Many of us open a local bank account to pay our bills in Spain. But when it comes to our investments, it’s less clear how we should proceed.
In the United States, three types of investment professionals are available:
• Broker-dealers purchase and sell securities, both for clients (the “broker” part) and for themselves (the “dealer” part)
• Investment advisors give clients advice on investment decisions
• Financial planners provide a roadmap for our finances that increases the likelihood of achieving our goals
In Spain, the big banks act as broker-dealers and investment advisors, but seldom as financial planners.
BISSAN Wealth Management
Fortunately, there is a firm in Spain that successfully assists clients with financial planning: BISSAN Wealth Management. Founded in 2010, BISSAN has been providing independent, regulated financial planning and investment advice ever since. It has offices in Barcelona and Bilbao and is authorized and supervised by the National Securities Market Commission (the CNMV), the Spanish government agency responsible for the financial regulation of the securities markets in Spain.
The good news is that BISSAN has an American financial planner who helps English-speaking families and individuals across all of Spain. His name is Peter Dougherty, and his career path looks almost like the blueprint for a cross-border financial planning curriculum. He came to Spain after spending twenty years working at top-tier Wall Street investment banks in New York. In Spain, Mr. Dougherty is certified as a European Financial Planner (EFP) by the European Financial Planning Association of Spain, and he earned a master’s degree in Spanish taxation from Universidad Nebrija. In the U.S., he is both a CFP® professional and a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor® and he holds an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School in New York.
A Blind Spot
As Dougherty says, “The financial advisory industry remains domestic in nature. This creates a blind spot. Most financial advisors operate within just one country with one regulatory, tax and investment framework. Advisors in Europe comply with local tax laws and European Union structures. Advisors in the U.S. design portfolios within IRS rules and the constraints of American securities regulation. Their advice works fine inside their own system. The problem arises when a client belongs to two systems at once. Americans living in Spain are a good example. A Spanish portfolio may be perfectly suitable for a domestic investor, yet inefficient for a U.S. taxpayer due to PFIC rules. A U.S.-based investment strategy may be tax-efficient under American rules but misaligned once Spanish taxation is considered.
The solution is to find a firm with dual-sided financial expertise so financial planning decisions can be made strategically rather than sequentially. That’s what we have built at BISSAN Wealth Management.
Investing as an American in Spain doesn’t have to be complicated. Most of the problems expatriates face come from using investment structures that are perfectly-suited to work in one country—but not in the other. Avoid those pitfalls: hire a financial planner to help you choose investments that make sense on both sides of the Atlantic, and the rest of investing becomes surprisingly straightforward. Which is exactly how investing should be.
To schedule a free consultation with Peter Dougherty:
Financial planning in spain
