Professional Footballers: Engage Guide To Wealth Management

Part 4: Your Financial Team

Choosing a Financial team built for success.

Wealth management in sport requires a team of specialists with extensive expertise.

Let’s break down the who, what, and how of your financial team.

The Who

A footballer’s financial team should consist of at least four specialists:

A note on Agents

We have deliberately left out the agent from this list. The agent is a key contact and will often facilitate the introductions. Earning their trust and showing integrity are key to successfully working in football. In our experience, the best agents outsource to professionals when it comes to wealth management, as opposed to trying to do any of this specialised work themselves.

The What

We understand the core four team members but what is the role each of them plays?

Financial Advisor

This is the point person advising, coordinating, and managing each element of your financial life. At Engage, we serve as the main contact point for our footballer clients. This full service role involves managing the client relationship, the family, the agent, the property purchases, the insurances, the investment opportunities etc. There is a lot more to work involved here than with a traditional financial planning client.

Accountant

Taxes will be your single largest lifetime expense. It is the role of the accountant to work on making sure your tax position is clear, set out ahead of time and is organised. Elite footballers have an extremely demanding work load, add in family time, down time, rest and there isn’t masses left. You don’t want the stresses of worrying about tax bills, so we liaise with the accountant to ensure all tax returns are done way ahead of time, that you are on the correct tax code, that agent fees are coded ahead of time where possible and we work hard together to make sure there are no surprise tax bills. Where appropriate, we also help set up Image Rights companies or property companies for investment purposes.

Lawyer

Professional footballers are in the spotlight and with that comes increased risk and reduced privacy. You need a trusted lawyer to help you with various legal matters, be it contracts, property purchases, estate planning, or social media issues, the Lawyer is the expert in helping athletes protect, direct, and shield assets where possible. Their expertise and experience of previous issues cannot be underestimated.

Protection specialist

Professional footballers tend to be quite young adults. The most formative years of your adult life (18-35) are while you are playing, in the spotlight and earning substantial income. This massive wealth creation brings with it increased responsibilities. Life insurance plays a key role in planning for family protection and ultra-high-net-worth legacy strategies. You will also be responsible for various insurances from a very early age. Be it car insurance, home insurance, building and content insurance, valuables protection etc. We work with a number of brokers to make sure policies are in place, with the correct trusts and that they don’t lapse.

Our goal as a footballer’s financial planner is to bring these experts together in one place and to manage them all on your behalf.

The How

You understand who is on the team and why, but how do you choose the right people?

These six criteria will help you choose who should have a place on your financial team.

1. Expertise - You are looking for someone who can provide one, two or three level advice. They have lived it ~ they have done it themselves ~ and they have helped guide others through it.

2. Experience and Credentials - As a professional footballer, you want an experienced and credentialed team. Look for high quality advice standards. At Engage, our clients’ financial teams consist of advanced designations such as a Chartered Financial Planner or CFP Certified Financial Planner.

3. Service Model - You need a team that specialises in sports people and ultra-high-net worth planning. Success breeds success in these niches. A generalist financial advisor is not going to cut it for a professional footballer.

4. Independence - You want to make sure the advice you receive is in your best interest, and free of conflicts. Finding an independent firm gives you a great platform here.

5. Fit - The average financial firm serves clients with an average age over 60 and services several hundred per advisor. At Engage, we keep our client-to-advisor ratio small and our average client age is reflective of the professional athletes we serve.

6. Fees - How does your team get paid? Are your incentives and those of the advisor aligned? At Engage, we charge a fixed fee, which means we are not incentivised to manage more investments and our fee is not linked to invested assets.

We build, coordinate, and hold accountable all the members of your team. This allows you to keep your focus on the field. The next contract you sign could potentially be worth far more than we could ever make for our clients. This is why we make every effort to help you focus on what you do best, whilst we focus on what we do best.

If you are a professional footballer who is looking to find a financial team that specialises in you, schedule a call, and talk with Engage.