deVere & Partners - financial consultants

I was wondering if anybody has invested with deVere & Partners?

If so your experiences, problems, positives etc. What is their reputation in the market, reliability etc?

Use the search function, you will find some 'feedback'.

We had a thread on DeVere, but unfortunately it was deleted. Basically they cold call many expats and are apparently quite a dodgy company. They have told some TTers that other expats have given them their name and phone number and that's how they contact people. There's a thread on a similar company but I forget their name so can't search for it.

I tried. "No results found".

There was a thread on here a while ago. It was full of negative reviews and people describing their bad experiences. No positives.

deVere themselves didn't like that very much, so their lawyers sent us a letter to get the whole thread pulled.

In fact, you won't find many forum discussions about them anywhere on the Internet. I presume this is because they threaten other sites the same as they did TT.

The people who operate de Vere in Germany are basically the same individuals who operate Churchill Financial Management. They're all in bed together.

If you need financial advice, I'd recommend one of the TT authorised advertisers. We've had no negative feedback about any of them to date.

dj jay smith: from what I learned so far, it is not a company who gives really unbiased and independent advice but rather is selling hard on some investment funds... I am also not aware that they have enough experience/special knowledge about the German laws and regulations, especially with regards to pension planning with the involvment of tax breakes and all. There is a new financial advisor for investment here on Toytown as advertiser, Strategic Financial Solutions, run by one Mrs. Cummings who appears to be a dedicated and trustworthy advisor - she worked for a very short time for them and quitted immideately when she found out that they did not have, according to her, the clients best interest in mind like she was used to from her advisor business in the UK. You might want to contact her for more info, not sure if she would commit any of her experience openly to the thread here on TT for reasons of legal liability...

Anyway: if a company needs to do some cold calling in order to generate new clients (which by the way is completely illegal according to the German UWG law and punishable with hefty fines), then they appearantly don't have a good reputation because otherwise they would, like me, get their new contacts and clients directly and/or through references from satisfied clients. If they are willing to brake the law in order to get to you, what other things will they be willing to do in order to make profits from you... just food for thought!

Cheerio

Thank you for the advice, i actually met with devere a couple of weeks ago and found it very informative the solutions they proposed to me were far more efficient than proposals i had received from alternative companies i would recommend sitting down with devere before passing judgement.

You joined up just to tell us that?

Excuse my scepticism "ricardo", but deVere have a long history of shill posting on this forum. Their staff pose as satisfied customers and write glowing reviews. If you don't know what a "shill posting" is, read about it on Wikipedia: Shill


As a forum member who joined just eight minutes before making that one single post, Ricardo, your recommendation carries zero credibility. In fact, it has all the hallmarks of a typical shill.

Update:

Via your TT registered email address, Ricardo, I was able to look up your Facebook profile. And through Facebook I can see that you do indeed work for deVere.

Busted, my friend.

The only positive reviews of deVere that have ever been posted to this forum have all been proven to come direct from the company's own employees.

This has been going on for five years or more.

So, I put it to the other readers of TT, would you trust such a deceptive company with your money? You decide.

Hell F*** No.

P4WND

go Bob!

Hell, Bob is your uncle and the local Sherlock Holmes too!

U are SOOOO busted.

what a poor, poor attempt: you should be ashamed of yourself... and kudos for Bob for detecting the fraud here. AS I wrote above myself: if people are willing to break the law (cold-calls are just that and a so-called "reference" or "recommendation" from an unnamed friedn/colleague etc does not count at all!) just to get in touch with you, what other unlawfull or fraudulent things are the willing to do in order to get to your money. The certainly are big fans of "Zillmerung" and high commission on investment funds...when I see people working with deceits like this I can only use a German quote: Ich kann gar nicht so viel essen wie ich kotzen möchte...

Cheerio

Please don't kill DeVeres business. I really enjoy my long telephone discussions with their salesmen. It breaks up an otherwise boring day. Had a DeVere chap on from Dubai only last week with a seemingly unbeatable investment offer not to be missed. He was totally convinced about its potential, and said he'd even invested substantially himself, but I enjoyed discussing the weather and which were the best bars to visit in Dubai. He even got that wrong.

Probably because he was actually in Bangalore.

...with a Mancunian accent?

Nice one Bob. They get on my nerves as well, calling me at work after I've told them specificly not to.

Can anyone comment on the company "AWD" where "D" AFAIK stands for "deVere"? One and the same thing?

I think you are confusing "de Vere" with "deVere". There is a subtle difference, but your confusion is understandable. I wonder if "deVere" have ever considered that they may be easily confused with or mistaken for a reputable financial organisation?
"AWD" actually stands for "Allgemeiner Wirtschaftsdienst". AWD Holding bought Chase de Vere from Bank of Ireland in 2005 - hence the apparent name connection

Damn EB if I need a new guard dog I'll call you up.

So how long before the suits show up and close this thread?

Thanks for the explanation, YL6. The "space" is clearly significant. AWD also bought out a small UK-based finance advisor some years ago. I had dealings with the Manchester office of said advisors.

HEM: first very important fact about AWD advisors: they are multi-tied agents (german: Mehrfachagenten) instead of independent broker. This is the typical advisor model for most of the large structured/pyramid sales organisations. It means that the individual advisor can only select for the client out of a limited pre-selection for which AWD has made general contracts with a small number of insurance companies and investment funds etc. Furthermore AWD has been bought in by SWISS LIFE, a major insurance company, and can nowadays be seen mostly like an extended sales organisation for them (in the past they were more focussing on Generali products at AWD if I am not mistaken).

Cheerio

But are they really advisors? Their recruitment information and training information would suggest that, although they call themselves "independent financial advisers"/"financial advisers"/"advisers", they're actually something else.


Can anyone find the key word in this sentence?

if EB gets another threatening letter from the deVEre lawyers again to remove this thread "or else...", my suggestion is that those among the Toytowners who have received unsolicited calls step forward, sign an affidavit that and when they have been called without giving their explicit permission beforehand and we'll give all this to another lawyer who willsend them a costly warning (Abmahnung) with a penalty for each case and more penalties to come in the future if they ever do it again. That should cool them down...

Cheerio

Expat pension schemes: Singapore sling may sink pensions


Costa Del Sol Action Group

Needless to say, those who do sign an affidavit need to be members that EB knows personally. If a company is involved in shady activities such as these, it might easily slip someone in there, say one of their own employees, that would sign the affidavit and then prove that the claim was false, since the person was never "contacted". But then again, there is always the possibility that I am watching too many courtroom dramas.

Jesus wept.... but you are right! One really has to think around several corners ahead if dealing with sleezy people ...

Cheerio

I was approached myself over two years ago via a cold call. They offered a free in-person consultation which I accepted as much out of curiosity as anything. I gave them only very general information on my financials but very specific information on my residency/citizenship status, which pretty much completely determines the extent to which one can avail one's self of their services.

I must say that the proposals offered up by the afoermentioned had offshoring elements that I told them right up front were at odds with virtually every piece of advice I'd previously received from my international estate and tax planning advisors. The proposals offered by the advisor with whom I had contact matched the sales pitch itself in aggressiveness ("while I'm at it, do you have any other expat friends?"). An attempt was clearly make me feel as though I "just didn't get it," which was partly true as I started to lose the plot once it veered into lots of Isle of Man, complicated insurance wrappers, etc. However, I believe that when it comes to personal financial planning, if one starts to personally find things getting too complex, then one should simply imagine how one's grieving relatives are going to feel trying to unravel everything.

As a result, I chose not to proceed.