Who we serve
An inheritance, a property or business sale, a pension lump sum, savings that have long since outgrown cash — money that now needs to work harder, without taking risks you do not understand. Investment management is the work this firm grew out of, and it is the part of the job we do ourselves rather than hand to someone else.
How we help
The shape of the advice is much the same whether the money arrived last week or has been sitting in a dormant portfolio for a decade: work out what it is for, decide how it should be invested and where it should be held, then manage it and account for it properly.
Before anything is invested we work out what the money has to do — income now, income later, a purchase in five years, a legacy, or simply not being eroded by inflation. What it is for, when you will need it, and how you would react to a fall along the way decide which portfolio we recommend.
Our portfolios blend index funds with specialist strategies chosen because they behave differently from the markets around them. The aim is attractive long-term returns carrying less movement than a portfolio built from shares and bonds alone.
We manage the portfolio on an ongoing basis and report in plain English — what happened, why, and what if anything we are doing about it. You will always be able to see what you own, what it is worth, and what it costs you.
The first question
Almost every lump sum arrives with this question attached, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a reassuring one. Nobody can reliably predict what markets will do over the next year or two — we cannot, and we do not believe anyone else can either. We will not pretend otherwise in order to sound confident.
What we can do is separate the question into the parts that are actually answerable. How long the money has to work is knowable. How much of a fall shortly after investing you could live with, financially and otherwise, is knowable. How quickly the money goes to work — in one go, or in steps over a period — is a decision we take with you, in the light of those two answers rather than a forecast.
Wrappers and tax
Two people can hold identical investments and keep very different amounts of what those investments earn. The difference is the wrapper — an ISA, a pension, a general investment account, and in some circumstances an investment bond or a trust. Deciding what goes where, and in whose name, is part of the advice rather than an afterthought to it.
For a couple that often means using both sets of allowances. For a large sum it usually means moving money into shelter over several tax years rather than all at once, and keeping an eye on the capital gains that arise on the way. Where a portfolio already exists, restructuring it can itself trigger a tax charge — so the sequence matters, and we plan it before anything is sold.
Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and may change in future, and the Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate tax advice.
Avoiding permanent loss
Markets fall from time to time — 2008, the Covid spring of 2020, 2022 — and a diversified portfolio is designed to weather those falls, not to avoid them. What we work hardest to avoid is permanent loss. Almost without fail, where UK retail investors have suffered devastating permanent losses, it was because they put money into unregulated schemes or concentrated a large part of their savings in a single investment.
We do neither: no unregulated schemes, no fads, no outsized positions in any one holding. To be fair, we expect all good financial advisers to avoid these traps — regulation, rightly, demands it. Where we differ is in how far we take diversification, and in the investment management experience behind it.
The value of investments and the income from them can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you originally invested. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.