Charlton House Wealth Management

We were lucky to find David who undertook a lot of investigation to find out what went wrong with our portfolio. He uncovered the huge hidden charges, the untold commissions to our old advisors, and the limitations of the setup that made it difficult to unwind our position. Gradually, David helped us turn it around, rebuild our portfolio and put us back on track. Not only is David good at financial management, he gave us advice on different ways to protect ourselves. He explained how different types of funds work; which ones work best for us, how to structure the funds to avoid penalties for early withdrawal and minimise various charges. He also advised us on how to prevent our children from being hit by inheritance tax in the future. In addition, David advised us on tax planning as we planned to move from Hong Kong to the UK in 2020. He patiently explained to us how various UK taxes work and how to protect our retirement funds. Without him, we would have easily fallen into traps!

David spent time talking through our current situation, our plans for the future, and our current assets and investments to make sure that he understood our needs thoroughly. He then prepared a comprehensive report outlining the options open to us. After that, he helped us to set up the investments and insurance plans that we needed. Since then, he’s maintained regular contact with us over the last five years. He talks us through the risks and opportunities associated with any major political and economic developments and makes sure that our investments are properly balanced to our appetite for risk, and in line with our future needs. The planning that we did in advance of moving back to the UK made the transition process very straightforward. We’ve also gained peace of mind, knowing that the children will not have to deal with an inheritance tax problem if anything unexpected happens.

The offshore investments that David has been managing for the past five years have met our expectations and goals. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a real test of how robust the investments are and so far, we’re happy to say that they’ve done comparatively well. David’s guidance has helped us achieve peace of mind and sleep soundly knowing that our investments are in safe hands.

Three words I’d use to describe Charlton House: friendly, honest, accountable. Charlton House is especially useful for expats. Ones where they’ve got international aspirations or international footprints; David and his team can manage that complexity. My wife and I are quintessential expats, I guess. We were born in Canada; grew-up there. But I’ve always had a British passport and when we moved to the UK, we both became British Citizens. We lived there about 10 years but have been travelling ever since, so we’ve lived in countries in Asia, in South-east Asia, South Asia and we lived in Europe, and of course we’ve lived in North America. So it’s been a great lifestyle for us. Would I recommend David and Charlton House to others? Absolutely!