On their site they advertise themselves as:
"Abbey Wealth Switzerland, Spain, Ireland and around the world remains acutely focused on the provision of first class financial advice and support services to expatriates globally."
I have been contacted by Abbey Wealth, Spain and was wondering if anyone on the forum has experience with dealing with them?
Run.
I would never work with someone who contacts me out of the blue.
Their site says:
Which is true, unto a point, except they are registered as: insurance, reinsurance or ancillary insurance intermediary providers, not financial advisers or similar...
Best avoided.
Rule of thumb in Switzerland: If people contact you for insurances and financials just throw the phone down instantly without saying goodbye.
I searched for Abbey Wealth and got over a page worth of hits from their website. Halfway down the second page I found this that explains what insurance advisors do. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...-billions.html
No mention of Abbey Wealth, but it does mention our favourite Swiss culprit.
If you get cold-called by anyone trying to offer financial advice, hang-up at once. Unless you are happy to string them along and waste their time.
That's more or less what I have done to now. That said I was interested in what they knew about UK tax domicile and they sent me a pdf on the subject. Naturally they would also like to help me 're-structure' my investments. But don't worry I wont be signing up for anything.
They will know next to nothing. Most of the people working for these companies are 2nd hand car salesmen in shiny suits selling financial products with massive commission for them and the company.
Depends how much money you have to invest, and how active you want to be yourself there are different solutions available, but NEVER let someone who cold call you "take care" of it, because that will clearly be the worst possibility.
I'm not going to "publicly" advertise for one or another solution, but if you want to invest some money into the stock market but have "professionals" doing the picks, there are well-known, low commission solutions available from serious banks.
The best way, if you're in for long-term, is probably to buy some stocks which you'd expect to perform reasonably well in mid-to-long term and also have decent dividends. If not buying/selling, you'd usually not even have to pay anything to simply hold the stock with a proper broker. You won't become a millionaire over night with that strategy, but it's definitely a better approach than to have your money sitting around. You must be willing to accept that not every year will be a net positive, though.
They're named here: Costa Scam: The Cost of "Advice" in Spain (Link found in a comment on RepDigger .)
It seems that they used to be known or are possibly still also known as Abbey Financial Solutions (mentioned on their website ).
- Article from 2014: Victor France joins Abbey Financial Solutions
- UK Pension Ombudsman's decision on a complaint from someone advised by Abbey Financial Solutions, although the complaint wasn't about Abbey Financial Solutions
- Discussion about Abbey Financial Solutions from 2014/2015, including this comment: