Paul Coates
Paul sought out our help with his move from the UK to Australia, where he was planning on fulfilling his life-long dream of living in a house overlooking the ocean. Here's his story.
Making dreams come true
I already had an advisor. They were based in Hong Kong, but I wasn’t entirely confident and happy with what they’d done to date in trying to meet my financial objectives. I actually have a friend who’s a financial advisor in Perth, and asked for her advice and who she could recommend – and bdhSterling was the first company that she recommended. And that proved to be a fantastic recommendation!
There’s a degree of complexity in my circumstances. I really needed an organisation which had the connections both in UK and in Australia and understood these complexities and were able to find the best route forward for me to get my funds within my control in Australia.
I think bdhSterling fully understood my requirements. They have offices located in the UK, as well as in Australia, and the person I’ve dealt with in Australia was superb. I transferred money into a pension scheme in Australia within the limits allowable in the most tax-efficient way. I also wanted to use some of the funds to purchase a property, which I’m going to now build on. It’s overlooking the ocean, which has been a dream of mine. I would not be on track to meet that dream if bdhSterling hadn’t helped me and intervened and listened to what my requirements were. My previous advisor had left me in a situation where my funds were essentially locked in with penalty clauses, so I wouldn’t have been able to get the money out of that without the support of bdhSterling.
The three words I would use to describe bdhSterling are professional, compassionate (they listened to what I wanted, my own life plans, and didn’t try and divert me away from those plans). Perhaps compassionate is an unusual word to use for financial advisors, but I think it certainly applied to the people I dealt with. And they were very efficient. That’s the third word: efficiency. They were very efficient in getting the results that I was looking for.
The best thing for me about working with bdhSterling was the fact they were local to where I live, but also they had a presence in the UK, which is where my funds were. So I think that cross-border professionalism that they show and their experience was probably the most vital cog in getting me to achieve what I wanted for my financial investments
I would not be on track to meet my dream if bdhSterling hadn’t helped me and intervened and listened to what my requirements were.