that we offer the most comprehensive service available in Orkney. We are 100% Orkney-based and regulated directly by the Financial Services Authority. We are not (unlike many other advisers) tied to a single product provider or part of a network actually based elsewhere.
We have an innovative and flexible approach - for example, in 2008 we introduced a special scheme to help first-time buyer clients buy their home without paying conveyancing fees! This scheme was unique in Orkney – possibly in Scotland – and helped to get many first-time buyers onto the first rung of the housing ladder when otherwise they might have been unable to.
We want our clients to feel confident that any financial product we recommend to them is based on their individual needs and objectives and we use the most up-to-date financial planning tools to help do this. Existing clients are offered regular investment reviews and our taxation specialist Ian Stout updates clients when there are taxation changes which may affect them. Ian was, for example, the first adviser in Orkney to alert holiday home-owning clients to a major change in the tax treatment of letting income.
The turmoil in capital markets in late 2008 and into 2009 has made finance ‘front page news’; many investors or would –be borrowers have learned (to their cost) that hitherto trusted high-street institutions have put their short-term interests before the long-term interests of the client. We believe that for the client seeking the best independent advice, suited to their individual needs and designed for long-term sustainable prosperity now, more than ever, is the time to speak to Lows!