James, 8s:

What is up everybody? Welcome back to the Dennis Huye Invest podcast. This is a podcast I've been meaning to do for absolutely ages, because we've done pensions to death, but we've never done SaaS pensions specifically. And I have sat here in front of me Paul Barry, who is the expert on everything to do with SaaS pensions, and we don't know what a SaaS pension is or what that acronym stands for. Don't worry, we've got you covered, because that is actually something that we're going to talk about today in the podcast. That is the main point and the main reason that we're here. But before we do that, how are you today, paul?

Paul, 37s:

Hello James, thank you for starting me on the podcast. Always have the like, share and information with the public, like-minded professionals, so cool. Really appreciate the time and thank you for letting me on.

James, 45s:

Hey man, it's cool. Like I said, we've been meaning to do this for absolutely ages and here we are 220-ish episodes and we've never quite got around to it. And there's a little bit of a metaphor in there, for life isn't there If you just have to go and do something, or it's literally years later before it actually happens. So here we are today. We're going to sort that. Well, anyway, paul, let's start from the start. That seems sensible. What is a SaaS pension?

Paul, 1m 11s:

Which is a great question and a question I'm asked very often. So basically, the acronym stands for Small Self-Administered Scheme and that basically means the small means is for SME business owners like you and I. Self-administered means it's a pension that we control, so we own it and direct it and a full autonomy over it, and scheme just needs to be a pension. So it's a pension scheme designed specifically for UK SME business owners, which is pretty much everyone we're talking to on the podcast here today, which is convenient. So just, I guess we put some context to that, james. So SaaS was established way back in 1973. So it's now in for 51 years I guess. But I don't think it's correct. And the whole point really was back then that HMRC or Rural and Revenue they were back back in those days figured that you and I as business owners are taking and making decisions every day of our lives that affect our livelihood. So therefore, why wouldn't we have the ability to do it with a pension and essentially give, I suppose, some credibility or control back the business owners? Because we're taking that, we have that position with our business and essentially what that meant was that you could then pretty much connect your pension to your business and run the two of them in tandem, or indeed together in many cases and really just give full control and make two that structure, because most people want that, because, as business owners, that's what we have every day in all aspects of our lives. So I'm going to have a bit of a pension. So that's essentially what SaaS did was to bring those elements together which, for most of us, as business owners, that is what we need, because that's how we function, that's how we make our living, that's how we make our profits, that's how we feed our families and improve our lifestyle and everything else, because we need that control right? Because if we don't have that, then what have we actually brought? So I should also warn you, james, I've got to have it talking quite a lot, so feel free just to cut me off.

James, 3m 6s:

You're all going to be a good match then in that case, smith, because I tend to do that a lot as well. So all good, but no, I was listening with intent just then about what you were saying. Was there more to that, or was that pretty much yes, the purpose of it, so it is a small set of business owners and pretty much to give you control.

Paul, 3m 26s:

That's what it actually is, and I guess thinking then that's great, but what is the purpose of that? So what do I have at all?

James, 3m 33s:

So could I just jump in just before we talk about what the purpose of it is? Just to go back to the small business that we were talking about just a second ago, small business owners. How would we define small business? I think it's. Is it under 50 employees? Is the definition? What's the definition of that? Again?

Paul, 3m 52s:

Yeah, there's a number. So, yes, some people define it on turnover, some people define it on employee numbers. It's a combination of both, but in that context, all of my clients have a turnover of probably less than 15, 20 million and they have variable employees from themselves to probably a couple of hundred. So there's not really an actual definition. Each of them have their own definition of that, of course, and so pretty much everyone who's got a business that's probably turned over less than 20 million quite as essentially an SME, and so most businesses in the UK. So I think there are five and a half million businesses in the UK. I think something like four and a half million fall into this category and from from maybe I don't quote the numbers exactly, but it's in that kind of order. And so obviously there's corporates and much bigger institutions out there who are not in this space. But SMEs are small, medium sized enterprises is what it stands for, so not corporate, I guess.

James, 4m 51s:

Yeah, and that would be definitely the majority of dental taxes then would fall into that category. Okay, cool. Well, anyway, sorry, before I bought it and just then you were just about to explain what it's for and how it operates, I believe.

Paul, 5m 3s:

Yeah, absolutely so. The kind of purpose of it really is I will mention this in the first place is to give you control as a business owner of all the value within a pension structure that you may already have a pension structure and you can indeed consider moving that into a science. If that's something you want to do, you can talk about that in much more detail on a one to one. The point of it really is to give you the ability to determine exactly how the money in your pension is invested and to then use structures and methods in that process that you're probably not familiar with generally in pension world, because the SAS gives specific things to talk into in a second that give you the flexibility to do things that you just couldn't do in other pension structures, and the kind of headlines are always things like you can lend money to other businesses, to your own business, for example, and you can buy commercial premises and you can pretty much invest anything you want through the HMRC approved. But fundamentally the point with that is to connect a source of capital and a source of value and a source of wealth that you've got somewhere else that is currently not connected to your business and you can bring that into that same environment and use it productively to help grow your pension structure and to help you grow and advance your business, all at the same time, and it's kind of two gears that connect that you wouldn't typically have because you'd have one separate and another kind of somebody else alongside of it. So it's a little bit connected and controlled and these kind of things.

James, 6m 31s:

Fascinating. So what I'm hearing is that it's money in a pension, but it's not necessarily completely 100% tied up like it is in a conventional pension.

Paul, 6m 41s:

Yeah, exactly.

James, 6m 42s:

Flexibility there Correct no you're right.

Paul, 6m 44s:

It's a really good way to summarize it. So if you imagine and you've all had this or need me still have this where you have a pension that you paid money into historically or you're still doing it right now, and you place that with a big investment manager hundreds of aim at the like, just using an example, say, a standard way for whatever there are hundreds of them, obviously and you trust that business to invest your money, you put them regularly or infrequently, and you give them money and they aim to make sure you're returning that money. And they may do that, you may not do that. It might be neutral, it might be disastrous, it might be absolutely brilliant, but that's what you essentially give is the control of that to a third party. And there's nothing wrong with that, incidentally, and you can absolutely do that inside of a SaaS as well, but it's just a different way of doing it. And so it's a bit like almost being self-employed or employed, having a pension. That is almost like being an employee, the whole structure set up for you, you can function within it, but you're self-employed, you're a business owner. That's different and you take control and make decisions and kind of you know, rising and fall based on the value and merit of what you decide you're going to do. And that's the point of the SaaS release to give that full control of that structure to you, which is what most people want not everyone, but most.

James, 7m 54s:

That's cool and you know what. Just to make that hyper clear to anybody who's listening, probably the best example of a conventional pension that most of us dentists or pay with is a SIP, self-invested personal pension. We also have the NHS pension as well, paul, and that is like four to five hour long webinars or podcasts in and of itself how that works. But suffice to say, in both those pensions, your money is tied up and you cannot get access to your capital until you hit pensionably age, whichever that it, depending on the terms you're NHS pension. Well, there's a few variances of that, and with the SIP, I believe it's currently 55, but it's soon to be 57 over the next few years, right?

Paul, 8m 37s:

Yeah, actually so that age is essentially that a standard UK normal retirement date is, as in each one of us you would describe it. So 55 is the current date that you can, or a sort of you can take value from any pension in the UK, including SaaS or SIP, and it's rising to 57, I believe, in two years. Then don't quote me again that year, I'll also get big specific dates on that, but it's coming soon and, let's be frank, that will get higher, that number, as life expectancy increases and or the population ages, and it's just a demographic that we can't control. So but you're right and the difference here, I guess, is so maybe they should just look at that all of the detail James will. So a SIP and a SaaS are quite often compared to each other because the SIP does have a level of self investment. So point this is self invested. Personal pension does have a level of that. It does give you and I is the investor some control, but it is limited and the real difference there is a SaaS is a legal entity created in its own right for you. You own it and you are the members of it and therefore all decisions with what happens with money belong to you, because with a SIP, you're a member of somewhere else's structure. I get nothing wrong with that. It's just what it is, and so you don't have the full control of it, and nor should you, because you don't actually own it. But the SaaS we do have that ownership and you do have that control. Yes, there are rules obviously determined by each and our seed, but it's it's yours to control. A SIP is a personal pension designed for one person. A SaaS is a group structure designed for up to 11 people to cooperate and collaborate in that same space. Each person still owns their own money. It's still their structure, but you have the ability to pull wealth together in a way that can be very productive. And, for example, when I guess an identical practice maybe a number of owners in there having the ability to bring that wealth together, which might be, for example, to acquire premises for the business or to acquire other businesses, it can be particularly attractive because there's a really simple way of bringing a lot of that wealth together and there's a natural collaboration here because you're already in business with people already, so you're not stepping out of the structure you've already come to. So, yes, with SIP and SaaS are very different. The only thing a SIP and SaaS can do that's similar is they both can buy commercial premises, but that's pretty much it and there's nothing really beyond that. And but a SIP that could be more challenging because a SIP is regulated in a different way to SaaS and that regulates the own particular like commercial property and there are some rules and restrictions around that. They make it a bit more challenging.

James, 11m 7s:

Fascinating, and you know what. I've got so many questions on what you've just said, how the investments are managed within the SaaS, and what have you as compared to SIP, and a few of the things that you said just then as well. One question just before we go any further. I was curious to know who specifically qualifies for a SaaS, like what will allow someone to open a SaaS? What prerequisites are there?

Paul, 11m 31s:

Yeah, that's a good question and actually it's probably more straightforward than you might think. So the fundamental qualification is that you have a UK registered and active in trading limited company, so other one's in business, and so that basically gives you a right to apply to have a SaaS, and the application process is a relatively simple but a bit time consuming process to have that SaaS application approved by HMRC. We do all that for you, by the way, but that's just part of the process. But to qualify for it you have to have a company registered in the UK. It must be a trading company, not an investment company. It must be active and have been active for at least 12 months, which, again, most people listening to this will automatically qualify for that. But even if you don't, you will qualify in time, and so it's not like you have to have a particular qualification or be able to take a turn or a particular value in the SaaS. You just have to have a business that actually exists and is active and is actually trading, and that is pretty much everybody, because that's actually a business to the podcast. So yeah, quite straightforward and actual fact.

James, 12m 41s:

Well, don't disoperate in an interesting place, because even the people who do not necessarily own practice oftentimes have limited companies because it makes sense for them, for tax reasons, to be able to have a little bit of discretion as to when they withdraw income from those limited companies, even when they're just self employed and associate. In practice they may not. They want to stick to their 50K every single year. Maybe they're 100K, depending on what their lifestyle is like. They're 100K. What I mean by that is obviously the tax balance, of course, the income levels, but anyway, just to pull it back to what we were saying just a second ago. So I'm curious to know the company has to be active to set up the SaaS. What happens if the company becomes inactive for whatever reason, like it goes bankrupt or broke? Yeah, I'm curious.

Paul, 13m 26s:

I want to take a question. So I guess all that really means is that, if you look at it in the context, if these two parts the company and the SaaS are going to be competing as two gears, if you like, if one of them is not there, the other one still exists, but it just can't do as much as it did before, so if you have a SaaS, you still own it, it's still there, but you couldn't do some of the things that you could do previously because the company you'd have done it with doesn't exist anymore. So the ability to add money into it, the ability to, for example, borrow money from it, would dissipate until you add another company into it and you may already have more than one company associated to it, from the very beginning anyway, or indeed through time, because with a SaaS you can have multiple companies connected to the same SaaS structure and that isn't uncommon. Where older my clients will have a trading business, maybe a consultancy business, maybe a property business and all sorts of things that connect around that, and management companies and all sorts of things. So it's not uncommon. I might have a SaaS for two, three, four, five businesses connected to the same SaaS structure because there are different business structures, there are different sources of income, there's different reasons for having those structures there. So if one goes for, you might have retired, you might have sold, you might have gone bankrupt, as you say, these things happen. Then it doesn't mean the SaaS CCC just means it's got less capacity to do something unless there's another company where they're connected to it or even. Good question, though I'm not often asked that question, I'd say, although I've been asked that a couple of things the last couple of weeks, it was interesting, so I don't know if that teared a bit with you.

James, 15m 0s:

Maybe that's something to do with the economic climate. Climate. There we go. It's kind of like percolating in people's mind, but no, I didn't think that to myself. I was like, oh okay, how does that work? Okay, fascinating. So it's basically an independent vehicle from the company that's contributing towards it and you can link more than one vehicle to it. You can link more than one entity to it in terms of a business. Rather Okay, cool, all right, fascinating, all right. So let's delve into the SaaS itself, like what actually happens in the SaaS, so to speak. So I'm guessing that you can invest and correct me if I'm wrong and this may be right, this may not be right, but correct me if I'm wrong you can invest in pretty much anything that you could in your personal name or a company, except it's in this structure. Oh, and actually, am I right in saying that? First of all, just before we go any further, have I got that?

Paul, 15m 48s:

right.

James, 15m 49s:

Yeah, I bet there's some little caveats to that which we'll get into. Actually, do you know what? Let's answer that first, because I was going to come back to annual allowance and lifetime allowance and things like that, but we can do that afterwards.

Paul, 16m 0s:

Yeah, sure, yeah. So I think maybe the start point to answer that question is that a SaaS has the widest capacity for investment scope than any pension in the UK. So, to make a direct comparison, there is no pension that gives you more ability to have more choices of how you invest with a pension structure, and a SaaS has the widest capacity of all of those things. The only thing a UK pension cannot do normally on its day to day routine any UK pension, including SIPs as I see it in personal pensions is you cannot invest directly in residential property. There are structures, a way to do it on mass and a portfolio structure and a much, much larger, more complex place. But that's not for this discussion today. That's a much larger discussion. But generally speaking, a SaaS can invest in pretty much anything, but it just can't invest in residential property. It can invest in whatever you want to. So any investment fund, any structure, any platform, trackers, commodities, a whole range of things. It can invest in commercial property, it can invest in land, it can invest in businesses, it can buy shares, it can buy options, it can do all sorts of really clever things, and that in itself has got a wide subject in its own, but the headlines, I guess which is the point of this conversation today is that it can do pretty much most things you want to do with a pension structure, in fact, probably most things you wouldn't have thought you could do with a pension structure, and I guess that's kind of the main point is that because most of us are traditionally educated, or indeed not educated by the way of the UK system in finance at all, and through referent investment is usually something that we do do passively because we just go with the flow and the investment, that's it. For that pension structure we had before. We're basically going to get into that because that's what we used to. But a SaaS opens that door, really, and gives a load of freedom that you may not have thought was available to you, and some of those things will come up in a minute. But one of the main things it can do a SaaS is lend money to your own limited company or limited companies, and that, for a loaded people, is very, very interesting because if you're about to embark upon a growth period or a marketing campaign or a treatment campaign or trying to buy something equipment or you know where they'd be for your business, having the ability to access capital from your own source, from your own pension structure, is a little bit cool, because most people don't think you can do that and where you have a pension might have a 50 grand, 100 grand, 200 grand more in it. Having the ability to borrow from that to help you grow your business and grow your pension at the same time, well, is pretty cool and most people, when you hear that, kind of almost don't believe it because you've never heard it before and don't think it's possible. But I can assure you everything we're talking about here is determined by HMRC's own rules. So you know this is not a fantasy or a few more stories. We're just repeating each one or say allow to happen the pension structure. So having that ability to take that control to investment you want to, which includes your own business, for most people is a kind of a massive step, and particularly if you are ambitious enough to want to grow your business or maybe to repay other finance or where that may be, then having that capacity is great. You can also lend to other people's companies as well if you want to, and there's different rules around that and some people love doing that. I did that with my own SaaS, for example, but I guess not for everybody. I maybe should say as well, before I get into this SaaS is not for everybody, but for those that can see a way forward with it, it is a hugely powerful tool. If I speak to 100 people in a month, probably 45 or 50 million are suitable for SaaS, another 25 suitable later on and 25 are just not right for it For one reason or another. But it's not one size fits all because it is a very distinct process for with an identified to the end game, if you like. So yeah, it's a big subject and I see, I think the purpose of this conversation is to kind of just headline it.

James, 19m 58s:

And this is it, and I can feel my brain just trying to ask those questions about caveats, but what we should definitely do today is try to keep it high level. All entry level for people who are learning about SaaS is because I can feel myself getting carried away. But what happens in this instance and what's the terms that landed and stuff like that? Let's see if that for a follow up podcast, shall we question pop into my head a little bit of a wild card question. We say that you can invest in pretty much any asset within this, within the SaaS that you could do in your personal name. But what about crypto?

Paul, 20m 30s:

Yeah, I've asked that question a lot and I'd love to give a different answer to this. But fundamentally, the great thing crypto is. The value of it is well, it's high at the minute, but it's obviously had the capacity to be quite volatile, and that can be brilliant if you're on the low to the high. But also the key thing crypto is it doesn't have a traditional title structure to it, because it is obviously blockchain and that's different. So, actually, a SaaS cannot directly own crypto because, well, it doesn't have a title to it and the value is too variable for it to be comfortable with. But there are ways that it can indirectly, and this I guess this is an apple-bling with SaaS is that there's invariably a solution to a question that you will ask, because it is such a flexible structure that it has the capacity to find a way to make something work. So a couple of things you could do there For example, you could borrow money out of your SaaS into your company and your company could buy crypto. So there's a solution. And or there are crypto structures and sub structures that SaaS could invest in, and I get it. Well, just high level. I'll probably leave that there, but there are ways it can do it, but it's not. It's maybe not, it's not by direct title to it, you can't have that title to it. But be a good question, and it is. I am actually a question, a lot, as you might imagine.

James, 21m 50s:

That's cool, man. Well, it's a bit like an Issa, then, really by the sounds of it, because not not in so much the borrowing aspect, but what I mean is, within an Issa, you can purchase mining companies and their prices tend to be correlated to the price of Bitcoin. Anyway, no, financial advice is not what we're here to do today, but just sharing cool bits of wisdom that we've learned in our journeys. So we wouldn't want everybody to rush off and do that. Certainly, just sign posting that that's possible. Anyway, let's pull it back to the pension. Let's pull it back to the SaaS. How do the annual allowance and lifetime allowance? Well, obviously, lifetime allowance is gone now for the moment. What's the space? But how does annual allowance interact? How does that come into play whenever it comes to SaaS?

Paul, 22m 31s:

Yeah, so it's actually very different in SaaS space. I think one of the key things that maybe should say at the start of the chat is that SaaS is a different kind of pension structure to a separate place because it's actually guarded or classified as an occupational pension scheme, which gives it a different set of rules and a different regulatory structure. A whole kind of different regime sits around it. One of the things that impacts on significantly is the ability to fund the SaaS on an annual basis. So you quite rightly said there, if the annual limit or the annual allowance limit is currently 60K for an individual to make a contribution or for the business into a personal pension, but with a SaaS that limit is much higher and a SaaS has a unique structure within it called a general fund. I'll give you a high label list that allows a business or a company to make a contribution much higher than annual personal allowance and basically park that higher amount in this thing with the general fund, which means that you can pay up to half a million pounds a year from your company or companies into the SaaS. That is tax deductible for corporation tax. Then when you will sit inside the pension structure and the investable and it's also sitting inside that structure which is distinct from your company and therefore de-risk from having the cash shipping the company fully investable. But the money hasn't allocated to you personally, because I'll still do that at the rate of 60 grand a year within the SaaS. Now that's sort of a bit a little bit technical. But the high label bit there is. You put a lot more money into the SaaS and I always say and again, you put it in a leave, just put a calvary and a couple of things there that is subject to an advisory or a guidance process. The rules allow all of that to happen, but from a prudence perspective or from a protection perspective, we always advocate getting that process underway with an advisory note from professionals who are qualified to give you that and we can connect that all up for you and it's not an expensive thing to do. But it's just sensible to have a high contribution that is deductible at 25%, which we see the 125-gallon fundraising tax. If you're doing that, you want to have an advisory structure around that make sure that it's been done properly and that all the rules and all the means have been tested to make sure that it's been done in the exact right format and we can help you with that.

James, 24m 46s:

Fascinating and you see that right there, that's probably a whole podcast in itself, the ins and outs of that. You know that because that's one of the most pertinent things and the biggest things. That's going to be a decider, I feel, for a lot of people. So just a recap just like a SIP, it comes out of your company's profits, pre-corporation tax, right, right, yeah, okay, interesting, okay, there we go. Okay, cool man, all right, and then lifetime allowance. I'm guessing that's similar situation for the SIP. Yeah, I mean.

Paul, 25m 14s:

So, as you've probably said, james, I mean at the minute there is no lifetime allowance, but you know there might be. I'm not a gambler particularly, but I would take a bet that the UK government structure will change at some point in 2024. And if that happens, and if that happens as expected, then the new government will most likely introduce or reintroduce a level of lifetime allowance. You know that would be. I'd be a guessing man if I did. But previously, if we recall when that allowance was introduced way back in the early 2000s 2006, I think it was the limit was 1.8 million pounds and it has gradually reduced to 1.073 million pounds when it was scrapped last year. So well bye, I'll take a guess at that and I'll suggest that the figure would be something higher than it was and maybe get towards what it had been before, because all you might do is separate out high earning NHS staff from that calculation. Because that was the whole point of actually them scrapping the leitimolines at all. Because too many people were exiting NHS at senior levels, because we were basically forced to do so, because the tax situation on the pension was just not productive and it made the light. So that's why they changed the scrapped it, but I think there'll be some addressing of that to come back. And again, though, because SAS is a group structure, then that leitimolines is per person within that group. It didn't change it, but it just makes it a bit more easy to manage it. If there are four people in the SAS, then you have four things that leitimolines within the SAS and also just a big picture marker that our pension structures beyond SAS that can be looked upon. So if you get to a place where you are beyond the leitimolines, there are methods and processes and structures that can adapt to that. So whilst it is a problem, it isn't a disaster. There are things that have been done beyond that, again, with proper guidance and proper planning and advice cool man.

James, 27m 10s:

Thank you for that awesome. Well, like I say, I'm itching to ask an absolute ton of stuff on that, like the borrowing terms versus the value of the asset. I'd really love to know how that works. Let's save that as a podcast for another day. Let's just zoom out again. Once more, thank you for all that technical information. We'll just resurface, go back up to the high level. I'm just curious why is it people talk about ISIS and SIPs all the time, but why didn't they not talk about SAS as frequently?

Paul, 27m 38s:

yeah, maybe that maybe my marketing is not as good as it should be. Maybe it should be good. No, I mean, seriously, it's a strange thing. So I think, because SAS is so connected to you know, so if you're the SAS, then that's connected you, your business, your family, your wealth strategy, your pension, everything in one place. And people tend not to share all of the information too much on a personal level. But actually, fundamental thing, that the reason why SAS hasn't been as popular as it might be is that most accountants don't understand SAS, and most accountants tend to shy away from talking about pensions and pension short years, and I can't kind of understand that, because they feel they're kind of venturing into uncharted territory and they maybe shouldn't be going down that road, and I kind of understand that to a degree. You know, they're kind of harder things to understand as financial advisors, though, do know about SAS in kind of generic high level terms, but I think they fear SAS a little bit because they essentially are giving the control of your finances back to you, particularly what their re-buit is, and so there's a kind of a I think, a kind of contrarian view of that, that they probably should talk about SAS in more detail and some advisors do, of course, talk about SAS, but they're very, very rare because most financial advisors want to retain the control of that money that you've got, because that's actually how they charge you. That's how they charge you. And also some advisors are allowed to venture into SAS space because they're regularly and insurance structures are allowed to do that and that's not, again, uncommon because most advisors work within the last networks these days and those networks tend to kind of dumb down a little bit what some advisors can do, so some are a bit restricted. But put it in a context in the UK there's probably a little four, five, six million sips out there. I don't actually know the number, but it'd be millions for sure. There are, in comparison, only 22,000 sasses, so it's very much a niche market. There's no real reason why it should be niche and it's not like that. But actually I said at the start, sas does not suit everybody. So you need to see a need or a reason why you want to use it, you need to qualify for it, you need to be a company owner, which naturally reduces numbers anyway, and you need to have the ability to find that, that you're supported, and I guess that's one of the things that we do. We mentioned this earlier. I spoke to James about this. But you can find information online about all sorts of things, but actually finding a process to carry that all the way through is quite difficult and with SAS, the information that's out there is very sporadic and it's very opinionated. So actually some people are looking at it and they're like do you know what I do? How do I make that happen? And therefore some people just don't actually proceed with the process, because a sip looks quite easy, you'll get a sip today, it'll be done tomorrow and it's kind of more straightforward. But SAS is a bit more involved and requires more expertise, which is what we do. But actually finding us, maybe it isn't that easy. But here we are, we're now visible, so we're here to help, but yeah, so there's loads of reasons why it isn't as sporadic as it might be, but it's not for any other reason and it's just not that widely known.

James, 30m 39s:

There. We are Fascinating and you know what? It's very true and I have heard a lot of people throw around saying, oh, it was too good to be true in a song that has too many perks. It probably is in the long news lines and it's just like okay, there are probably lots of things in the world that are like that right. But equally, there are some things that are very beneficial and useful and it's good to have an open mind and just because something is just a little bit off the beaten track, well, there might be something fruitful in there, should you learn about it and should you educate yourself, and then you can at least make an informed choice, which is what we're all about and which is actually a huge part of Dennis who invest, a huge reason why I started it and also a huge reason why we're doing this podcast today, which is long overdue. On the subject of Sassist, paul, you've been super generous with your time today. If anybody is listening to the Dennis Invest podcast and they want to find out more about you and what you do, where are the best off finding you?

Paul, 31m 33s:

Yeah, well, I guess I'm right here and so, yeah, so that's a great point, I guess maybe just going to box that off. So really, my function is to provide or my team is to provide a full pathway for people to get into that process, to get educated on Sass, done some, what it means to support people through application and support them once you've got it and then guide and strategize on when you actually have it existing. So you can provide that full structure. And I am available very easily on my LinkedIn pages, available on my website. I'm happy to show you information here, or don't want to do that on our section later on in the podcast, but my website is quite simply sassconsultantsso it's ssas-consultantcouk.

James, 32m 18s:

That's a cool piece of real estate right there for a website, man, that's a really good searchable title. Anyway, your site is there.

Paul, 32m 25s:

It exists. So I'm there. I'm online. There's a chat in place in there. There's questions online. You can ask me the question directly. So you'll find me on LinkedIn as sass-consultant. My name is Paul Barri B-A-R-R-Y, so I'm there and I'm visible. I'm happy to help anyone who has joining creations and an interest in Sass, because this is what I do. So my particular role is, in the early stages of Sass discovery journey, really helping people to be educated on it and to guide them on the uses of it and, I guess, to kind of coach people into whether one it is suitable for you or not, generically, whether you can see a use for it, can you understand it, see a way forward and, if you can, we'll help you in that whole process and create a pathway for you. I'm going forward, but, yeah, I'm here. I'm happy to help and delight at the conversation with you and it's been great to have that chat. James, I appreciate it and I'll be delighted to have a chat with anybody who's listening and then see how you've been helping out.

James, 33m 14s:

That's totally cool, mate, and one thing you mentioned to me which we never actually really got run to talking about on this podcast you are a former financial advisor, right, and you're now branched into this realm, so you see the entire field of play whenever it comes to this stuff. You've literally sat in that chair as an advisor and understood the reasons why maybe it isn't discussed as frequently as it should be. So that's the angle that you're coming at this from right, Absolutely.

Paul, 33m 39s:

So I was an advisor from the mid 90s to 2010, I think it was. I used SaaS back in the 90s because I had clients who were all business owners, who wanted to do more than just invest money in a standard structure, and that's why I branched into SaaS, because it was obvious to me that to keep those clients deductively engaged with me then I had to do something more than just give them a standard off the pad structure. And that's what SaaS was. And some great stories about some clients who saved their business or do their business or maximise the growth of their business and manage tax and all sorts of other things, simply because they had a structure that suited them. And I think that's the key point, that SaaS was designed. Sorry, saas is the only pension structure designed for S&E business owners. The other ones they're not unsuitable, but they were still designed for a business owner and that, I think, is the message to be the mind. That's how I got into SaaS, because it was obvious to me there's a niche and a need for it, and pulling a process together to help people to get to that point was oh, that's what I do. It works.

James, 34m 41s:

And what a lovely note to end this podcast on today. Paul, we're going to get you back on the podcast super soon so we can do another episode. Thank you for a wonderful episode today. Lots to learn and take in for the dentist I'm sure you're listening and for myself as well, because SaaS is not something I knew a great deal about. Now I'm feeling that much more enlightened, which is wonderful, and I'm certainly looking forward to future episodes. Paul, I hope you haven't absolutely smashed into it and we'll see each other very soon, james and Jude, thank you very much.