Jane Challener

Mark makes the time to listen and understand you as a person and what you want out of your financial future.

Hello, my name is Jane Challener, and I’ve been a client with BlueSKY for about 12 years.

I wanted to understand my finances and have confidence in where I stood, as I wasn’t completely comfortable with where I was at that time.

They were recommended by a friend who’d come to Mark Penston with a change of circumstances and needed to get her finances sorted out. She said he was really down to earth and sensible. I trusted this person and their recommendation, so that’s when I approached him.

I approached BlueSKY and explained what I wanted to do, which was to be able to see an overall picture of my finances. They explained what they could do for me, and how it would work moving forwards so that I would have a complete picture of where I stood and where I needed to get to, because I wasn’t clear on that at that time. I wanted to understand where I could get to in 10 or 15 years’ time. And I wasn’t getting that from anybody else. But they explained that’s what they could do.

Mark has a knack of understanding people’s personalities and their needs. I was very surprised that when I had an opportunity presented to me, Mark was able to take a different perspective to myself and helped me through that process. He almost held my hand through it and reassured me that actually everything was going to be completely fine, and I could go off and enjoy myself. So, I was very appreciative of that, and I was very surprised as well, because I was expecting just black and white numbers. But their service offered much more than that. It was about getting to know me, my family, what I wanted to do with my life, and where I and my family were in our lives, because that was relevant to retirement.

He’s helped me through that. I was very, very nervous about taking various bits of my pensions, but he was very reassuring. I think partly this was because I’d built up trust in him through the service he’d delivered in the years leading up to that. This involved annual reviews, giving me a single picture of my financial status and where I could get to, and his patience in explaining and re explaining options and what they meant helped me get a really good understanding of them.

Working with Mark at BlueSKY makes me really reassured and comfortable. He is such a calm person and takes the time to listen and understand what will work for you. He gets very enthusiastic when something has really come good for you. It feels like he’s almost part of my family, because he’s helping us move forwards into whatever the future holds.

From the very beginning, I feel that Mark’s answers have been very genuine, and he’s had a genuine interest in helping me do what I want to do. BlueSKY and Mark are also very efficient. I lost out previously in moving a pension over because that particular advisor wasn’t efficient, but I don’t feel that I’ll miss out on anything with BlueSKY.

We’re helping my parents transition into old age and looking after their finances, so I’m having to pick up some threads there. I don’t always have confidence in some of the advice they’ve been given. But I feel I can trust Mark all the time. I’m a cynical person, so he’s done well to earn that trust.

One time, I was particularly concerned about some stuff that was going on with my son and I was trying to help him. I asked Mark a question, and didn’t expect him to give me free advice or anything like that, but he was only too willing to help out. Those little things make a big difference in reassuring people and looking after the family.

I’m a control freak. I like to double-check, triple-check and do my research before I actually move forwards so I’m completely confident in knowing where I stand. And now I know where I’ll stand when I get to 102, because I’ve got a grasp of the big picture. I know when I can spend money and when I can’t, and hopefully I won’t be one of these people who is just two bad decisions away from losing the lot, because I can always call up Mark and check.

The three words that I’d use to describe Mark and BlueSKY are genuine, reliable, and completely trustworthy.

The best thing about working with BlueSKY is that they are always responsive. They’re always reliable, there at the end of the phone, and I feel I’ve got someone who always holds my hand and reassures me.

I would have no hesitation in recommending BlueSKY and Mark moving forwards because they look at the whole picture. They’re not just in it for their commission or because they have a particular view about the way things should be done. They take the time to understand me as a person, my lifestyle and my family requirements, and tailor their advice specifically to each person.