Approach
We are paid by you, and by nobody else.
That single sentence removes most of what goes wrong in this industry. We hold no products of our own, take no commission, and have no incentive to move your money other than the case for moving it.
One
Plan first, portfolio second
We will not propose an investment until we know what the money is for, when it is needed and who else depends on it. A portfolio built without that is a guess with a spreadsheet attached.
Two
Cost is the one certainty
Returns are uncertain; charges are not. We use passive building blocks where markets are efficient and pay for active management only where we can point at the evidence.
Three
Do less, more deliberately
We rebalance quarterly and otherwise leave portfolios alone. Most damage to long-run returns is self-inflicted and happens in March of a bad year.
Four
Say the unwelcome thing
Including that you are drawing too much, that the business sale will not fund the retirement you have described, or that your children should be in the room for the next conversation.
The first year
Four meetings, and then rather fewer.
Month 1
Discovery
Ninety minutes on circumstances and objectives. No products, no paperwork, no charge.
Month 2
Cashflow plan
A model of the next thirty years, including the bad markets. This is where most of the real decisions get made.
Month 3
Mandate agreed
A written mandate you understand, with the risk stated in pounds rather than in adjectives.
Ongoing
Annual review
Once a year formally, and whenever something changes. Your adviser answers their own telephone.
On bad years
We will tell you what a 30% fall looks like in pounds, before it happens.
Risk questionnaires ask people how they feel about volatility. Nobody knows how they feel about volatility until they have watched £400,000 disappear over eleven weeks.
So we do it in cash. Before a mandate is agreed, we show you the worst twelve months your portfolio would have had since 1972, in the actual amount you would have lost. If that number is intolerable, we change the mandate rather than your expectations.
It is the single most useful hour of the whole process, and it is the reason almost nobody sold in 2022.
Does that sound like the right arrangement?
Our minimum relationship is £500,000. Below that we would be taking a fee for something a low-cost platform does perfectly well, and we will tell you so.
Arrange a meeting