Corporate Services

We specialise in helping companies establish new employee benefit schemes to help with recruitment and retention;  and we review established employee benefit schemes to ensure that they are competitively priced and meet your staff’s needs.

Start Up Businesses

Start up business need to balance expenditure against income very carefully in the early days. We work with companies that are looking to grow to put in place financial protection and employee benefits at the right time. Initially you may simply need some help with a shareholder or partnership agreement and some protection for your business should one of your directors or partners fall ill or die.

As you grow you will be need to attract and retain high quality staff. Recruitment fees are not cheap and it is always better to keep a good employee by giving them a package they value, rather than paying additional recruitment fees. We would help you put in place an employee benefit scheme suited to your staff. If you employ younger staff they are more likely to be more interested in protecting their monthly income and their family.  

Older members of your team may be more interested in retirement planning. In the very early days your most important staff are the ones bringing revenue into the business, keeping it alive. Many businesses do not think about what would happen if that person no longer worked for them due to illness and simply hope this does not happen. This is not a safe way to plan for your business and you should consider the option of insuring your business against this.

Existing Businesses with Employee Benefit Schemes

When was the last time you reviewed your employee benefit schemes to find out:

• If they include what your staff actually want?
• If the price is competetive?
• If the benefits are what you think they are?
• Are you paying for these benefits at the right time in your financial year?
• If you have financial advisers, what are they doing for you?

We find that many of the employers we are asked to help have not looked deeply into any of the above questions. In the majority of cases, we are able to provide the benefits that the employer and the employees want at a lower cost than the employer is currently paying.

Companies often use financial advisers that are not specialists in corporate financial planning. This has big risks for you. We have also regularly come across schemes that are defective and do not provide the benefits the employer thought they were paying for.

Shareholder and Partnership Agreements

Do you have a shareholder or partnership agreement? What does it say and when was it last looked at?  Do you understand what it means? what actually happens if one of the shareholders dies? Many of the agreements that we look at were set up on day one and have not been reviewed since. They may contain obligations which a company may not have the funds to meet, perhaps on retirement or on the death of a shareholder or member. It is important these are reviewed and even more important that you understand what they mean.

If you would like us to refer you to one of the law firms we work with we would be pleased to help.

Why Use Square One Financial Planning LLP?

The partners are among the most highly qualified teams of corporate financial planners in the UK. Andrew Melbourne is a Chartered Financial Planner, one of the small number of such individuals.  He specialises in pensions and employee benefit schemes. John Kelly is a Chartered Accountant with 15 years prior experience in practice advising on business tax planning. Many advisers dabble in corporate financial planing and you use them at your peril. Much of our work is in sorting out defects in advice from inexperienced or underqualified advisers.

For more information please contact Andrew.