AES International provides a range of international investment, international financial planning and international health & protection solutions.
Our approach is characterised by a unique focus on reducing costs, and improving the returns and benefits that our clients get.
We believe the traditional international financial services industry harbours conflicts of interest, which damage your returns.
This is because this industry is outdated…it incentivises individual salespeople to perpetuate a wide range of myths, which ultimately enables them to transfer your wealth to themselves (via commissions and hidden fees and charges).
We don’t just say this – we prove it with data and evidence. If you'd like to know more, request a portfolio review, and we'll demonstrate.
Our passion, our mission and our movement are about helping you learn how to sidestep the traditional industry, and benefit from the massive opportunities now available to well-informed investors.
Because we are unconflicted by commission, we help reduce your investment costs, and improve the returns and benefits that you receive by using next generation solutions.
This means our clients get better results, and hopefully lead better lives, which helps us realise our own mission of positive change.
But what EXACTLY is different about AES International?
Pretty much everything that we believe to be in your best interests will be different to what traditional industry salespeople will have told you.
There are literally hundreds of examples of this...
But maybe this list will help you understand how and why we are different: -
We only advocate a personalised financial advice service for those with sufficient wealth to make our fee-based service worth the investment.
Studies show that un-conflicted and unbiased investment advice and lifestyle financial planning services, like our own, generate substantial value.*
Our full service combines investment advice and financial planning to help you understand, protect and build your wealth.
This is an holistic approach: it helps you lead a successful financial life – it's not just focused on maximising your investment returns, but improving your overall financial well-being and knowledge.
International financial planning is a professional approach to planning your financial future. It helps those who live overseas (expatriates), those with complex cross-border tax arrangements (non-doms), and those who own assets in multiple tax, legal and regulatory jurisdictions.
Based on your personal risks, aspirations and financial demands, a good financial planner will produce an effective road map to help you reach your desired financial destination.
Good offshore financial advice helps point out the risks, the returns and the flexibility of your options within a marketplace where many regulatory and legal protections may not apply. Good international financial advisers recommend which path to take so that you can grow your money through solid investment choices, but still have enough cash and flexibility for expenditure.
Professional financial planning incurs professional, transparent fees, (just like those a chartered accountant, chartered surveyor or lawyer charge). If your needs are simple, it is unlikely that you will make money net of fees, and it is often better to just get a helping hand to ensure you invest sensibly.
This fact isn't what the industry wants you to know, because they can make several decades worth of fees on the very first day you incept a plan through a mechanism called ‘indemnity commission.’ This hidden payment creates a lack of flexibility as it results in exist penalties and surrender values, at the same time as eroding your future returns and misaligning the salesperson's interests with yours.
The true value of a financial adviser often manifests itself as being a ‘behavioural investment counsel.’ To that end, we are here to help bridge the behaviour gap – that is, he difference between investment returns, and the returns of the average investor.
This gap exists because of the human tendency to allow emotions to overwhelm rational thinking when making investment decisions.
Clients who benefit the most from our services understand something very important about successful investing, that has been proven time and time again:
Investors are not hardwired to make rational decisions when confronted with emotional, challenging facts in relation to their investments.
In other words, individual investors are often the worst persons to manage their own finances.
In offshore financial services, the situation is slightly different. With just a helping hand, self-investing is normally better than becoming the victim of a rotten offshore financial adviser or salesperson or local bank. But the evidence shows it is still sub-optimal…
Our chartered financial planners and chartered wealth managers create a great deal of value by understanding this. A large part of our job is to act as a barrier between investors and their own worst instincts.
In particular, AES International helps safeguard investors and clients from an industry of retail banks, IFAs and insurance salespeople who want to sell their toxic wares to unsuspecting and poorly protected expatriates. We try to warn you about financial scams, and guard both your ‘Buy & Sell’ buttons.
We know that over our clients’ lifetimes there will be economic, political, and market events that will create significant emotional hurdles that will trip up the unwary. We help you clear these hurdles.
But, you don’t only employ a financial practitioner to talk you off the ledge during inevitable bouts of global financial or political turmoil. You hire them to guide you towards achieving significant financial goals, such as:
Most of our clients are expatriates, non-domiciled individuals, or those with other cross-border or offshore financial requirements.
Our process begins by taking an holistic approach to your financial life.
We then construct a blueprint for your financial plan, that becomes the basis of your relationship with our organisation.
Yes – but the evidence suggests that most DIY investors who track down the cheapest platforms end up reaping themselves negative returns…
Author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the concept of the 10,000 hour rule as the amount of time required to gain competence within a specific field. Applying this rule to investing - someone who has little experience such as a DIY investor is likely to make many mistakes — which is normal when learning any new skill.
For example, an inexperienced investor might think they’re well diversified when they’re not, they might trade frequently based on what they see on the news, or hold inappropriate investments in taxable or non-compliant accounts.
Even more importantly, in order to improve you need to receive useful feedback during your practice.
In Thinking Fast and Slow, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that learning to drive is one activity where feedback is immediate and clear. When you’re taking corners, you instantly know whether you’ve turned the wheel too sharply or applied the brakes too hard. This makes it relatively easy to improve as a driver
But with investing, the size (or cost) of a mistake may not become apparent for quite some time - perhaps until it's too late to rectify.
Professional advice from someone who isn’t incentivised or paid by the industry in the form of commissions and hidden fees, but who represents your best interests, is therefore critical to getting things right first time.
This type of professional advice is best obtained from a fee-based, chartered financial planning organisation – not an individual with whom you play golf, who comes to your home, who works on commission/referrals, or whom you consider to be a friend.
A mountain of evidence demonstrates staggeringly different outcomes are obtained by those who take advice from commission-based investment salespeople (like banks and IFAs), those who do-it themselves (DIY/execution-only) and those who use a fiduciary/fee-based professional such as a chartered wealth manager from a chartered financial planning organisation.
And of course, chartered financial advisers have a minimum of 10,000 hours of professional experience...
No. Successful investing requires a long-term perspective, but we recognise that circumstances can change and that your plans may need to be revised accordingly. It is fundamental to our approach that you can withdraw any or all of your money whenever you like, without penalty, cost or delay - and there’s no minimum investment period.
We aren’t tax advisers so we can’t give guidance on your tax exposure.
International investors may benefit from very low, or zero tax rates in the countries where they live. But tax, especially where it involves cross-border issues, is increasingly complex and you should be very careful to take tax advice from a reputable, properly qualified tax adviser who is qualified to give opinions on the tax exposure you will have in the countries that are relevant to you.
Whatever you do, make sure you understand and follow the tax laws, as the penalties for tax evasion may involve very large fines or even imprisonment.
There are tax advisers with whom many of our clients work, and we can give you their contact details, just ask us - this does not serve as a recommendation however, or tax advice.
Your other main option is to build and manage a portfolio yourself, but as explained above, this can prove time-consuming and risky.
However, if you are confident in your skills as an investor, then there is a wide range of low-cost investment and trading platforms where you can manage your own wealth. You might also like to consider our Smart Account™.
We don’t know!
But we do know that talking heads on CNBC and elsewhere have successfully got it wrong time and time again!
So we ignore this market noise and focus on identifying simple, cost-effective solutions that, within a defined asset allocation, offer the best chance for investors to meet their long-term investment goals.
We think this is pretty easy - and we don’t want to make it any harder, or more expensive for our clients by making speculative decisions based on baseless predictions that will probably turn out to be wrong!
Not all financial advisers are the same.
Good financial advice relies on the professionals who give advice having relevant qualifications, experience and integrity.
These advisers need to operate within a corporate framework which provides a regulatory umbrella, compliance supervision, good management, systems and controls, all of which operate towards treating clients fairly.
In our view, the culture and values of a company inform the type of advice and service you are likely to receive.
We strongly recommend that you run through this due diligence checklist on how to choose a financial adviser before committing to using us, or any of our competitors.
Personal recommendations are not a reliable way to decide on a financial adviser - because badly advised people are often unaware they have received poor financial advice for many years.
Unfortunately, bad financial advisers make themselves much more visible within a marketplace than the good ones, (the bad ones cold call, turn up at your house, meet you after work...)
Bad financial advisers are often very slick and effective salesmen who will tell you what you want to hear about great returns and better performing funds.
Good financial advisers more often than not uncover uncomfortable truths…
Do your own research by ticking off against this due diligence checklist on how to choose a financial adviser. You have found a strong contender if they score 100%.
If you've already taken advice and want a second opinion, we offer a portfolio review service.
Sometimes, clients are unhappy: we under-deliver against something, or they are simply unhappy with the way that we performed our tasks. Where that’s the case, we are quick to raise our hands and take responsibility.
We have a well-codified complaints process that, regardless of jurisdiction, is run to UK service standards.
If we can’t resolve an issue quickly and satisfactorily, we suggest that clients follow our formal complaints process. We will always make sure that you are aware how to complain to the relevant regulator in your jurisdiction.
