#92 Lisa Perry – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of ensemble advice South Africa. Today I have with me in the studio, Lisa Perry. Lisa is a certified financial planner at PWH Wealth Group. And I think we’re in for a treat around Lisa’s journey. Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today.

Lisa Perry
Thanks, Louis. Nice to be on your show.

Louis van der Merwe
Where are you dialing in from I don’t see much sunshine be on your side. So I’m curious to hear where you are at the moment. I am

Lisa Perry
currently in a little village outside west of London. And in Gerrards cross I’m throwing in the UK at the moment. And we are probably having the same weather South Africa is heavy. So we are expecting sunshine on the weekend with a beautiful hot weekend just pass so it’s but it’s cold at the moment, as usual, not in England.

Louis van der Merwe
It will be lovely for us today in this conversation to unpack your journey. And you know, setting up a business in the UK, which you just mentioned to me has been going for for nine plus years. But before we get there, give us the snapshot of how you got into the financial services world.

Lisa Perry
So I fell into it. I’m a stay. I think there’s quite a few people story. So I worked for Norwich life about 26 years ago. I don’t know how many of your listeners will remember Norwich giving away your age now Lisa, and giving away my age. And my father I started doing a couple of odd jobs here and the bit of accounting because I was studying accounting at the time, I was coaching netball. And just out of out of school last Saturday, I was at Boston Tea on the side. And my dad said I needed a real job and he got me in touch with the guy who worked at Norwich life and I became his PA and I then started out in the corporate I worked at Norwich I worked at momentum Glacia. I think that’s it. And then I got offered a job to start up the Joburg office of a financial planning practice in Durban. So we took on that opportunity as absolutely petrified of it. And about a year after that we actually decided to branch out on our own because we had a mismatch of, you know, the what I wanted to do versus what the Dubai office was doing. So we just decided we very amicable, amicably split ways. And Peter who was born in 2015. And then the UK office was born 2022

Louis van der Merwe
loose, I want to ask you about that move from a PA into a different role. Tell me how was it working as a PA for someone that I’m assuming was more insurance based and more sales based and then moving into a different role. How difficult was that?

Lisa Perry
It was very difficult, but I actually I went through everything quite slowly. So Norwich as a PA for one of the branches. Born managers then are funnily enough went to advertising and sponsorship at Fisher was oddly enough. And then I became a broker consultant at Metropolitan which and lakes and then moved to momentum as a marketing advisor or broker consultants and stay there for quite a while. So I didn’t immediately go into the sales role, even though I was probably stronger on the technical side than any in selling anything because I still don’t think I’m very good at selling anything.

Louis van der Merwe
And that’s a theme that comes up so often where us as advisors are either allergic to the word sales or don’t see ourselves as salespeople, like how do you position that within your current role where you know you’re growing a business and you’re ultimately providing a service yet you don’t want to come across salesy.

Lisa Perry
So I think there’s two aspects of that. So I can’t even tell you it was but someone said to me, the one that we are all salespeople, because we sell ourselves. So every time you meet someone, you are effectively selling yourself, because inevitably they’ll ask you about yourself, and you’ve got to have some kind of a story that you’re going to tell them. So from their point of view, I think we are all salespeople whether we like it or not, and regardless of what our role is. And then we believe that we provide a solution to clients. So they will come to us with a need or a problem, we will either be able to sell them a solution or we worked. And so from my point of view, we don’t just take on any client that comes our way we are very specific and picky about our clients because we want to be adding value. So I think of you as an advisor, if you take on clients, where you got them and you’ve tried to sell them something you are taking on a client that you don’t have a joint passion or purpose together. And that for me is always important with our clients that they they’ve got a need and we’ve got a solution to their problem. So that’s basically it.

Louis van der Merwe
I love how you actually it’s it’s fairly simple, right? It’s just there’s something that they need help with. Is there a common theme between what people are struggling with at the moment or what they need? Or is it just very diverse and depends on each client.

Lisa Perry
So South Africa in the South African practice, it’s a lot of overall financial planning. So people are very especially since COVID. And people are serious about getting the finances in order people are Kids, they’re looking for that protection factor. They’re scared that they, if something happens to them, what will happen to their families, they’re looking for those kinds of strategies as well. And they are just really wanting to get the budgets and the lives in order and, you know, start saving. And so whether it be retirement or for the family holidays, that I think people just want to really get in touch with what they’ve got, and what their money can do for them. In the UK, we find a lot more retirement clients. So we’ve got a couple of clients that want full financial plans. But the general theme in the UK has been people are very focused on retirement.

Louis van der Merwe
And do the processes differ from someone in South Africa wanting full financial planning versus someone close to retirement in the UK are different? How would it differ?

Lisa Perry
So the idea was originally to kind of take our essay process and copy and paste it, which is tried to do, I wouldn’t say very successfully, but the concept is the same. It’s you know, we still do bad jobs, we still do the coaching, we still do exactly the same things where the client has just the documents, I think, or the the compliance processes are slightly different. So in the UK here, for example, you’ve got to prove effect font. So you’ve got to actually show them a fact finding document where you literally gathered all the clients information. We’re in South Africa, I think we don’t do it. Well, we aren’t doing very much in a organized fashion. But I don’t think it’s something that’s a prerequisite from a compliance point of view, you’ve just got to prove that you know, your client, well, there is a very, or here and in England, it’s a very big focus area. For them,

Louis van der Merwe
do you find that you bringing some of that back into the SA business and saying, Hey, this is what the future of compliance might look like,

Lisa Perry
we’ve had this exact conversation that other day. So we’ve tried to put myself in my power plan or my to ice, I’m not sure what some was to call yourself anymore. But it’s my sidekick, we were having the conversation about what we’re doing in the UK, we need to actually filter back into South Africa as well. So we’ve changed a lot of our compliance documents in South Africa to include the stuff that we’re doing in the UK. So two reasons. Number one, I do absolutely believe that essay will follow suit, or what the UK are doing. And secondly, it just makes us a universal Global Practice. So once you get on one side, you’re getting good on the other because we want clients to have the same experience in both countries, as they transition into the UK, they must feel comfortable because there’s so much change that they’re coming to in the UK already. We want them to have something that is consistent.

Louis van der Merwe
I think that’s a lovely point for us talk about the reason for setting up an office outside of the country. I know there was some personal elements to it, but it can you unpack some of that thinking and the process of setting up shop, because I would imagine a lot of people listening to this, have thought about it, they don’t necessarily know where to start, not for them to also join you. But also to say, you know, is it really achievable for a South African financial planning business to go global.

Lisa Perry
So obviously COVID was kick started the process where myself and what about other directors just had a conversation about the amount of clients that started wanting or investigating into immigrating. And I am a lover of South Africa through and through South Africa is in my blood. It’s my favorite place of the world we coming we just booked our tickets to come back home in July. And I cannot wait I’m like chomping at the bit already. So it’s like we can’t do the days. And run here is 73, who’s our director, he agreed that we should look to open up shop in the UK for clients to catch them on the site to continue their financial planning from a global point of view. And I think because of online and you know, you don’t have to see people face to face anymore, that was a much easier task than if it had been three COVID or COVID. That never happened. So we decided we kind of committed to investigating it and I would look into it. And obviously my biggest concern was my son, I’ve got a 13 he’s now 13 year old son and schooling and cost of schooling in the UK and all of those good things that made me go big time. And, and I’ve just started chatting to people about it and how we do it and in the whole process of it was so there’s a couple of aspects you’ve got to look at. So the first one is the studies because you’ve got to convert to UK, and I’ve done the UK CFP conversion, you don’t have to do that you can just do their normal I investment diploma and that’s the tick box from an education point of view. Then you’ve got to get a license which is completely and utterly a no go in the UK. So the UK don’t like one man shows they don’t like small businesses. They’re very much would prefer everyone to be part of networks. So what we did was and I actually did this after I got to the UK not before I left, which I know sounds a bit silly, but we had made the decision to go and then my son went and got a bursary into Harrow. So it was like, well, that’s a no brainer. So we’ll do that. And we then found a South African gentleman whose license we now sit on. So you sit as associated rip on someone’s license here in the UK. So we can eventually get onto our own license once once we big enough in the UK, but at the moment, we just set as an associated rip on the license.

Louis van der Merwe
Okay, so there’s those two major challenges at setting up a license and which sounds like you’ve found a really good way of approaching that. Tell me a bit more about the conversion of your CFP designation around something that is valid. In the UK? How difficult is that? Does that mean more exams? Do you have to redo the whole thing? Or what is it all about?

Lisa Perry
Yes, you don’t have to redo the whole thing. So the UK, they do so as si or ci si in the UK that the FBI here. They recognize the South African CFP, which was music to my ears, that was absolutely fabulous, because the thought of rewriting exams just scared me senseless. So you’ve got to write the AI D, which is an investment advice, diploma, I think that’s what it stands for, which again, has four subjects, but it’s all UK based. So there’s no case study or anything like that. Assume that you know how to give financial planning to a client. And it wasn’t hard at all, I was really nervous about it. I thought, oh, my gosh, I know nothing about the UK system. I knew about UK tax because I’ve done a UK tax course. And yeah, and it’s multiple choice. And you I mean, in theory, if you’ve done your work on a dual cruise through it. So And once that’s done, the FBI sent over all the documentation to say that you’re in good standing with them. And they issue your CFP here. So the other thing that took the longest was to get FBI to send across the document,

Louis van der Merwe
the red tape, figuring that out, and I’m glad to hear that you’re at a point where, you know, that is now behind you, Lisa, what has been the part that was the most challenging for you that might have surprised you? You know, you mentioned that you did some tax training. But was there a piece of how clients receive financial planning in the UK are the expectations that maybe you weren’t prepared for didn’t expect?

Lisa Perry
So from what I’ve gathered in the UK, and just from what I’ve spoken to, to people that I’ve spoken to is that there’s still a lot of product selling. Yeah, so you’ve got a lot of good old fashioned brokers, yeah, that go out. And they’ll sell a pension fund or ISO, which is a Tax Free Savings Account, to clients where there’s not a huge group of people who do proper financial strategies or plans for clients. So I believe there’s a big gap in the market for doing that with clients, which is quite exciting, obviously, for us. But yeah, it’s so the biggest frustration that we’ve had is getting serviced. So it’s like living in Cape Tanya, tomorrow’s another day, don’t worry, we’ll get to it in three days time and obviously be from Johannesburg. I’m not chop chop, I want it now. So that has been quite frustrating. And one would think being a first world country that they would this service levels would be better, but they I would say South African service levels are far better in the industry.

Louis van der Merwe
So when you say they are those the product providers that you would interact with on behalf of your clients. Yeah. And how difficult was that opening up contracts with those providers to be able to do business?

Lisa Perry
Thank goodness, we didn’t have to judge because it stands to global wealth, Matthew, do our license. So they got all those those licenses for us all those contracts for us and those quiet? Yeah. So you’ve got to understand the jargon that they use here and everything is got is short and dodge a couple of letters. And that for us, we kind of need to start building a dictionary to understand what everything is. So we when we speak to providers, it’s probably more sun than me, you know, you’ve got to use certain language that we don’t know what that language is. So it’s like learning a whole different new language.

Louis van der Merwe
When least I can imagine that you could feel similar to what a client could feel like someone that doesn’t necessarily have the background knowledge on you know, all these acronyms or the jargon and it’s, like, exclusive and now you need to understand like, is that frustrate? In trying to navigate and figure it out, it’s very frustrating.

Lisa Perry
It drives us absolutely mad. But it’s exactly the same as what we deal with with clients. So we always try to keep saying to our team, speak to the card, like you speak to a 10 year old class do not understand our English, English, they don’t understand what TFSA is. So you need to educate our clients on the financial language that we use in South Africa. And the same way we now need to get educated on their financial language their providers, and if I was using the UK here,

Louis van der Merwe
do you have a strategy for kind of increasing your knowledge? Or is it just accumulating as you go along and saying, Okay, now we need to understand this and unpack.

Lisa Perry
So a couple of things on that. So ci si, who the FBI is here, they’ve got fantastic videos and webinars online that you and a refresher that you literally just go on. And if I want to know about pension funds are gone, and I do an hour webinar, and they, they’ve just great, so it keeps you learning there, but a lot of conferences in Africa as well that you can attend, which is great. So they’re very engaging with the, with the ifas here. So you know, knowledge is power. So we busy trying to unpack the, the system there. So we would use elite wealth in South Africa, here, they’ve got intelliflo. And someone is trying to understand how the system, the back end of the system works, because nothing seems to link to anything else they use. The assets are loaded as plans. And I’m not for that’s not a plan ft liability, don’t pull through to the current portal. And it’s literally a promise you just so frustrating. And they’ve also said then you end up watching about 45 webinars to get the answer for one thing.

Louis van der Merwe
So use of African clients and your UK clients, you’re using different software providers to help them with a financial plans

Lisa Perry
would be so much nice if you could just easily eat well, for both

Louis van der Merwe
elite wealth, if anyone from your team is listening, there might be an opportunity to create a UK model,

Lisa Perry
there’s a little paint for you as well. I did speak to Rossi about it. And he I think he is looking into

Louis van der Merwe
and what has been the feedback from your clients, someone that you’ve now if I’m understanding you correctly, it’s a client that maybe has an intention to relocate to the UK from South Africa, you can hold their hand through the process and create that kind of soft landing in a space where, you know, you understand them, you understand their goals. And you can seamlessly implemented I would imagine their clients. Would you repeat raving about that?

Lisa Perry
Well, I hope so. So we’ve had some really good feedback. And, you know, we’ve had clients who left South Africa a couple of years ago, that we weren’t really dealing with. And when we kind of put it out that we’ve now opened up the UK offers they’ve come back to us. And you know, I think people Yeah, all South Africans here love to speak South African. And that, I think is a bit of the biggest benefit. Because as we learning what the UK jargon is, you know, be able to interpret that for clients. So and I think specifically on the tax side. So there’s big issues about South Africans who live in the UK, you don’t understand the task tax risks they’ve got back in South Africa, and the risks that they’re holds. Yeah, because one just thinks, Well, I’m not in South Africa anymore. So I don’t have to be part of the tax process or system anymore, which sadly, is not true. So we have a lot of conversations about the tax side of it. And and there are opportunities here for for clients to do use the UK tax system to the benefits when they first arrive in the UK. So that’s what we try and get clients to set up but you know, it was min sauce was three years of balance sheet. The I’ve tried to do my own at the moment. And every time I even look at it, I go I can’t do this. It is very, it’s quite a quite a process to move a client brand South Africa to the UK. But we do get there. And I would imagine I appreciate the hand holding and as sharing our experiences with them. Through the process,

Louis van der Merwe
I can just hear how your own experience has shaped the way you see clients to say, Hey, I see these frustrations. I’m going through it I’ve learned from it. Is that something you communicate to clients?

Lisa Perry
I absolutely. So we you know, clients come on as a partnership, they come into the PW H family. So we’re human beings. So as much as they are human beings. I’m also a human being and I can share their frustrations and hopefully provide insights or solutions to some of the problems that they might be having because I am at the beta for Do I have the benefit of being in the financial industry. So I shouldn’t be able to navigate a lot easier than someone who’s coming in. You’re blind because it is overwhelming moving to a new cat job, especially at my age. And a lot of clients in the 40s and 50s are starting to move across as well. So I think they’re It is. Yeah, it’s, it’s scary. And it’s hard. And, you know, this crazy things like converting your driver’s license and having to trust the postal system that are quite overwhelming.

Louis van der Merwe
Are those kinds of things that you guys get involved with in terms of, you know, helping someone sort out their driver’s license, or as part of the discussions? Are we with that fit in?

Lisa Perry
You know, not really, but I’m, I’m very happy to share my experience with us. And I think that, you know, with South Africa, the post system, you never put your passport in the post in South Africa, it just wouldn’t ever happen. We’re here, when you convert your driver’s license, you’ve got to give them your Visa card, you got to actually post it to them. And for me, I think it took me about three weeks to do it, because I’m like, I just can’t, I’m never gonna get it back. Funny story, I never did get mine back, mine did actually get lost in the Royal Mail. So I had to go to apply for a new one. But that was

Louis van der Merwe
part of the process that I told you.

Lisa Perry
But that’s normal. It’s I was obviously so paranoid that I just pulled it at negative energy into my life. But now we are trying to help people like setting up bank accounts, your driver’s license, White Castle taxes. So how do you reduce your council tax? You know, those are all these hard lessons that I’ve learned over the last 14 months, I’m very happy to share with my class and I do go through, when we do clients budget and go line item for line item, we look at where we can obviously save or if there’s a better way to do something. So I definitely do share that knowledge with clients. Because we do obviously always want to pay less on utilities, and those the cost of living and save more spend more on things that we love

Louis van der Merwe
Elisa, it sounds very involved, compared to what we would normally do with South African clients, how have you changed your pricing model to reflect the work that you’re doing.

Lisa Perry
So we did have quite a bit of research in the UK as to what advisors are charging, and we’ve gone kind of just below the average of it, and on how people in the UK will charge and their pricing structure. So we’ve, we charge a professional fee for our clients. And that’s where we’ve got just below the average, which we will over time, get up to the average or be above the average. But for now we’ve done that. And then from a assets under management was sliding scale fee, we’ve just gone with the normal fee here. So and that’s exactly the same as South Africa. So our sliding scale fees are the same as South Africa.

Louis van der Merwe
Okay, so for someone moving between countries, they’re not going to pay a different percentage. And was it quite easy to get these figures of what the average advisor would charge as a upfront fee? In pounds, or, you know, the sliding scales?

Lisa Perry
It was I mean, there’s, there’s so much information on Google. And then I’ve chatted to people I know in the UK and what they charge what they feel is fair how they do it. So South Africans, financial advisors who are already here, so there’s a couple of Excel Africans that are here working as financial advisors. They I’ve got good relationships with them, check them often. And we’ve got black Hello, fellow African group going on. And we just share stories, we share motivations, we share tears, I suppose as well at times,

Louis van der Merwe
to wonderful how we just can motivate each other in this profession. And I’m curious around the staffing side of it, how are you managing your office there? Is it still South African store for you looking to employ people in the UK, because that obviously brings another set of complexity.

Lisa Perry
So I can’t stomach HR rules in the UK at the moment or labor. It’s my brain just can’t expand that far at the moment. What we’ve decided to do is to run the whole of the global group from South Africa. So admin paraplanning, everything starts in South Africa. And only ifas will start in the UK. So if one of our paraplanner decides that they want to live in the UK, then they can come live in the UK and work from here. But they’ll still be under South African contracts.

Louis van der Merwe
And does that mean you have to upskill them in terms of the planning for UK tax legislation and products? And

Lisa Perry
so we’ve already started doing that. So are my current paraplanner some, she’s funnily enough doing a CFP Board Exam next week, and then she’ll start the UK CFP stuff.

Louis van der Merwe
Wow. Some hopefully by the time you’re listening to this, you have passed successfully. Hopefully, that that is quite an attractive situation for for someone learning these skills to say, well, actually, I don’t have to only deal with South Africa. I can now think about different countries. What would you say to young advisors that are thinking about exploring other jurisdictions?

Lisa Perry
I think you’ve you’ve got to go so the easiest ones would be England or Australia, because South Africa got plans is based off those two countries. So that for me would be the obvious one, or both of them. And I think you’ve got to be multi knowledgeable, if you want to go global one day. So if a young advisor wants to start up in South Africa in five years time, they decide I will actually want to go work in the UK, they would need to have the knowledge of the UK and there’s loads of stuff that you can do before you come to the UK to get certified or to get educated and how things work in the UK. So I’m definitely getting both CFPs is worthwhile. In my mind, I’m not sure how Australia work. We haven’t even looked at that, and don’t really plan to,

Louis van der Merwe
you sound like you’re up to, to move again, and and go through this. This whole process again, it sounds like it hasn’t been more difficult than what you expected. Just given all these challenges.

Lisa Perry
I think it’s been easier than I expected. And funnily enough, and I did a went in very much with a open mind to learn. And so you know, there’s those three levels of you know, what, you know, you don’t know what you don’t you don’t know what you know, and you don’t know what you don’t know. So I literally went in with everything. I don’t know what I don’t know. And now I’m here and I took the first year just literally exploring picking people’s like brains, making connections, trying to build a bit of a network and asking what I felt like really stupid questions when I was, I don’t know. So I’ve kind of got to ask the stupid questions. And that’s really worked. But I think that if you have an expectation on certain timelines, you’re gonna fail, because they work even though we all speak English. That’s all they speak a different type of English jazz. In the UK. Yeah. And it’s a very different culture as well. So depending on whether you live in London or out in the country, we I do, it’s a very, very different culture. So it’s, you’ve got to understand it and fit in with that. And my biggest challenge, or and target was to make English friends, people who were born and bred UK and not just hang around with South Africa, and try to understand how the culture works. Yeah. So there have been challenges. And there have been days where I’ve just, you know, sat down and gone, what have I done, as you do, but I think I keep going with an open mind. And just go, I’m just gonna take roll with the punches, take it as it comes, and cry, the tears that are frustrated, enjoy the wins, celebrate the wins, then it’s fine. So you’ve got your copy, Richard, I think is that it’s on. So you’ve got to just be able to be fluid. And we spoke to about three or four different companies for license before we found Global Wealth map. And none of them felt right up there. And I didn’t again, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I didn’t even know what questions I should be asking them. So I just followed my gut on it. If it didn’t make sense, they were out. So

Louis van der Merwe
seems to have served you. Well. Tell me a bit about how you servicing your South African clients and how that how you’ve had to adapt that.

Lisa Perry
So I’m in South Africa twice a year, probably for about two or three months. Over the years. As I said, we’re heading out there now. end of July with the summer. Yeah. And and everything’s on on. So I don’t I don’t think some of my clients have even registered that I don’t live in South Africa anymore. Or I’ll get a no go. Where in the world are you? Can we chat? So my funniest experience was when a client, one client asked me via email and WhatsApp was gonna stay the same? And could they still contact me? Or do they need a landline? Now as luck? No, you won’t even know that I’m not there.

Louis van der Merwe
But that’s what a wonderful time to be able to do this and do the drug use transition into a new country. I’m curious how this has impacted your view from a South African perspective on global investments. So we talked about our clients about diversifying and not having a home bias. But now actually wearing a different hat, someone’s sitting in a different country, how has that impacted how you see South Africa and just the politics because we see a lot of negativity in clients at the moment. And I’m wondering how that is for someone sitting outside of the country, if it if it feels any different compared to when you were physically in South Africa.

Lisa Perry
So first of all, I think when you speak to anyone in the UK here, no one cares about South Africa, they also from a from a financial point of view. So I know and it seems so big when you in South Africa, when I speak to South African clients, it seems so big there. But once you start unpacking it, so we won’t look at British American Tobacco. In South Africa, we don’t look at it as a South African company. We’re South African, you got to look at it as a South African company. We look at it from a global point of view. And and that’s a bit of a mind shift. So I mean, a theory in South Africa, you shouldn’t do that. But you always do have that home bias and look at what’s happening in South Africa. So you know, how’s bat going to produce a performance of Africa? Well, that day owns that produce and perform from a global point of view. So everything we have conversations now very, hardly ever do we talk about British companies, we talk global, everything is global. So we just happen to live in the hub, the financial hub in the world. That’s how the Brits see themselves, which is great for them. And we have access to everything. So it’s not it’s not a home bias yet, or we I think, South Africans, and that’s not to do with legislation, obviously, they have to invest locally and look at local shares, where here you could invest wherever you live. So it makes it it just makes it easier. And it’s just a different mindset, I suppose.

Louis van der Merwe
I guess that could also bring new challenges, because now you have to have a sense of, you know, what is the health of the world? And what are these outlooks compared to just one country for us to focus on a little bit easier?

Lisa Perry
Absolutely. So I think that’s always been something that I’ve been interested in. So economics is one of my favorite subjects. So I’m always interested in like, I’m one of those people who goes and looks at stats, global stats, I find that quite fun. So I’ve always really done that. And you do have to look at the health of of the world, and see where there is opportunity, but we use portfolio matrix to do that for us. So we have utter faith in them. And that will deal with the conversations we will be having with them and why they are looking at the different areas or the different geographic regions.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you, Lisa, for that BMX is a sponsor of the show. This was not planned, but I’m sure there’ll be a BT

Lisa Perry
in the UK as well. And that’s been one one good copy and paste is just literally going using them as in our solutions in South Africa, and moved to the UK wasn’t even an option didn’t look anywhere else. We literally just signed up with the Pemex office, and they’ve been fantastic. They really have been great.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s wonderful to hear how that move was smooth. But yet it sounds like the tax component caused the biggest headache. What about estate planning? How different is that in the UK compared to South Africa?

Lisa Perry
Do you get a wool done in the UK is 300 pounds. Now I can’t stomach that I really I just can’t for love or money. I cannot wrap my head around that. And I really am struggling with that. So how do you tell a client they’ve got to pay 300 pounds for a while. But we’re working on that I’ll find a solution to that. I don’t know what it is. But again, it’s one of those things, I don’t know what I don’t know if I need to go and dig and dig and dig and find the answer to that. But that state planning here is very different because you’ve got gifting, so you can gift assets away, and they don’t charge CGT on day. So the calculation is really easy, because that’s just the IHT at bat, it’s easier to do estate planning here than it is to do it in South Africa.

Louis van der Merwe
Okay, so if anyone’s listening to this, and you have a solution for a UK based world, please reach out to me or Lisa, around that because I’m guessing that 300 pound would be a barrister or solicitor helping you draw something, would that be a consultation with a client and some estate planning will literally just use your standard will.

Lisa Perry
So it will be it will be a consultation with the client? Because they do you have a well, it’s a questionnaire. So I’m not sure how many of how much they engage with the client or ask the client questions. I mean, a wall is a wall in my mind. I mean, I don’t know if I’m missing something. But in my mind, a wall is a wall. And so that’s just so there’s no state planning in that. And this is by wall specialist, you get companies Yeah, that all they do, they will specialist, I’m assuming they would take the role and do the probate and all of that stuff as well. I’m lucky we haven’t had anyone pass away yet. So I haven’t got experience in that just yet. But it is an area that we are investigating and to just try and understand how the process works. Yeah, versus South Africa. But the planning side is quite easy, because you just want to make sure someone dies broke. And they Clank so you can just gift your assets away.

Louis van der Merwe
If there’s anything that you could bring back from the UK and applied to Sir, to the South African financial services market, not legislation related, what would that be?

Lisa Perry
I actually I don’t know. I I’m of the opinion that South Africa is far more advanced than we think we are. And I think the UK things will move slowly. So I think the UK could actually learn a lot from South Africa.

Louis van der Merwe
Andy and your team listening from humans under management. Next time we’ll do a presentation to your UK audience around how to speed things up and make it a bit more efficient is that because we just have the ability to figure things out and improve things as as a nation, or what do you think is in Aaron behind that?

Lisa Perry
So that’s my kind of thought process on this might be I mean, you could probably have four arguments on it. But I think it’s on Africa because you guys do your job. You need to be more efficient, were in the UK at sitting at two or 3% unemployment rate that go to work for 95 that do their job, they go home, there’s no need to be better. So you’re obviously you have the breastfed, or the people who work in the UK who want to excel and move up the ranks and get promotions in that. But, you know, mediocrity just seems to be acceptable here. And it’s what it is we I think it’s an Africa, you better your job, you’ve got a job, you love your job, you value it, you don’t want to lose it, because you know, you got such a small chance of finding another job that you get pushed. And it’s the South African work ethic is, in my mind, far superior than probably most countries. We’ve just got to just get the job done attitude and a bull market plan. You know, throw all of those the South African Hotspur, throw all of that out there. And that’s a South African person who works there. I get quite excited when I meet a South African because I know I’ve got to get stuff done. So I’m not to say that we don’t have that with I mean, we’ve got some wonderful Brits that we work with that really are very, very efficient. And but we just are dealing with service providers has been rather other disappointing. So and even even on the software side, and we found the Support Center. It’s just you know, some has to find them. I can’t find them because I just want to calm down their phone and slap them. So it’s better that some desert

Louis van der Merwe
it’s wonderful to hear that sometimes we think everything’s gonna run smoothly. When we move to another country. There’s just going to be perfect that yes, there’s still there’s still challenges, right? You just have to pick which challenges you’re comfortable

Lisa Perry
tackling. No, that’s exactly that’s an often get asked, you know which one is better? And there’s no better they’re just different. So I love driving. Yeah, I could drive across the whole country be happy. I hate driving in Joburg, can’t stand it. Drivers are very aggressive way. Yeah, everyone sticks to the speed limit what sticks to the rules of the road and it works. So it’s an absolute pleasure. You seldom see accidents around gm we do quite a bit of traveling. We like to explore constant the weather here. I must love Jobu people. I love Joby people, land England is very pretty as well. So the area’s we’ve gone through too. I love Wales. I think it’s absolutely beautiful. Cape town’s just as beautiful. So it’s just different. I think I’m very lucky to have a hybrid lifestyle where I get to experience both as a call both my home. So that for me is nice.

Louis van der Merwe
Lisa, I think that’s a wonderful place for us to end our conversation. I want to thank you for sharing so openly the challenges and also the winds for building a business in a foreign country. For someone listening to this thinking about it, I hope this might motivate them or say oh, wow, I really underestimated what it might take. Is there any parting thoughts that you want to leave with people listening or place where they might be able to connect with you if they want to reach out for more questions.

Lisa Perry
So they Yeah, they’re welcome to email, email me on Lisa at PW hwg.com. I’m sure you can post the email address somewhere. That’s absolutely fine. And I think that if you have a love for financial planning, and it is really your purpose, you’ll be able to do it anywhere in the world because the concept is the same as long as you’re putting your client first. Delivering a professional, well thought out strategy for them. You can’t go wrong and don’t sell.

Louis van der Merwe
Wonderful. We’ve come full circle. But thank you so much for your time. Lisa,

Lisa Perry
Thanks a lot.

Louis van der Merwe
We’ll check in again in the year to year all the new winds from the UK office.