Wealth Management
Wealth Management is a type of financial planning that provides the management of a client’s wealth by an experienced investment professional.
A proper wealth management company should give highly professional, unbiased, financial advice and investment management services to discerning clients usually on a fee-basis; delivering planning solutions that are always advice led, never product driven.
It is an ideal service for high net worth individuals, businesses and families that need not only investment management, but also estate planning, legal resources and tax planning expertise, with the long-term goal of sustaining and growing long-term wealth.
A wealth management company should be able to provide advice on many aspects of wealth management, helping individuals of widely differing financial resources or life stages, including the increasingly complex area of corporate financial planning, from pensions through to even insuring against the loss of a key director.
As wealth should mean the ability to fully enjoy and experience life, so the main focus of any wealth management company, worth its salt, should be able to take onboard their clients’ needs, desire and passions.
In a nutshell then their job is to assist in enriching their clients’ lives even further by offering integrated financial and portfolio services that are complemented by retirement, inheritance and tax planning.
Many of the top wealth management companies recognise that no single investment company has a monopoly of investment expertise and therefore prefer to use a carefully selected a number of external managers, of outstanding investment ability, to manage their diverse range of funds. This means then that instead of employing in-house investment managers, they set up an appointed Investment Committee who manage the fund managers on behalf of their clients.
The Investment Committee's role is to research and then select the best investment managers, monitor those managers to ensure they remain focused, change managers if this becomes necessary and above all reduce any risk to their clients by selecting managers with different investment styles. They should also retain an independent investment consulting firm, who may also play an important role in the selection and management of the fund managers.
Obviously the performance of your investments could make a critical difference to your financial well being in the future, so reliable financial advice, investment products and fund managers you can trust are important - only then can you have complete peace of mind.
Short-term volatility has always been an inherent feature of stock markets, but historically financial markets have consistently shown that falls have always been followed by recoveries. This means that short-term speculation is a risky business simply because it is all too easy to get the timing wrong. Therefore a measured long-term view on investment, guided by specialist advice along with investment products and sound fund managers is the key to secure future wealth.
For some people, investing offshore has its advantages and can prove an attractive option; for instance where a parent has provided capital to a minor, for investors entitled to an age related allowance, for expatriates investing to avoid UK tax while non-resident, for investors who are Trustees and for companies investing corporate funds.
You may want to consider Wealth Management if:
- You have a lump sum to invest
- You are looking to build capital
- You want an income as well as growth from your investments
- You are concerned about investment risk
- You are interested in offshore investments
- You are currently employed and considering funding for retirement
- You are a Trustee of a pension fund
- You want to safeguard your family against serious illness or death
- You need to protect your income in case of long-term illness
- You are worried about the impact of Inheritance Tax or Capital Gains Tax
- You are considering new banking arrangements
- You require a corporate pension scheme
- You need assistance with corporate banking
Finally, it must be emphasised that no wealth management company can ever give a cast-iron guarantee for future investment performance, which is why you need to do a lot of in depth research. Before you finally hand over your precious wealth you must be completely confident in what should be a superior investment process likely to maximise your chance of achieving a better return over the medium to long-term.
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