As your independent financial adviser, one of our prime responsibilities is to help you increase and protect your wealth. To do that, we must have a thorough understanding of your personal circumstances, your financial goals and your attitude to risk. We use that knowledge (gained through conversation and the exchange of ideas) to create an appropriate investment strategy for you. Once that strategy is agreed with you, we then select the investment vehicles which are best able to meet your objectives and reflect your views on risk and return. The development and implementation of your investment strategy is one aspect of the wealth-creation process - the other is the on-going management of your invested assets.

Nothing is set in stone
Our knowledge of investment theory and practice is put to the test through a series of rigorous and professional examinations, which we must pass in order to practice our profession. Knowledge is all very well as far as it goes, but in the investment business the goal posts move every day. The pace of change can be fast and furious: economies boom and bust, fledgling and established fund managers launch new funds, funds merge, different asset classes and sub-asset classes appear, managers move from one investment house to another and risk ratings are adjusted. Although it can be both intellectually taxing and time-consuming, we are duty bound to inform our clients if we feel that any of these developments could positively or indeed negatively effect their interests. In a fast-changing and crowded environment, how best can we do that while keeping our attention firmly on each investor’s particular interests?

More choice, more attention
In the past, the majority of private investors owned no more than a handful of investments. A unit trust or two, a pension (invested in a managed fund) and some PEPs or ISAs. That’s no longer the case. Many of our clients understand the attractions associated with a diversified portfolio and are spreading their capital across more asset classes and in more investments than ever before. As a result, it takes more time and effort to monitor the performance of each investment and the portfolio’s performance as a whole. However there’s no getting away from the fact that once established, a portfolio must be monitored. Our task was to find the most effective way of doing that.

Something had to give
It became clear to us in 20XX that we had to decide how our time is best invested: in the provision of personal financial advice or monitoring industry developments and portfolio performance?

Staying with what we do best
To ensure that our standards of client service are not compromised, we now outsource the day-to-day management (not the creation) and administration of our clients’ investment portfolios to Nucleus Financial Services Ltd (Nucleus). Nucleus provides what’s known in the financial services industry a ‘wrap’ – a virtual platform where we gather together each of our clients’ various investments with different product providers and investment managers and store them all in one package or place. (Please see page xx for more details on wraps) The investments themselves don’t change, it’s simply where they are stored that’s different.

• Allianz GI
• Barclays Capital
• Credit Suisse
• Dexia
• Ely
• Invesco
• J O Hambro Capital Management
• Motley Fool
• New Star
• Nucleus
• TCF Fund Managers
• Threadneedle