A Question of Trust – Is My Money Safe?

When we talk about Real Lifestyle Planning and helping our clients get their best return on life, we tend to talk about our clients dreams and aspirations and marrying where they are now to where they want to be in the future.

But there is one key element to making our relationship work, and without it there would be no successful Metis LifePlans. That key element is trust.

Trust in Metis Ireland, trust in your team who you meet regularly to update your Metis LifePlan, and trust in the process. We work very hard to make sure that Metis Ireland is synonymous with trust, by being open, honest and truthful.

Indeed point 6 in our contract with you states “We will tell you the truth about your money. This may sometimes mean delivering unpleasant truths as we believe comforting lies are pointless”.

Is my money safe with Metis Ireland?

A question that often is posed is ‘is my money safe with Metis Ireland?’, and a very simple answer to that is Yes. There are a number of safeguards in place to keep your money as safe as possible. I must preface this with, unfortunately we cannot control the markets or market volatility and your investments can go down as well as up, but evidence tells us that in the long-term markets do go up.

What we can control is how we in Metis Ireland behave to ensure that we keep your trust, and make sure we do our due diligence on the companies we recommend to invest your funds with.

Our investment, preferred provider, and risk teams all meet quarterly to ensure that any company or product we are recommending match our investment philosophy and meet our requirements for security, and we only ever recommend regulated products.

To reduce risk and touchpoints, Metis Ireland never hold your money. We do not accept client funds in our accounts, your money always goes directly to the insurance or investment platform company.

An external auditor audits our accounts annually. These findings are then reported annually to the Central Bank of Ireland for review to ensure that Metis Ireland is itself financially stable and not putting our clients at risk.

We pay into the Investor Compensation fund. This was set up to provide a level of protection for investors in circumstances where fraud or insolvency results in the inability of an investment firm to return investment instruments or money to investors.

We are insured to protect our clients should we fail in our objective to go above and beyond.

And finally, we take Governance very seriously. With myself as Head of Compliance, and my colleague Paddy O’Halloran as Head of Finance, all business decisions are made with the client at the centre of the process and ensuring that all regulations and legislation are adhered to.

What next?

If you want to read more about security of funds with insurance companies and trading platforms, I wrote a blog last year which can be found HERE, and our ‘Doing Business With Us’ document can be found HERE.

If you have any queries or questions on anything in relation to the above, please don’t hesitate to contact me at sclintoncaldas@metisireland.ie.

If you’d like to speak to the wider team about engaging with financial planning with Metis Ireland, please do get in touch on 01 908 1500 or email us at info@metisireland.ie.

Sinéad holds a Masters in Compliance, is an FCI Compliance and LCI with the Compliance Institute of Ireland and is a Qualified Financial Advisor (QFA), a Certified Financial Crime Professional (CFCP), and a Certified Data Protection Officer (CDPO).

Sinéad Clinton Caldas MSc, FCI Compliance, BA, LCI, QFA, CFCP, CDPO

Head of Compliance

Head of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing Legislation Compliance