Take it from someone who has spent 20 years in oil and gas, “pretty much nobody has thought about it or done anything about it” when it comes to long-term financial planning.
However, the pandemic, with the huge impact it has had on the industry, has “shone a light” on the need for people to keep tabs on their finances “more than ever”.
McKnight Associates Wealth Management, this year marking 25 years of service in Aberdeen, has been the workplace for Zyg Krukowski since 2018, after redundancy from the oil sector two years earlier forced him to seek a new path in financial consulting.
“At the time, it was difficult to go through those changes and the uncertainty, the exposure, the liabilities that need to be met,” he said, aware of the situation thousands of people in Aberdeen and farther afield are facing right now.
“There may have been a little bit of a respite in the last couple of years, but since the pandemic there’s been a steady round of redundancies which have accelerated recently.”
More free time and less travel means this is a good time for many of those faced with redundancy or early retirement to take stock of their positions, Zyg said.
“A lot of people will go through their entire careers knowing nothing and, at retirement, say, ‘OK, that’s the pot, it is what it is, but it could have been an awful lot better’.
“There may be several former employers there, each with a pension plan, so understanding how it’s invested, how it’s doing, how it’s going to meet your objectives in retirement is very important.”
McKnight Associates provide a range of services, including investment, retirement, protection and inheritance tax planning, geared towards individuals and on a corporate level.
On the latter, the practice has programmes in place to help companies with employee benefits and financial training – something it is “really going to push for” going into the new year.
“We really don’t discriminate as to who we help – we want to be able to help everyone from cradle to grave, from £100 to £1 million,” said Zyg’s colleague Sean Mills.
“We just want to be able to have that conversation with someone and make sure they have an understanding of what’s available.”
Zyg and Sean are both financial consultants at McKnight Associates, while founder Steven McKnight and Gary MacFarlane are partners. McKnight Associates is also a Principal Partner Practice of St. James’s Place Wealth Management.
Similar to Zyg, it was the last downturn, of 2014-16, that partly dictated Sean’s career path.
Having graduated from Strathclyde University with a chemical engineering degree and placements with Shell and Tullow Oil under his belt, he was set for a career in oil and gas, just when the market environment said otherwise.
However, founder Steven McKnight set out a clear path for him to financial consulting, so Sean combined his maths skills and positive mindset from the rugby pitch and applied it to this new avenue.
This season notwithstanding, Sean still plays for Aberdeen Grammar in his spare time, having played semi-professionally in the US and Canada prior to joining McKnight Associates.
The parallels between the pitch and boardroom aren’t as distant as you might expect.
“When you’re working in team rugby you’ve got to be positive all the time,” he said.
“It’s no different when you’re speaking to someone about financial advice – no matter what their situation, you’ve got to make them see the positives of what they’ve got there and get the most out of what assets they have.
“There’s never a bad time to get financial advice, the sooner you get that looked at the better.
“So people being made redundant, and not necessarily retiring, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad time to have a look at what you’ve got and preparing for the future.”
Both men have managed to leverage their experience to help clients new and old, fully appreciating, as Zyg says: “It’s not all about writing down their national insurance number or their bank account value.
“It’s understanding what motivates them and, if it’s something you’ve got in common, like travel or sport, then it helps build the relationship, which is ultimately what you want.”
As with so many right now, McKnight are working from home these days, adapting to the new normal of the pandemic, be that Zoom calls, electronic signatures – whatever suits the client.
Despite that though, 2020 has generally been a positive year for business as the practice marks its 25-year anniversary, though they’ve not been able to celebrate properly yet.
“When the rules allow, we’ll have a celebration of Steve’s achievement, and obviously the practice’s success off the back of that,” Sean said.
There are also plans to move into new offices in 2021, but they may need to wait a little longer before everyone can be invited in for a full launch.
Zyg said: “There’s certainly no shortage of conversations and meetings. Demand is still very much there, going back to the original point that as people’s circumstances change, it’s always a good time to review, albeit it’s never a bad time to review. It’s just been a bit harder, it’s very much tailored to face-to-face, which I think works a lot better for everybody, but we’re just having to be a bit more pragmatic. I don’t know how many Zoom meetings I’ve done.”
The McKnight Associates practice can be reached on 07747 568049.
The Partner Practice is an Appointed Representative of and represents only St. James’s Place Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) for the purpose of advising solely on the group’s wealth management products and services, more details of which are set out on the group’s website www.sjp.co.uk/products. The ‘St. James’s Place Partnership’ and the titles ‘Partner’ and ‘Partner Practice’ are marketing terms used to describe St. James’s Place representatives.
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