Wealth Management

We aim to develop an investment strategy to enable you to meet your financial planning objectives. To do this, we will consider your individual circumstances, your attitude to risk and other preferences. Once the strategy has been agreed and implemented, we will have regular meetings with you to ensure that the portfolio is performing as expected and to make any necessary adjustments to reflect changes in your circumstances or in market conditions.

Discretionary and Advisory Investment Services

Historically, as Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs) we have offered investment advice on an advisory basis. This means that we make suitable recommendations, based on your particular circumstances, which we then implement after discussing them with you and securing your agreement.

The Discretionary Portfolio Service complements the existing advisory option. This means that you appoint us to manage your portfolio on your behalf in accordance with agreed parameters, such as your risk tolerance, income requirements and tax position. We then take responsibility for making all investment decisions at our discretion, and report to you periodically on progress.

The benefit of discretionary management, and a key reason for offering the service, is that it eliminates delay when implementing investment decisions in today’s fast moving markets that is increasingly important. It also provides other benefi ts such as more streamlined administration and consolidated reporting.

Our Investment Philosophy

Our success is built on a talented team guided by a robust investment philosophy and process. The investment process combines asset allocation, portfolio construction, fund selection and risk management. Each stage of the process involves extensive and detailed research. Our research process includes meetings with fund managers, data analysis and weekly meetings of the Investment Committee, in addition to extensive reading of research material and the fi nancial press.

Our starting point is to identify and understand the key economic drivers around the world. This in turn helps to shape our view of particular asset classes and markets. With each type of investment we look at market expectations to consider what is currently ‘priced in’, since the best opportunities for good active fund managers tend to occur when the market revises its expectations and prices rise. This requires both insight and conviction. We believe that a good active manager can add value and outperform the market over time.

We advise on collective investments such as unit trusts, OEICs, investment trusts and Exchange Traded Funds rather than direct equities. We consider that collective funds offer key advantages compared with direct equities, with regard to diversifi cation and risk management, tax mitigation, charges and administration. We also work with a number of stockbrokers if a portfolio of direct equities is considered to be appropriate.