Eleanor Mills, Founder of NOON
I’ve just discovered that the house I was buying has fallen through. This is not good as I’ve just sold the family home where we’ve lived for 23 years and there is no going back. I’ve got 10 days to find a rental or we’re going to be living in a hotel.
The estate agent needs all sorts of complicated financial information about my income before I can pin down the rental property and it is a moment of intense stress. I’m the director of two companies so I don’t have a PAYE salary to prove my income easily. Adrenaline floods my system. This won’t wait. what am I going to do?
The answer is, as ever, call BKL.
It isn’t even 8am but I know I can contact Anthony Cohen who oversees all my accounts and financial affairs. He’s not like other accountants I’ve dealt with. I don’t get put through to a switchboard, or send an email into the ether. When I call his mobile, he picks up on the first ring, says he’ll speak to the estate agent, is immensely calming and reassuring and an hour later, following his advice, I have secured a rental.
And then…
Another morning, another panic.
What is the best and most tax efficient way to support our daughter at university while she does her master’s degree at Oxford? Again we’ve left it quite late: I call Tony – he picks up on the second ring. “Give me half an hour to have a think about it,” he says. Sure enough, I am on the Thameslink 45 minutes later when he rings with an easy, swift solution.
Whether it’s VAT returns for business, Xero not adding up on one of the company accounts, drawing up a will, or tax and inheritance planning for the future, since 2020 BKL has been my financial fairy godmother. Tony and his team have become like family; they know our circumstances and they know us.
Whether the question is big or small, urgent or routine, they are there to help. Always available, straight, reliable and speaking English – not jargon.
I set up my first business aged 50. My cofounder had been a client of BKL for 20 years, which was how I was introduced to the firm. Since then I’ve set up another business and can confidently say, as a total entrepreneurial novice, that without BKL I would have floundered. Instead, with them onside, we have flourished.
At every turn they’ve been there to advise and support, explain and sort things out. For me, my family and my business they are like a fourth emergency service.
Like many Queenagers I often approach financial affairs with a mixture of terror and boredom. BKL have helped me navigate the jargon and cut through to what matters. My personal and entrepreneurial journey in midlife could never have happened without them.
