David Safir

My name is David and I’ve been a Caliber client for about seven years, and my adviser is Gary Lister-Thorn.

I had a previous financial adviser who I was becoming increasingly annoyed with, because he was more interested in his car than he was in my money. Frankly, I’d also reached the point where I had retired – although I hadn’t really, I’d only semi-retired – so I was getting all sorts of income from consultancy and I wanted to get advice about how to best handle that and also how to deal with my pension.

I spoke to a retired accountant friend, and said, “I don’t want to use this guy anymore, can you recommend anybody?” And he said, “Actually, I would recommend that you go for one of the following companies” and one of them was Caliber. So, I contacted Caliber and Gary was the person who responded.

I could relate to him and was very taken by the fact that he was interested in what I did with my life rather than just in the money. This also led him to understand how to help me with the money.

I’m now 75 and so even when I started working with Caliber, we had to look forward to the impact of changes in pension policy, government policy, and so on, and Gary really helped me plan all that and then effectively execute the steps we had to take. That was extremely helpful and quite frankly, probably saved me a lot of money and anxiety because I needed professional help with that. I couldn’t possibly work that out for myself.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever had was to “Stop reading the papers and call me – you’re paying for it!”

The three words I would use to describe Gary are professional, empathetic, and encouraging.

Frankly, he’s in touch with what’s going on and is able to preempt any problems much better than I can. Firstly because he understands the subject, and secondly, because I simply don’t have to spend my life wondering if I’ve missed something. So, in matters of pension, Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, and all sorts of things, he’s very, very helpful.

For me, the best thing about working with Caliber is that if I do contact them, they always respond very quickly. I’m very impressed by the fact that if I send Gary an email at 17:30 on a Friday, I get an answer by 17:45. I’ve never met anybody else like that apart from my own boss. They are extremely reliable. So, it’s very reassuring to work with them.

I would certainly recommend Caliber to somebody who is thinking of making an important financial decision, maybe at retirement, and I would actually recommend Gary personally to somebody who I felt would get on with him as I do.