Investments

We have found Andrew is very transparent about the charges he makes for his services and we feel gives great value for money.

PS & SS, Pontefract

Andrew is the only financial adviser I have dealt with that I trust, and I have dealt with quite a few. I find his advice clear and honest.

J Bell, London

Trustworthy, Intelligent, and Creative. Could not think of a better person to look after my wealth.

Dr R Habib, Algo Engineering

We now have a lovely new home and financial security, what more could you ask of a financial advisor. Thanks Claire

John, Derbyshire

Claire explains often complicated financial products in a way which allows us to make informed decisions based on her sound advice on the various options on the market.

Linda, West Yorkshire

Our financial advisers believe that investing should not be a mysterious process as it can have a vital role to play in meeting individual aims and objectives. From our experience, we find the best results are achieved when there is a simple, clear understanding on those objectives.

For Yorkshire residents and businesses, the structure of your agreed investment portfolio should support the achievement of your long term goals, within acceptable risk parameters. But what we find is that individual investors across the Yorkshire region often don’t have the time or inclination to actively review their monies – and that’s where our financial advice team come in.

Our philosophy is that regular monitoring of an investment portfolio optimises performance and helps avoid the mistakes many investors make. We do this because the fund range with the strongest outlook today might be very different from that in a year’s time, so with appropriate systems in place, our financial advisers can review investment portfolios to make the relevant adjustments along the way.

By way of example let’s say you chose the highest level of servicing (Premium). This would involve a review of your portfolio assets every three months. For each of the portfolio reviews, our investment team in Leeds would meet over a few weeks to conduct the following research:

First our asset management team in Leeds consider the changes recommended by Distribution Technology, market leaders in asset allocation. Distribution Technology constantly monitor their asset allocation in order to maximise returns given the level of risk and produce a blend of asset classes to match each respective risk profile.

We then consider the economic backdrop and decide if we need to deviate from the above to optimise returns. For example, if the bond market looks particularly overpriced and unlikely to produce much value over time, but the outlook for the commercial property market looks buoyant, we may alter exposure accordingly. Of course, our financial advisers feed this back into our research to ensure an appropriate balance of risk and reward is still met.

Now we research each sector for which your investment portfolio requires some exposure, in this example let’s say we research European equities.

The whole universe of funds in the European equity sector is relatively huge with over a hundred funds to choose from. We initially filter this down by removing funds which are too small (as the dynamic of these can change significantly with large inflows of money), as well as those with low ratings and a short fund manager tenure.

Incidentally this last point of fund manager tenure is not set in stone. If a fund manager has only been managing a fund for say 12 months then how much of the fund’s long term track record can be attributed to that manager? We take this into consideration however we also track the performance of the managers themselves as sometimes they emulate the success they previously achieved and as such we sometimes ignore the filters for a number of star managers. What our financial advisers do not like is uncertainty – if a fund manager leaves unexpectedly and is replaced by a team with an unproven record we would prefer to choose alternatives, after all there are plenty to choose from.

We take fund managers and their respective teams very seriously and the financial advisers at Heritage have been meeting with these talented individuals for years and will continue to do so, to determine whether their investment philosophy suits the portfolio they would be included in.

After this initial filter we then consider a multitude of other factors such as discrete yearly performance, alpha, volatility, and information ratio as well as many others. We would also determine whether the fund should really fit into that sector. Some of these terms may mean little to the average investor but they are vital for us to build a picture of each fund to see the respective strengths and weaknesses.

This allows us to produce a shortlist of funds, which our individual committee team members will then take away to do some in depth analysis on, comparing with the funds which are already in the portfolio. This stage is vital as a fund may have floated to the top or bottom of a sector because of one freak event and we need to discount this where possible to really put the fund into context.

We then meet again to discuss the results of this research and decide which, if any, substitutions to make in each sector. We only make substitutions where we are confident we really add value – we do not chop and change on a regular basis forever chasing the latest outperforming fund as we know the markets reward patience. Prior to making these substitutions we do, of course, ensure the resultant blend of funds is still suitable for your risk profile.

The changes are communicated to our Yorkshire based customers via email and client confirmation of the changes is requested, this is because we want you involved in the process – this is your money after all.

Does this seem excessive to manage investments? We don’t think so!

Although this might seem like a long process, our financial adviser team at our Leeds head office recreate this process every three months to ensure that all of our Yorkshire clients see acceptable returns on their investment portfolios.

If you are based within Leeds, Wakefield or any of the surrounding Yorkshire area and you are looking for experienced financial advisers to help with your investment portfolio and portfolio management, then Heritage may be the right team for you. For more information, or for a free 30-minute consultation with one of our advisors, call 0113 350 2080.

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