Protect & Invest Portfolios - Protect and Invest

Why Invest in Our Portfolios

We believe that a strong, robust, independent process is important when investing money; you can't just make it up as you go along. It's important to have your portfolio regularly reviewed to ensure your assets are working hard for you. However, if you don't have many millions of pounds to invest, the cost of having your individual portfolio thoroughly reviewed on a regular basis is likely to be prohibitive.

That's why we created the Protect and Invest Portfolios. They bring to our clients a much greater level of portfolio governance than would have been possible in the past, through the use of modern investment management technology. Investing in one of our portfolios gives you the peace of mind that your money is being looked after properly; everyone who invests in our portfolios receives the same level of care and attention in managing your money, whether you've got £100,000 or £10m to invest. Our robust process is explained in more detail below.

Asset Allocation is Key

It is often said that 90% of the returns in a portfolio are made up of having the right asset allocation, so it's pretty important to get this right from the start. But what does this mean? In other words, it's about having the most efficient mix of shares, fixed interest, cash, property and other alternative investments in your portfolio at any given time.  When setting the asset allocation within our portfolios we use Ibbotson Associates, a leading authority on asset allocation with expertise in defining the most efficient blend of assets for any given risk profile.

Review and Rebalance

Getting the correct allocation at outset is just the start. Markets change, and some assets perform better than others, which means if left unchecked your portfolio will quickly deviate from the optimum asset allocation. We automatically rebalance our portfolios quarterly, back to the correct starting position. This means you can relax knowing that your assets remain invested in an efficient manner and in line with the risk level we agreed with you.

There may come a time when the asset allocation  that was most appropriate at outset needs to be changed. This could be for a number of reasons; a change in the economic outlook, or a shift in the long term expected returns of an asset. We review the asset allocation on a regular basis to ensure we take account of these changing factors.

Find the Right Funds

When most people invest money, they do so in a pooled fund of money along with many other investors; this is usually more cost effective for the majority of investors than buying and selling individual shares. As you might expect, there are literally thousands of funds available, some good, some bad, some cheap some expensive. We use the expertise of OBSR (Old Broad Street Research), who are recognised as the leading qualitative investment research company in the UK retail funds market, to assist us in picking out suitable funds that are deserving of a place within our clients' portfolios.

As with asset allocation, you can't just pick a few funds at outset and leave them to do their thing. Funds change over time, and what was appropriate in the past may not be suitable going forwards. This could be due to a variety of reasons; the fund manager may retire, the objectives of the fund may change, or the manager may increase their charges. The funds within our portfolios are monitored and reviewed on a regular basis, and changed as appropriate.

Fully Flexible

Our portfolios don't come with huge entry costs, and neither do they have any penalties for taking your money out, because we think that once you have experienced our investment philosophy you won't want to take your money elsewhere. However, you may want to make changes for other reasons; over time your views may change, as you get older you might find you become more cautious. Or you might want to protect the gains you have made in your pension fund over many years. At any time and without penalty, you can change from one of our fifteen portfolios to another. Or it could be the case that you change your mind on the active v passive debate; in which case you can keep your investment risk profile the same but simply switch to a different style. That said, we wouldn't suggest that you switch things around too frequently!

Your Commitment

All our portfolios are managed on an advisory basis. This means that when we write to you each quarter we will advise you of any changes which are required, and explain the reasons we are suggesting the them. We always ask your permission before making any changes therefore your only commitment when investing in our portfolios is to respond promptly to our request for permission to proceed. This will be a maximum of once every three months.