Retiring company director

‘I was a director of Elizabeth Shaw,’ says Paul Keith, now retired. ‘I worked very hard to turn the business around from making a huge loss to making decent profits.

At the time, I had no one to advise me about my finances on a personal level – I was taking a straight salary and hadn’t any capital to spare for investments. Selling the business in 2006 was a life-changing moment for me.

‘I had known Stephen Willis, a Bristol IFA, for a couple of years through the Institute of Directors,’ continues Paul. ‘He was on one of the branch committees I’d chaired. While I was selling the business, I realised I needed his skills – I was coming up to retirement and wanted to make sure I had the cash to see me and Christine, my wife, through.

‘Stephen helped me get control of my financial affairs,’ Paul says. ‘I had eight pension pots which I’d collected as I’d moved from company to company in my working life. Just to have Stephen take all the work of sorting them out off my hands was wonderful. He’s very good at the detail. He explained it all.

‘He guided Christine and me through the process of planning what we wanted to do for the next 40 years (I was 59 at the time). We went through it decade by decade. For example, Stephen asked about what we wanted to do in terms of travel and where we wanted to end up living and so on, though Christine and I always felt we could change our mind about things any time.

‘Then Stephen planned everything so our finances will last us throughout our lifetimes. He made everything very logical but it was our input, our vision for the future, that was key. He’s very professional. He’s also very attentive and supportive; if he even senses that you have a question, or that one of us doesn’t understand something, he won’t let it pass. He’ll stop and talk it through until we understand.’

Paul’s wife, Christine, admits that she is hopeless with finances. In spite of this, she says, ‘Stephen has given me so much confidence and I now understand what’s happening with our money.’ She hesitates and then adds, ‘There’s another big issue – that I’m left by myself. That used to worry me, but I know now that Stephen would give me so much help.’