Protecting your legacy

When it comes to retirement, many people are tempted to simply rely on their house. After all, a house is often your most valuable single asset, with property accounting for 35% of total household wealth in the UK.

At Quilter Cheviot, we have over 30 years’ experience of investing in personal and workplace pension schemes and know that no two clients or pension schemes are the same. This is why we develop a bespoke investment plan for each client, or can manage part of a client’s portfolio to a set mandate.

If you are one of the 20m+ employees in the UK who save into a workplace pension, read on. For change is coming. Rest assured pensions remain a highly tax-efficient savings wrapper. 

Somewhere out there, there is an allowance or allowances that can help you lower your tax bill. Whether it is fully subscribing to the tax-efficient Individual Savings Account (ISA) each year

You’ve done the hard bit. You’ve earned and saved enough over the years to have a comfortable retirement. There should even be enough left over to pass onto your loved ones.

The existence of so many reliefs and other mitigation tools lies behind IHT’s alternative moniker, ‘the voluntary tax’— by making use of reliefs and other tools, IHT bills can be reduced and, in some cases, eliminated.

If you think of investing as a beauty parade where different asset classes (equities, bonds, property etc) vie for the investor’s attention (and cash), then property arguably has a head start over the rest.

Many parents and grandparents want to help with these issues by setting aside money for when the time is right. That naturally leads to questions around tax, and how best to arrange your affairs. 

Ask the average person on the street when or why they would consider using a financial planner and chances are retirement planning would feature highly. 

While contributions in the region of 27% are an outlier, many people can boost their contributions from their current levels. Doing so earlier rather than later is a positive step, given that the value of contributions made in your 20s will be around four times greater than a decade’s worth of contributions made in your fifties.

A SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension) is a type of pension that gives investors more control over their retirement savings, by offering a wide range of investment options

Choosing when to access your pension, and how to go about it, is an important decision. The options available to you will depend on what type of pension you have.

For many clients, decumulation signals the promise of reward for all the late nights, lost weekends and hours spent commuting that a lifetime of work has demanded.

The majority of wealthy women, including those expecting inheritance in the future, are largely unprepared for the substantial transfer of wealth that is expected to take place in the coming decades, according to a recent report by UBS. 

The largest ever transfer of wealth from one generation to another is expected to occur in the next 30 years, with somewhere in the region of £5.5tn-£7tn passing on in the UK. This is being called the great wealth transfer.

As a hard-won asset that you are looking to sell, your business is not just a monetary figure, it is a culmination of your life’s work. If you receive a valuation that falls short of what you think the business is worth, it may be difficult to not take personally.

Rising property prices, asset price inflation and frozen tax thresholds mean that more and more people are being dragged into paying inheritance tax (IHT), leading inheritance tax receipts last year to hit a record £7.5bn.

Beyond this, the new cap on Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) at £1 million per estate from April 2026 marks a significant change for family-owned farms and businesses.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled a sweeping series of inheritance tax (IHT) changes in the October budget that have shaken up the UK’s estate planning status quo.

Family investment companies (FICs) have become a hot topic for discussion with more and more families considering utilising them to mitigate tax and put an effective succession plan in place.