How we look after your money

The cornerstone of great financial planning is a sound investment strategy. The strategy does not only need to meet your goals, but must fit with your attitidue to risk.

At Wealth matters we call this process WRAPS™ - the 'Wealth Matters Risk-Assessed Performance System.We assess your attitudes to risk using psychometric risk profiling - a detailed online questionnaire that you complete - so that we can identify your specific risk profile, which will then fall into one of seven core profiles ...

Key features of WRAPS™ are:

• We control your costs. There are a lot of aspects to investing that are out of our control (the market and economy for example) but we are fully able to control your costs and this will have a significant impact on your investment returns. Having all your investments managed in a consolidated forum rather than scattered in many places makes absolute sense.
• We generally work with a strategy where 80% of your money will be in 'passive' funds - essentially the market return - and 20% in 'active' funds where we aim to provide above average returns for you. The process of fund selection to meet your goals is called asset allocation and investments will be selected according to your risk profile.
• We review your portfolio and strategy at regular intervals agreed with you. This will probably result in a portfolio re-balancing exercise.
• We are committed to communicating with you - at least 12 times every year, with reports tailored to your personal 'risk profile'.

Our WRAPS™ investment system

The core aim and principal strategy of WRAPS™ is to achieve above-average returns by using a structured asset allocation model, which is based on this specific risk profile.Click on the chart (below) for a overview of how the seven key portfiolios differ from one another.

Click the image below / right to download a PDF of this portfolio analyysis>>

• WRAPS™ allows our clients to invest in different asset classes (equities, property, bonds, gilts, cash etc), in different geographical regions and in different sectors of an economy, all in an effort to spread risk and diversify.
• WRAPS™ includes regular communication with you via a minimum of 12 points of contact each year.
• WRAPS™ simplifies the management of your investments by using the services of a number of leading fund managers with proven track records. We use leading on-line administration platforms that allow you to monitor your investments 24:7.
• We re-balance your portfolio on a annual basis in line with your original objectives, in order to lock in gains and minimise losses.
• Finally we use direct investments and not mirror funds, which are deemed to be far more transparent than investments with many life insurance companies whose funds are not a true replication of the actual fund. Thus, if we recommend Fidelity, or Invesco Perpetual, your monies are actually invested with these specific investment houses.

We believe that constant reviews, ongoing advice and regular communication form the backbone of solid investment advice and we believe that WRAPS™ achieves these goals.

According to additional research by Skandia, over a 10 year sample case, an annually rebalanced investment portfolio would return 14% more than the same portfolio if it had not been rebalanced.  In addition, the rebalanced portfolio would have been less volatile.

Professional Adviser excerpt – 26/11/2009

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