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Wealth Management

Wealth Management is an important part of our service to you and encompasses both the growing and protecting of your hard earned investments. Our investment process is consistent across all products so whether an allocation to an ISA, an International Portfolio Bond or your Pension the same level of due diligence is applied. Importantly we manage this in house and do not outsource this at additional cost to clients.

In most instances, your money will be invested in a selection of funds that, grouped together as a portfolio for diversification, forms one of our portfolios. These range from our lowest risk portfolio invested in cash, bonds and absolute return funds primarily to protect returns and collect steady income and dividends to our highest risk grouping focusing mainly on equities from UK to the US to some of the Emerging and frontier markets.

You can have confidence that whichever grouping we place a portion of your estate in it will be focused on achieving the objectives in the medium to long term set out to you by your dedicated adviser.

Most client funds will be invested in retail products using regulated UCIT compliant funds but we also have specialist parts of our Wealth Management proposition that has helps investment in unlisted equities, many qualifying for Seed EIS or EIS status and allows some to invest in UCIS funds. Please ask your adviser if these could form part of your wealth management service.

Our investment process is summarised in our dedicated Investment Process document attached here and summarised in the sections below:

  • Our Investment Solution

    Having spent many years in the markets we believe we have produced fresh, forward thinking investment solutions which is constantly challenged and evolves constantly alongside the company.

    Our strategies mix both passive and active management styles based on our view of market cycles and the economy to create a robust multi-asset portfolio. We endeavour to protect and enhance the returns for our clients by having a flexible structure which is adaptable to the markets as well as client circumstances.

    The portfolios, including the wrap charges are still brought to you for sub 1% per annum. Over an extended period this cost saving is crucial to your portfolio growth.

    Our investment process is summarised in our dedicated Investment Process document attached here and summarised in the sections below.

  • Portfolio Construction

    We take the view that some active managers truly are great money managers but there are also a range of funds that are overpriced and definitely do not consistently beat the market. With our model of taking a flat fee from clients we feel we can help you benefit from the inclusion of passive funds that are low cost and track the market. With the inclusion of these we keep the cost of your investments down, something commonly not possible with the commission based reliance of many advisory firms.

    We therefore hope you believe in our portfolio construction and how we aim to deliver the right solution for you and your assets. You will see that we don’t totally reject the active management argument but we simply include the managers we truly feel will deliver superior returns.

    Each risk graded portfolio combines both passive and active management styles. The benefit this structure brings is that it allows us to consider including a substantial cash weighting or a strong sectorial based view for example. The end result is a cost efficient, but carefully considered portfolio for our clients.

  • Asset Allocation

    We see asset allocation being more important than picking individual fund managers. Assets will be allocated in all models in a minimum of two classes. Some clients will see diversification in their holdings across, equity, fixed income, commodities, property and alternatives.

    With the ability for clients to hold structured products and even commercial property, we feel we have solutions that will be suitable for all.

    We review selected allocations weekly and will suggests any changes depending on the current market environment. We can’t promise to get this perfect, but believe our clients have a clear and informed understanding of their options and our risk-controlled approach.

  • Move to the Platform

    As part of our Wealth Management proposition we see the role of the “platform” as a trend that has arrived and is here to stay in the industry. We believe it brings significant benefits to both the advisor and client because all the investments can be seen in one place, including legacy assets, which creates a more detailed and accessible portfolio than ever before.

    As your advisers we are able to group funds here and form portfolios that can be easily rebalanced and changed for market interpretations easily and with accuracy. There are also no costs to clients on the platforms we predominantly use for our clients investments.

    As well as 3,000 + funds the client platform is able to hold single name equity and bonds but this is something we do on an execution only basis. These balances do have the advantage of taking you up to the large platform rewards for accounts in excess of £100,000.

    As a client you will have a personal platform account which can be accessed 24/7 giving you more access and control over investments than ever before.

    It also allows us to report your balance and performance on a monthly basis.

  • Other Investment Options

    Clients also have the opportunity to invest money in structured products, or perhaps commercial property, through the use of a SIPP. A product we see as growing in popularity in the coming years as clients seek other investments and more opportunities than a traditional personal pension that is restricted to global funds of bonds and equities.

    Through our network of partners there is also the opportunity to be educated and introduced by these 3rd parties to Opportunities in Hedge Funds, Enterprise Investment schemes and Contracts For Difference. Speak to your adviser for more details on all these investment solutions available to you and whether an introduction to a specialist in these fields would be a route for you to explore.

  • Passive vs. Active Investment

    Having put considerable time in to the investment proposition that we present to you much of the process was deciding the split between active and passive or in certain environments the role of cash and the money markets.

    There is realms of information to support both sides of the argument. We somewhat agree with this view and incorporate in to our clients portfolios a mixture of both. We offer clients a mix that generally sits at 65% passive and 35% non passive. We also reserve the right in our selected risk graded models to move this to 50% passive 50% non passive and at the other end of the scale 80% passive 20% non passive.

    We say non passive because we don’t guarantee to fill the remaining section of the portfolio with actively managed funds forming a tactical overlay, there may be a large cash position for example chosen for a section of a clients risk graded model portfolio. We believe without significantly impairing the long term return and risk profiling of a client or area of a clients portfolio there are periods where these levels of risk should be either increase or decreased to both protect and enhance the clients returns and see this as a method of smoothing and protecting returns.