This made the time zone less of an issue - and to be honest, it wasn't a big challenge in the end, as we waited til he was home on a long break so we could go through everything with him in-person.
That said, we did want to make sure everything was handled in a time-sensitive way so that the plan could be in place before he went back to Qatar.
What other obstacles did you overcome?
Having so many moving parts was tricky. Thankfully the DB pension provider was helpful and we did not have to spend ages chasing them for the information about the historic pension.
But I have yet to come across an IFA who has a general positive view of providers when it comes to this sort of thing.
Usually it is a time-consuming and onerous task - we ask providers a set of questions and sometimes they come back without answering some of these, so we have to keep chasing.
And they often have lengthy time frames to which they work.
I think the biggest challenge was just meeting his expectations.
He was mid career and wanted to retire earlier than state pension age so, this was about understanding his expectations, explaining his tax situation, and then doing cash flow planning to help him understand the reality of it.
We had to meet somewhere in the middle.
What was the outcome for the client?
We managed to get a plan in place within about four weeks. We did it within the timeframe that he was at home.
I have a supportive team of paraplanners, and we did not have to rely on the DB pension scheme to supply the information before we could move forward with the bulk of the planning.
Working with his accountant was very helpful, too.
We quite quickly ascertained that some of his options were limited because of the tax situation, so we had to put something in place to provide a blended approach in terms of different tax wrappers.
In the end, we split it out. Because everyone can have a pension if they are a UK resident, even if they have no UK relevant earnings, we were able to set that up to the maximum of £3,600 a year.
We also looked at an Isa, and explored options about general investment accounts.
He has done more investments with us in the intervening months, even before his annual review is due. And he left me a lovely review on Google and on VouchedFor, which was positive.
