We recently sent out a client survey to gain an insight into your thoughts and feelings about the service we provide. As promised, we’re sharing the survey results with you and letting you know what changes we plan to make to enhance our service to you.

Of those who completed the survey, we’re delighted to say that:

• 100% of clients believe that working with us has helped or will help them achieve their financial goals.
• 98.04% of clients would recommend us to their friends, family or colleagues.
• 41.17% of clients have recommended us in the last 12 months alone.

We’re delighted that so many of our clients feel comfortable recommending us to their friends and family. However, while we’re ecstatic that the overwhelming majority of our clients would recommend us, it would be fantastic to get to 100%. So, if there’s anything we can do to help you feel more comfortable recommending us, please let us know, and we’ll take your suggestions on board.

Also, we’d like to take a moment to thank those of you who have recommended us, especially in the last 12 months. Recommendations are not only a touching endorsement of the service we provide, but they’re also extremely useful to the growth of our business and the promotion of financial planning to your friends and family. We appreciate your trust and support.

Our performance

We were delighted to see how satisfied our clients were with our performance. We’re very happy to say that:

• 100% of clients were satisfied with the speed of response from us.
• 100% of clients were satisfied that we understood their needs, goals and objectives.
• 100% of clients were satisfied with our communication between meetings.

Difference between those yet to retire and those who have retired

With this survey, we wanted to discover the financial concerns of our different client groups: those who have not yet retired and those who have retired. We wanted to see if there were financial concerns these groups had in common or if they had their own individual financial concerns.

The three biggest concerns for those who have not yet retired are:

• Not having enough money to retire at their preferred retirement age.
• Not having enough money to live their preferred lifestyle in retirement.
• The level of investment returns.

Meanwhile, the three biggest concerns for those who have already retired are:

• Not having enough money to continue living their preferred lifestyle in retirement.
• The level of investment returns.
• Potential investment losses.

While we were unsurprised, it’s still interesting to see that both those before and after retirement have concerns about their lifestyle in retirement. This shows the importance of preparing for your future properly to ensure that you have the retirement you always dreamed of, which is why we recommend updating and reviewing your financial plan with us each year.

For those who’ve already retired, it’s natural to have concerns regarding investment returns and potential investment losses. This has probably been amplified following the previous 18 months of uncertainty in investment markets before the survey date in October 2023. However, the planning we have put in place for you should mitigate these niggles and ease your concerns. However, if you’d like to have a more in-depth discussion about how we can navigate any financial concerns, please get in touch with us so that we can make sure these are understood, discussed, and attended to.

The benefits of working with Berry & Oak

In our survey, we asked clients an open-ended question: “What is the biggest benefit you get from working with us?” We’re delighted with some of the responses:

• “Financial security, which involves living life along the way.”
• “An increased sense of financial security and the trust that you are doing the best for us.”
• “Knowing that I’m always receiving good advice, quality service, and peace of mind.”
• “Reassurance that I can continue to live my life in the style I want to.”
• “Knowing our investments are in safe and professional hands.”

All our team members are thrilled with the comments that we received from this question. It provides a huge morale boost to know that the work we do genuinely helps our clients.

What do we plan to do differently?

Moving forward, we’ll be taking action to improve our service even more as we strive to provide the best service possible.

• We have implemented a new system for recording our meeting notes and actions so they can be sent to you more quickly. Already, we are seeing much improved times for these.
• We have updated some of our documentation to make it easier to read and understand.
• We are looking at new ways to communicate with you in between our meetings to keep you updated and reassured, especially when unexpected events happen and are in the news.

We’d like to thank everyone who completed our survey. Your feedback has been extremely helpful.