Financial Advice in Spain

Published / Last Updated on 29/01/2015

Video explores financial advice services in Spain and how we passport our financialadvice.net services into Spain for British Expatriates.

Transcript:

“Hello again and thank you adjoining me. The subject for my video is: Financial Advice in Spain.

You have financial advisers, financeros consejeros, that are based in Spain. So registered in Spain but you will also have, for example, United Kingdom financial advisers that are authorised to give financial advice in Spain from the United Kingdom.

So let us explore the principle, the services that are available and what sort of advice you can secure from ourselves. So to be a financial adviser in most European nations you will have to be registered and regulated by a local financial services industry regulator.

In Spain there is the DGS, which regulates insurance funds and pension funds and you have the CNMV that regulates basically stock market type investments. In the United Kingdom you have the Financial Conduct Authority which regulates financial advisers and financial services companies in terms of arranging pensions, investments, insurance et cetera. So, in the UK we have one regulator for financial advice, in Spain there are essentially two: DGS for insurance and pension-based products and investments and the CNMV for the stock market, direct stock market related investments such as shares, equities and also the Spanish equivalent of unit trusts and open-ended investment companies OEICS and things like that.

So you can take advice from a financial adviser regulated and registered in Spain or alternatively you may wish to take financial advice from United Kingdom adviser such as ourselves where we are UK authorised, we are UK regulated and our professional indemnity insurance insures us and therefore our clients for financial advice wherever they are based in Europe.

Now a lot of financial advisers may not have that and therefore they can't give advice throughout Europe. On top of that there is something called the ‘financial services passport’ and what that is:

Because we are regulated in the United Kingdom we have applied for, technically notified the UK regulator that we wish to give financial advice in Spain and as such the UK regulator has notified the Spanish regulators that we are giving advice in Spain. But it is under UK rules and regulations, so be very careful here because just because you're talking to a financial adviser in Spain check whether they are regulated and authorised in Spain or whether they are UK authorised and regulated via a passport or indeed if they start talking about other jurisdictions: some advisers may be registered in Gibraltar but what if all of a sudden your pension is being set up in Malta or Luxembourg or somewhere like that? Now, I am not saying that these are good or bad jurisdictions but what I am saying is for your own protection I would suggest seek financial advice from a Spanish authorised financial adviser or look to a UK authorised financial adviser such as ourselves where we can prove that we have a passport, where we are allowed to give financial planning advice on investments and pensions et cetera insurance based investments et cetera in Spain. So that's FinancialAdvice in Spain.

Also be very careful about commissions versus fees. In the United Kingdom, if you speak to a UK financial adviser, we are required to disclose our fees to you we are a required to agree our fees with you and that's not necessarily the case in Spain where they may be still work on a commission model. So if all else fails talk to us and compare our direct fee costs against what the hidden commissions would be if you're talking to a local adviser in Spain then also weigh up: Right if something went wrong, would I prefer the fact that, right these are UK insured with professional insurances and I have the protection of the UK regulator so no language barrier. So that's financial advice in Spain for you. Thanks very much for watching.”


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