Much has been made of the problems US nationals have in investing their savings while in Germany.
German banks have, for the most part, been unwilling to accept US Nationals as clients and many have gone further by asking their existing US clients to take their business elsewhere. They are deeply, and probably correctly, concerned at the penalties that might be levied on them by the IRS und FATCA and the HIRE act for assisting US Investors, irrespective of how small (or large) they are and irrespective of whether or not they pay due taxes in Germany or the US.
Oddly enough, large corporate investors do not suffer under the same restrictions as they can use different investment structures, partners and products that lesser mortals cannot access.
Tax advisers have discouraged their US clients from investing in passive investments (so called PFICS) by advising strongly against them and charging high fees for the summary of individual fund investments in their clients’ portfolios. US taxation can be prohibitively high and the fees for preparing US tax returns are already high enough without this additional burden.
These factors miss the obvious structural changes that are necessary to allow private individuals to save for their futures, something which is vital bearing in mind how low the state pension benefits will be at retirement.
By accepting the need for savings, and revisiting the financial, legal and tax structures that are available to our clients, we have a totally legal, cost-efficient and morally acceptable form of investment using an insurance-based wrapper.
Our structure has already supported many of our US clients. The investment and savings portfolios can be converted into a pension scheme when our client reaches a predetermined age. These structures are not intended to assist short-term speculators. Instead, they are long term instruments designed to allow clients to manage their investment portfolios, using funds and ETFs as before, but within a pension product.
The portfolio wrapper is structured to be protected by the German Life and Pension insurance company safety net Protector Lebensversicherung AG.
The costs of investing in a fund or a portfolio of funds are already reducing, with commissions under pressure and probably due to fall away altogether. Our structure takes the lead on this trend by removing open and hidden commissions altogether and charging only clear and understandable fees for our services. The overall costs of our investment structure are significantly less than those traditionally falling under the current platform banks.
The portfolios can be managed, with all existing stop loss limits both on the upside as well as the downside as they were before. Each of our clients has their own portfolio, designed to meet their risk and return propensities, as all of our clients do. Each client can add to and deduct from their portfolio according to their wishes and needs.
Above all, the structure and execution of each portfolio’s management and reporting is efficient, and each client has the ability to review their portfolio at will, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I must stress again that this product is not intended for speculators.
For more information on our services and to allow you to decide whether we can assist you with your investments, please contact us.
John Townsend
No guarantee is given for the accuracy or completeness of the information provided. This does not constitute an invitation to buy or sell investment instruments of any kind.
