Case Studies

Cara met a 55-year-old sales professional during an annual employee pension review. He had set a new target retirement age of 61, was contributing 5% of his salary to his company pension scheme with a matching employer contribution, and held a fund valued at around €400,000 at the outset.

His initial focus was on fund selection. Cara gently reframed the conversation around retirement outcomes and whether his current strategy would get him where he wanted to be. Together, they agreed a target retirement fund of €600,000 and shifted the approach toward maximising contributions – with the client beginning Additional Voluntary Contributions of up to 35% of salary, making full use of the available tax relief.

By age 61, with the benefit of disciplined contributions and supportive market conditions, his fund had grown to €750,000 – well beyond the original target. The clearest lesson from this case is that contribution strategy often matters more than fund selection.

A client came to LHW Financial Planning with broader concerns about their financial position. As part of a comprehensive review, our team carried out a detailed analysis of their pension contributions and tax treatment over previous years. While LHW does not provide tax advice, the review surfaced a number of pension reliefs that had not been fully utilised.

Working in close collaboration with the client’s tax advisor, these findings were used to identify opportunities to address past filings. As a result, the client was able to recover substantial tax refunds that might otherwise have gone unclaimed.

Beyond the immediate financial benefit, the process also led to stronger structures being put in place for the future – improving tax efficiency and reducing the likelihood of similar issues arising again. A thorough review of your financial arrangements can often reveal more opportunity than you might expect.

Group risk benefits – such as Death in Service and Income Protection – represent some of the most meaningful supports an employer can offer, yet they are frequently under-communicated and poorly understood by the people they are designed to protect. Attracting and retaining the

right people is central to the long-term success of any business, and a well-structured benefits package plays an important role in that.

In practice, Cara regularly discovers during employee consultations that individuals are paying privately for protection cover they already hold through their employer’s group scheme. This duplication quietly erodes personal income without any additional benefit.

By identifying these overlaps, employees gain the information they need to make better decisions – potentially reducing personal costs while maintaining the right level of protection. LHW works with both employers and employees to ensure benefits are clearly communicated, properly understood, and fully valued by everyone they are intended to support.

When Catherine first met with a prospective corporate client, it quickly became clear that managing pensions had become an unexpectedly burdensome task. The company was running individual pension arrangements for each member of staff, spread across a mix of different insurers, each with its own direct debit date and administrative requirements. What should have been a straightforward employee benefit had become a significant drain on time and resources.

Catherine carried out a full market review and worked closely with the company to establish a single group Defined Contribution scheme. All individual members transferred across, along with their existing funds, leaving the employer with one scheme to oversee and one payment date each month.

The response from staff was immediate and positive. Employees who had previously been outside any pension arrangement chose to join, and what had once felt like a complicated obligation became a genuine good news story within the business. The scheme has since played a meaningful role in staff retention – a reminder that a well-run pension is not just a financial benefit, but a signal of how much an employer values its people.