Financial Planning
We believe in working with you to create clarity in your financial affairs.
Our team work closely with businesses, families and individuals to help them to achieve these plans.
Your Personal
Financial Advisors
All of us here at Walsh Group are committed to establishing strong relationships with our clients, by ensuring our financial planning advice and services always meet the highest standards.
I’m Rose, a highly qualified Senior Financial Planner with over 25 years experience and expertise in providing financial solutions to both personal and business clients.
My role is to provide impartial holistic financial planning and advice, taking pride in offering a highly professional service whilst treating all my clients with respect and integrity.
As a working mother to three daughters myself, I have a genuine and deep understanding of clients everyday financial needs and financial planning requirements.
Rose O’Halloran
I’m Richard, I re-joined Walsh Group in 2019 after spending some time working in London. I recently finished my QFA and I am working towards my RPA qualification.
My role in Walsh Group is to provide our clients with holistic financial advice. My day-to-day interactions with clients are around pensions, savings, investments and protection.
So, whether you’re looking to save to buy your first home, querying what tax relief you can get on your pension contributions or wanting to know more about income protection, I am here to help.
Richard Walsh
Savings & Investments
We will work with you to ensure that with proper financial planning, your money works harder for you.
With interest rates being considerably low in Ireland, your savings are losing money on deposit in your local bank account or credit union. If you are looking to save for the medium to long term horizon, an Investment or Savings Plan can help you achieve your future financial goals and objectives.
This plan allows you to support your children’s education and can bring great peace of mind, and open up a world of possibilities for your children. The plan allows you to maximise the Gift Tax saving for the child by enabling you to legally assign the plan to the child, thus making full use of the annual Gift Tax Exemption limit of €3,000 from any individual (€6,000 from a married couple).
Investing a lump sum is a great option if you want an opportunity to grow your money over time. The subsequent returns on your chosen funds should increase the amount you have in the investment fund over a long period of time.
Corporate money should work for you and holding your company’s money on deposit may make financial sense to meet short term cash flow requirements. However, holding all your surplus cash in deposit can be inefficient and may have a negative impact on your balance sheet, as deposit interest rates are at historic lows and inflation is eating into your money.
There may also be a tax implication via the Close Company Surcharge rule. Where a close company is in receipt of passive income e.g. rents, dividends and this income is not distributed to its shareholders within 18 months of the accounting period end in which the income arises, a close company surcharge will apply. The surcharge equates to an additional 20% tax on the post-tax undistributed passive income. Investment of Corporate funds in a savings structure allows you to avoid this charge.
Retirement Planning
Budgeting for your retirement is one of the most important parts of your overall Financial Planning.
If you would like to continue with a good standard of living in retirement, now is the time to start saving and avail of great tax benefits.
Get in touch with our expert financial team to chat through the best strategies and options to suit you.
Planning for Retirement
A personal pension can be set up for you if you are a Sole Trader or an Employee with no access to an Executive Pension Plan or Occupational Pension Scheme. This is a private pension. This is not linked to any employer/company and all contributions going into it are from you. Your employer cannot contribute into this type of plan. If all contributions are taken from your Sole trader bank account before the Income Tax deadline, it is taken off from your earnings before personal income tax is calculated.
An Executive Pension is a pension set up by employers for executives or key employees of the company. The pension is set up under a trust and typically the employer will act as the trustee. With an Executive Pension both employees and employers can make contributions. The ultimate value of your pension plan will depend on the contributions you and your employer have made over the years and the investment return the funds have achieved in your Executive Pension.
Not only does an Executive Pension provide you with a long-term plan for your retirement, it is also a tax efficient way for you to set aside money for when you retire as well as being a tax efficient way for your employer to provide you with employee benefits. In addition to employer contributions, you may be able to contribute up to 40% of your income (depending on your age) into your Executive Pension and claim tax relief.
A Personal Retirement Savings Account (PRSA) is an account you can use to save for your retirement. It is an investment account because you can invest your savings in various investment funds through your account. You can make regular payments or lump sum payments to your PRSA, and these are usually tax deductible. You don’t pay tax on any investment gains but you might end up paying a relatively low level of tax on the retirement benefits you get from your PRSA. You can take out a PRSA with an authorised PRSA provider.
A PRSA provides benefits at retirement based on the amount of payments or ‘contributions’ you have paid in and the investment returns earned on those contributions.
PRSAs are available to you regardless of your job or employment status. You can take out a PRSA if you are a part-time or casual employee, a highly paid professional, self-employed, a homemaker, a carer, a jobseeker, a contractor, an employer, an employee or a partner in a partnership.
PRSAs are flexible; you can increase, decrease or stop your contributions at any time without any charge or penalty. PRSAs are portable; you can carry your PRSA from job to job or transfer it to another PRSA provider without any charge or penalty.
If your employer does not provide you with access to an occupational pension scheme or if certain restrictions apply to their scheme, then you must be provided with access to a Standard PRSA.
Given the increase in life expectancy, most of us can look forward to a longer and more active life in retirement. If you’re nearing retirement age, there are a few things you may want to think about.
The first thing you should consider is the lifestyle you would like to have in retirement and the financial support you will need to enjoy that life. If you have a pension, you may want to consider making Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs) if applicable. If you don’t have a pension, talk to your financial advisor.
Changing your job doesn’t mean losing your accumulated pension. A Personal Retirement Bond (PRB) is a simple, straightforward way to take your pension entitlement with you if you decide to change jobs.
When you leave a pension scheme, the value of your fund is invested in a bond in your own name, which you can benefit from at retirement. This provides you with the option to access your retirement benefits from age 50 onward.
It basically means that if you leave a pension scheme, you can bring your pension benefits with you by having the transfer value of your fund invested in a bond in your name.
A self-directed pension plan gives you the power to decide how your pension is invested. A self-directed pension may be suitable for experienced investors, who want to manage their pension fund investments themselves. It gives you access to invest in a range of fixed-interest and equity securities, and should be considered a high-risk investment.
At Retirement
An Approved Retirement Fund gives you more financial control over how your retirement fund is managed. The intention is to grow your fund during your retirement years based on your own investment strategy.
An ARF works by allowing you to invest all or part of your pension fund after you retire. You can decide on the type of fund you would like to invest in, and the amount of risk you’re comfortable with. With an ARF you can still withdraw from your fund on a regular or ad hoc basis (subject to income tax and USC. PRSI may also apply).
It’s worth remembering that since your pension fund is still invested, its value may go down as well as up.
With an Annuity, you will receive a regular income for the rest of your life. Annuities may be more suited for people who wish to avoid potential risks, and would prefer a guaranteed income for their retirement.
Life Assurance & Family Protection
Having an appropriate protection plan in place is certainly an effective way of providing peace of mind knowing that you have protected the people and items that are most important to you. Nobody wants to think about the worse case scenario, but planning for all eventualities is intrinsic to your overall financial plan.
Contact us today to see how we can help you devise custom financial planning to suit your requirements. Call us now on 021 425 5822.
Mortgage Protection helps repay your mortgage if you die. This is a basic decreasing benefit. In most cases your mortgage protection policy will be assigned to your mortgage lender, as security for your mortgage loan.
This provides protection for the term of the cover. The aim is to provide a lump sum to your family if you die. The sum assured under the policy is only paid out if death occurs within a specified term. You may also opt to convert the plan at the end of the term and continue the cover without providing further medical evidence.
This product provides you with a replacement income of up to 75% of your earnings (less social welfare payments) if you cannot work as a result of an illness or injury after a certain period of time (on average a 13 or 26 week period). It does not cover you if you become unemployed.
This is designed for self-employed, directors and employers who wish to provide income security for key employees. In the event of a claim, the benefit is paid to the employer, who then passes it onto the employee through salary roll, deducting tax, USC, etc, in the usual manner.
There are few families in Ireland that have been unaffected by cancer. While you may not like to think about cancer, you are probably aware of its medical implications and the effect it could have. But often overlooked is the financial impact that cancer could have on your life.
Specified Illness cover is a benefit, which pays you a financial lump sum if you are diagnosed with one of the specified conditions covered on the policy.
Pension Term Assurance is designed to provide life cover to those in non-pensionable employment. This includes self-employed people or people who are not members of an employer-sponsored pension plan. Eligible policyholders pay their full premium to the provider and then claim tax relief at their marginal rate from Revenue.
Whole of life cover will suit people who wish to have cover for the rest of their lives – and is not limited to a specific term. If you pass away, this policy will provide a lump sum financial payment to your family. If can also provide tax-efficient inheritance planning cover for your family, so as not to impact their inheritance.
Hard working, creative and valued employees are the most powerful assets available to any business. That’s why it makes sense to protect against the loss of certain key members of staff, bolstering your company against the financial and operational fall-out of such an event. This plan covers employees, directors, and partners, as well as providing bespoke group risk schemes.
A Section 72 policy is a type of life insurance you can take out to pay off capital acquisition tax, commonly known as inheritance tax. It is similar to regular life insurance in that you take out a policy, you pay your premium, and when you die, your beneficiaries get a tax-free lump sum to be used to pay the inheritance tax due. If you are a spouse or civil partner receiving an inheritance from your deceased spouse or civil partner, you don’t pay inheritance tax. However, everyone else may be liable for inheritance tax.
We design the Inheritance Tax Plan to suit your requirements and make it easy to engage with and understand the process.
Business Protection
Many businesses never factor in the enormous loss or uncertainty a business would face if a key staff member were to become seriously ill or pass away. Small to medium size businesses can be heavily dependent on the skills, experiences and business contacts of a few key employees or directors. The death of these could have devastating effects on the business. Therefore, one may need to consider putting Key Person Assurance in place, i.e. life assurance on the key person with the benefit payable to the company.
Partners in a partnership are all personally responsible for any financial debts of the business. If one partner goes bankrupt or fails to pay taxes, the other partners are liable for all the taxes involved. Therefore, partners should consider effecting Partnership Assurance, which is life assurance to ensure that, on death, sufficient money will become available to enable the surviving partners to buy the shares of the deceased partner.
Inheritance Planning
Proactive estate planning can save families from a financial perspective and can substantially reduce emotional pressure on families during an extremely difficult time.
Our experienced team will work with you closely to put a plan in place to minimize potential inheritance tax burdens.
Redundancy Planning
It is important to understand all the options available to you.
You will need to understand your pension options also, and ensure that your are making the correct decision at that time.
We will assist you to navigate this process, and best guide you with your financial planning.