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[xyy123]

Originally Posted by Myrmidon_J

Why not seek professional advice?
Why not visit an IFA?

Contradiction.

To clarify: IFAs are INDEPENDENT, not IMPARTIAL. Unless you go to an IFA who is FEE-BASED he will most likely be influenced by the COMMISSION from product providers. If you do decide to go for a fee-based IFA, then ask yourself if you're satisfied with 4 hours worth of attention to your portfolio for a year (4x 1 hour reviews)?

Originally Posted by marra

Is there anyone out there who has the clients interests at heart and not there own pocket.

Try finding an investment manager who does not custody assets and does not receive commission for trading the portfolio. That way every investment they choose and change they make is one which they think will benefit the client (because it will benefit them!). This is FWM's main selling point.


i.e.

• Not a stockbroker, because they will be biased to equities.
• Not an IFA because they recieve commission from fund providers (oh and by the way, if they don't or they rebate the commission, its common practice for them to be wined and dined at lunches and presentations by fund providers, having worked with ex-IFAs myself). Apart from the fact that IFAs are simply not investment experts.
• Not a private bank since they will be tied to or biased towards their own products and they trade off reputation.
• Go for a firm that works solely on an AMC. Its not perfect, but its the best solution that exists right now. Their revenues go up and down with the AUM they have so its in their interests to protect your money and grow it.

You may all wonder why I hate IFAs so much? Here's one reason why. There was someone while I was at FWM who needed to do a (relatively) specialised pension transfer. It involved about 6 hours total work. If FWM had done it for him, it would have been free (part of the service). Instead, his IFA did it for him. The IFA received about £35k commission (pension of £1M+). Let me repeat that - the IFA was paid £35,000 for 6 hours work. This is on top of the AMC the IFA charged to 'manage' his portfolio.

• IFAs are not investment experts and are really for people who don't have enough money to interest a money manager. Most of what IFAs know about products can be discerned with about 10 minutes looking around on the internet.
• They have extortionate fees (ask your IFA the Total Expense Ratio of your portfolio: 1-1.5% AMC for IFA, 1-1.5% AMC on each individual product, upfront fees on the products, dealing charges - if your TER is under 2.5% you've had a result).
• They often go for 'flavour of the month' products.
• They never stick their neck out on the line with a VIEW on the markets.
• They set portfolios up so the client will neither win nor lose (but they'll do alright).

When you have £200k+, you can do better, believe me.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by xyy123

Contradiction.

To clarify: IFAs are INDEPENDENT, not IMPARTIAL. Unless you go to an IFA who is FEE-BASED he will most likely be influenced by the COMMISSION from product providers. If you do decide to go for a fee-based IFA, then ask yourself if you're satisfied with 4 hours worth of attention to your portfolio for a year (4x 1 hour reviews)?

The idea of commission bias is often claimed but rarely evidenced. IFAs represent fewer than 2% of complaints about service to the Financial Ombudsman Service despite being the biggest arranger of investments, so it doesn't seem that commission bias is a widespread problem. Add to that that fact that most commission-based IFAs will operate on a fixed commission basis and will rebate the different (e.g. 2% initial commission, resulting in a 3% rebate for a product with a 5% commission rate, etc) and you really don't have all that much scope for problems of commission bias.

About the only thing you can claim is that some IFAs might feasibly recommend investing where savings would be more appropriate, but I've never personally seen a good example of this. Even people who invested right before the recent market crash would be getting back towards positive returns by now, and with a decent investment timescale they should still return a good profit.

Try finding an investment manager who does not custody assets and does not receive commission for trading the portfolio. That way every investment they choose and change they make is one which they think will benefit the client (because it will benefit them!). This is FWM's main selling point.

Churning would be valid grounds for complaint against an IFA. Again, this does not appear to be widespread based on the figures. On top of that, switches within a fund platform can usually be done free of charge, so for the majority of investments that IFAs make, there won't be an initial commission for switches unless it's agreed that the fee will come from the new investment (which would be an odd way to pay once the service is established: usually the trail would be sufficient).

Not a stockbroker, because they will be biased to equities.

A better reason is because they tend to charge very high fees to manage portfolios that an IFA can look after for a much lower cost. I've seen some very expensive discretionary managed services, and the diversification is often worse than a single investment in a unit trust.

Of course, stockbrokers can trade in investment trusts, and if that's within their mandate there's nothing stopping them from going down that route for a customer. They can also access institutional liquidity funds, something that can be very useful at times, along with directly held corporate bonds and gilts

For larger portfolios a discretionary managed stockbroking service might be ideal.

Not an IFA because they recieve commission from fund providers (oh and by the way, if they don't or they rebate the commission, its common practice for them to be wined and dined at lunches and presentations by fund providers, having worked with ex-IFAs myself). Apart from the fact that IFAs are simply not investment experts.

Been through this. An IFA does not have to receive commission: that's the client's choice, not the IFA's. If the client chooses to pay through commission, they can agree a maximum. Aside from that, who cares if the IFA goes out and meets fund managers? If it gets through their compliance team, it's a great way for the IFA to get an insight into how the fund is managed. My own company goes out for meetings with fund managers regularly to ensure that our knowledge base is as complete as possible. There's no bias there, managers get upgraded and downgraded on our lists purely based on merit and their strategies.

Not a private bank since they will be tied to or biased towards their own products and they trade off reputation.

I would imagine that some of the private banks are excellent, and I'd be very surprised to find them biased towards their own products at the level of true private banking. People with £2 million or more invested through such an organisation would generally be savvy enough to know when they're looking at a bad deal.

The only real criticism I'd have of this sort of service would be the cost. Private banks tend to be more expensive than the expensive IFAs, from what I've seen anyway.

Go for a firm that works solely on an AMC. Its not perfect, but its the best solution that exists right now. Their revenues go up and down with the AUM they have so its in their interests to protect your money and grow it.

It's in their best interest to get more assets under management. If the best strategy is to retreat to cash, there's a definite conflict of interest. Plus you have the issue that the cost of managing £2million isn't twice as much as managing £1million. In fact, charging someone twice as much for comparatively little work is one of the reasons that commission-based work is frowned upon.

To be perfectly honest, there's no real difference between a percentage fee and a fixed commission percentage. The only technical difference is that the customer pays directly in the case of the fee, while they pay indirectly for the commission.

The single best way to handle a portfolio this large is via a fixed hourly fee. A service charging as little as 0.5% annually on £2million would have to do £10k worth of work per year to make it cost-effective compared with retaining a fee-based IFA. Going down that route and assuming an expensive IFA charging £250p/h, you'd be looking at 40 hours work a year from the actual adviser himself before the percentage fee became the better option.

You may all wonder why I hate IFAs so much? Here's one reason why. There was someone while I was at FWM who needed to do a (relatively) specialised pension transfer. It involved about 6 hours total work. If FWM had done it for him, it would have been free (part of the service). Instead, his IFA did it for him. The IFA received about £35k commission (pension of £1M+). Let me repeat that - the IFA was paid £35,000 for 6 hours work. This is on top of the AMC the IFA charged to 'manage' his portfolio.

The client agreed that fee, presumably. A silly thing to do, but that way their call. Maybe they thought they'd get a better ongoing service than with FWM and decided it was worth it? Maybe they built up a very large credit balance with the IFA for future fees? Who knows.

In any case, this is one incident, hardly representative of the whole industry.

IFAs are not investment experts and are really for people who don't have enough money to interest a money manager. Most of what IFAs know about products can be discerned with about 10 minutes looking around on the internet.

Absolute load of rubbish. My employer, an IFA, only takes on clients with £1million or more because we are a firm with our own investment experts and we charge a lot for their time. You simply couldn't learn the knowledge we have from 10 minutes of research on the internet. You wouldn't even be able to read all the condensed investment bulletins we receive in a day in 10 minutes.

They have extortionate fees (ask your IFA the Total Expense Ratio of your portfolio: 1-1.5% AMC for IFA, 1-1.5% AMC on each individual product, upfront fees on the products, dealing charges - if your TER is under 2.5% you've had a result).

Those are the investments, not the IFA. Go direct and you'll still have an AMC of 1-2% depending on the product. Unit trusts and OEICs are still some of the best investment vehicles out there, and at the end of the day it's the performance that matters, not the charges. The IFA can actually reduce the AMC on these products, and is very unlikely to add anywhere near as much as you've claimed here, usually taking their trail fee from commission (i.e. you've counted the same fee twice, either through ignorance or maliciousness).

The TER on these funds is again not something the IFA has any real control over except via the trail commission.

They often go for 'flavour of the month' products.

Most IFAs I've seen so far have actually been very much against such strategies, instead choosing a wide selection of products covering a number of sectors and asset classes.

They never stick their neck out on the line with a VIEW on the markets.

In general, why should they? They're not investment analysts, it's not their job to predict the market. It's their job to prepare the client as best as possible for long term planning taking account of the long term general trends (i.e. generally long term gain in most markets with short term volatility). Some firms, like my own, have in house analysts who can offer their views on the markets, but in general investment advisers aren't also going to be investment analysts because both are full-time jobs.

They set portfolios up so the client will neither win nor lose (but they'll do alright).

Doing alright is generally considered good. IFAs tend to balance risk with potential reward in line with client objectives and risk profiles. Are you suggesting that they should then proceed to invest outside their client's risk profile (i.e. further up the efficient frontier) to try to generate higher returns? That doesn't sound like TCF to me...

When you have £200k+, you can do better, believe me.

Fee based IFA trumps all beyond a certain level. There's just no point in paying an annual percentage charge when your portfolio becomes large enough.

[jamesd]

xyy123, Aegis has gone into detail but if a person wants to avoid annual management charges in the 1.5% range the easy way is to also avoid FWM and instead buy a global growth tracker fund or ETF with low charges.

[jem16]

Originally Posted by xyy123

Responded to you in relevant thread.

You have yet to answer what exactly what your job was within this company. With a comment like the one below plus your "advice" to put £60k all in one tracker it surely can't have been an adviser.

They have extortionate fees (ask your IFA the Total Expense Ratio of your portfolio: 1-1.5% AMC for IFA, 1-1.5% AMC on each individual product, upfront fees on the products, dealing charges - if your TER is under 2.5% you've had a result).

As Aegis has already pointed out the normal trail commission of 0.5% comes directly from the AMC of the product and is not in addition to as you state.

[xyy123]

Originally Posted by Aegis

IFAs represent fewer than 2% of complaints about service to the Financial Ombudsman Service despite being the biggest arranger of investments, so it doesn't seem that commission bias is a widespread problem.

I'd like to see your evidence for this, bearing in mind the FOS deals with ALL financial services companies, including things like HP Finance, not just investment companies.

Add to that that fact that most commission-based IFAs will operate on a fixed commission basis and will rebate the different (e.g. 2% initial commission, resulting in a 3% rebate for a product with a 5% commission rate, etc) and you really don't have all that much scope for problems of commission bias.

2% seems a lot to me. Would the IFA prefer a product paying 5% commission then or 0%? Exactly.

Aside from that, who cares if the IFA goes out and meets fund managers? If it gets through their compliance team, it's a great way for the IFA to get an insight into how the fund is managed.

I didn't mean meeting fund managers - I meant the "Intermediary Sales Teams" that all fund providers have. They SELL the products to IFAs, if not by commission, then by benefits. They are not investment experts or fund managers, they are salespeople.

I would imagine that some of the private banks are excellent, and I'd be very surprised to find them biased towards their own products at the level of true private banking. People with £2 million or more invested through such an organisation would generally be savvy enough to know when they're looking at a bad deal.

Naive. Some of the worst portfolios I have ever seen have come from Coutts. But yes, they are also very expensive. People like them because they have the reputation and brand.

It's in their best interest to get more assets under management. If the best strategy is to retreat to cash, there's a definite conflict of interest.

I fail to see the conflict of interest here... It doesn't matter to them if they're managing £10B cash or £10B equity does it? They just want it to not go down and go up as much as possible without undue risk? FWM have liquidated their entire client base on several occasions.

The single best way to handle a portfolio this large is via a fixed hourly fee. A service charging as little as 0.5% annually on £2million would have to do £10k worth of work per year to make it cost-effective compared with retaining a fee-based IFA. Going down that route and assuming an expensive IFA charging £250p/h, you'd be looking at 40 hours work a year from the actual adviser himself before the percentage fee became the better option.

It really isn't. This is not proactive management and it is an unnecessary layer of fees because they will still be investing in funds with their own AMCs. You could get a bespoke direct equity portfolio with assets of that size.

The TER on these funds is again not something the IFA has any real control over except via the trail commission.

I'm talking about the TER on the whole portfolio. What is more, is that many IFA portfolios include Fund of funds/Fund of hedge funds! So that's the IFA employing someone, to employ someone to employ some people to pick some securities. Specialist. I have seen IFA portfolios with TERs in the region of 5-6% before.

In general, why should they?

Accountability.
Client: "My portfolio lost money Mr. IFA. Why?"
IFA: "The funds you held went down."
Client: "Why did you recommend them then?"
IFA: "I thought they would go up."
Client: "So you're saying your advice wasn't correct?"
IFA: "No my advice was correct, the fund manager got it wrong. We'll sell that fund and buy another one."
Client: "Why didn't the fund manager pull out of the market?"
IFA: "Well he is tied by the rigidity of his fund. He can only invest 20% in cash you see."
Client: "Well why didn't you just not buy the fund and stay in cash then?"
IFA: "Because I am not an expert on the markets, I am only qualified enough to give advice on other people's products."
Client: "Is that information readily available on the internet and in the public domain, such as the provider's website and prospectus?"
IFA: "Well, yes, but you're also paying for my experience."
Client: "Hmmm. Your experience doesn't seem to be doing me any good. I think I'll be ok on my own."

Doing alright is generally considered good.

You misunderstood, I meant the IFAs will do alright.

Originally Posted by jamesd

xyy123, Aegis has gone into detail but if a person wants to avoid annual management charges in the 1.5% range the easy way is to also avoid FWM and instead buy a global growth tracker fund or ETF with low charges.

Finally, a sensible post. People have forgotten my posts from the beginning. FWM run growth portfolios (generally speaking) of 100% equity in order to try and beat the market (generally MSCI world index). Occasionally they have been 100% fixed interest in anticipation of bear markets. If your investment time horizon for x amount of money is around 7-8 years+ you should most likely be 100% equity.

A Global tracker is an excellent alternative (in fact what I do). Low fees and wide diversification. In time you will beat the vast majority of mutual funds, private banks, stockbrokers, money managers, IFA portfolios, structured products, whatever. Their main vice is they are very easy to sell when there is a panic and that's how people lose out with them.

[whiteflag]

Originally Posted by xyy123

I'd like to see your evidence for this, bearing in mind the FOS deals with ALL financial services companies, including things like HP Finance, not just investment companies.


2% seems a lot to me. Would the IFA prefer a product paying 5% commission then or 0%? Exactly.


I didn't mean meeting fund managers - I meant the "Intermediary Sales Teams" that all fund providers have. They SELL the products to IFAs, if not by commission, then by benefits. They are not investment experts or fund managers, they are salespeople.


Naive. Some of the worst portfolios I have ever seen have come from Coutts. But yes, they are also very expensive. People like them because they have the reputation and brand.


I fail to see the conflict of interest here... It doesn't matter to them if they're managing £10B cash or £10B equity does it? They just want it to not go down and go up as much as possible without undue risk? FWM have liquidated their entire client base on several occasions.


It really isn't. This is not proactive management and it is an unnecessary layer of fees because they will still be investing in funds with their own AMCs. You could get a bespoke direct equity portfolio with assets of that size.


I'm talking about the TER on the whole portfolio. What is more, is that many IFA portfolios include Fund of funds/Fund of hedge funds! So that's the IFA employing someone, to employ someone to employ some people to pick some securities. Specialist. I have seen IFA portfolios with TERs in the region of 5-6% before.


Accountability.
Client: "My portfolio lost money Mr. IFA. Why?"
IFA: "The funds you held went down."
Client: "Why did you recommend them then?"
IFA: "I thought they would go up."
Client: "So you're saying your advice wasn't correct?"
IFA: "No my advice was correct, the fund manager got it wrong. We'll sell that fund and buy another one."
Client: "Why didn't the fund manager pull out of the market?"
IFA: "Well he is tied by the rigidity of his fund. He can only invest 20% in cash you see."
Client: "Well why didn't you just not buy the fund and stay in cash then?"
IFA: "Because I am not an expert on the markets, I am only qualified enough to give advice on other people's products."
Client: "Is that information readily available on the internet and in the public domain, such as the provider's website and prospectus?"
IFA: "Well, yes, but you're also paying for my experience."
Client: "Hmmm. Your experience doesn't seem to be doing me any good. I think I'll be ok on my own."


You misunderstood, I meant the IFAs will do alright.


Finally, a sensible post. People have forgotten my posts from the beginning. FWM run growth portfolios (generally speaking) of 100% equity in order to try and beat the market (generally MSCI world index). Occasionally they have been 100% fixed interest in anticipation of bear markets. If your investment time horizon for x amount of money is around 7-8 years+ you should most likely be 100% equity.

A Global tracker is an excellent alternative (in fact what I do). Low fees and wide diversification. In time you will beat the vast majority of mutual funds, private banks, stockbrokers, money managers, IFA portfolios, structured products, whatever. Their main vice is they are very easy to sell when there is a panic and that's how people lose out with them.

Nice to see an alternative view, especially in relation to IFAs and what they do or dont as the case may be.

[EdInvestor]

Originally Posted by xyy123

Finally, a sensible post. People have forgotten my posts from the beginning.

I think we've mostly been agreed on this from the beginning, in fact:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...01&postcount=6

[jamesd]

Whiteflag, please follow the "always declare any interest" bit at the top of every page and mention that you compete with IFAs. Not that it necessarily affects your comments, it's just nice to be transparent. btw, do you still use the interesting Truth planning approach that might be of broader interest to anyone considering FWM?

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by xyy123

I'd like to see your evidence for this, bearing in mind the FOS deals with ALL financial services companies, including things like HP Finance, not just investment companies.

Well, I'd like to see your evidence that there's any commission bias first. That way we can look at how many cases become FOS complaints, and from there we can look at how many are upheld. Otherwise the link has been posted here previously, but I don't really have the inclination to go looking for the specific page on the FOS website for you right now.

If no-one else has posted it by the weekend, I'll do a quick search.

2% seems a lot to me. Would the IFA prefer a product paying 5% commission then or 0%? Exactly.

Makes no difference at all. If they agree an up front fee of 2% of all investments, then the excess commission will be rebated and anything with zero commission will incur a charge.

By the way, another common statement here is that IFAs are the single biggest referrer to NS&I products in the UK. NS&I pays no commission, and by your logic shouldn't therefore be recommended much at all.

I didn't mean meeting fund managers - I meant the "Intermediary Sales Teams" that all fund providers have. They SELL the products to IFAs, if not by commission, then by benefits. They are not investment experts or fund managers, they are salespeople.

Those teams can't sell anything to the IFA unless he is himself looking for an investment. They can persuade the IFA, but he then has to take the facts and present them to clients and the facts must be run through compliance checks before making it to the public.

Now, if you're talking about negotiations with these teams for better rates, that's another matter entirely. Large enough IFA firms can reduce the AMC on funds by providing a large enough volume of business through to them, assuming they go direct of course. This is less of an issue when using a platform, as the platform tends to already negotiation with a huge amount of leverage.

All this means that the IFAs can pass on more savings to their clients, hence saving them money. There's no evidence that this leads to unsuitable recommendations, unless you have evidence that these fund teams somehow manage to bribe the IFAs into recommending their funds?

Naive. Some of the worst portfolios I have ever seen have come from Coutts. But yes, they are also very expensive. People like them because they have the reputation and brand.

Coutts are RBS with a few bells and whistles. You can get a Coutts account with about £10k to your name. They're not a real private bank any more. UBS would be a better example, or C. Hoare & Co, or HSBC's private banking arm These are much better examples of exclusive private banking rather than the high-street private banks, which are just ways to tease more money out of people who like status symbols.

I fail to see the conflict of interest here... It doesn't matter to them if they're managing £10B cash or £10B equity does it? They just want it to not go down and go up as much as possible without undue risk? FWM have liquidated their entire client base on several occasions.

So a customer holding nothing but cash for a year would still pay their full fee with you? It might not be a conflict of interest, but it certainly sounds like an incredibly expensive savings account. You presumably can't count NS&I products as assets under your management, do you recommend those on a regular basis or is there a conflict of interest because that represents a chunk of your fees walking away from you if you advise the client to fully utilise such savings vehicles?

It really isn't. This is not proactive management and it is an unnecessary layer of fees because they will still be investing in funds with their own AMCs. You could get a bespoke direct equity portfolio with assets of that size.

You'll get a bespoke equity portfolio through an IFA. The only difference is that the bespoke part will be in the funds used and the amounts invested into each sector. You'll also have the added advantage that each of the funds is then managed by someone whose job is solely to know his sector and to do the best he can to maximise profit in that sector. Yes, it's an extra layer of charges, but it's better in my view to have that local expertise separate to the overall investment strategy.

It's also not going to be particularly expensive if you look purely at the cost of the advice. The advice will cost a multiple of the amount of time spent working on client matters and no more. The charges on the investment funds will be reduced because the full initial commission and the IFA's portion of the trail commission will be fully rebates to the customer.

For disclosure purposes, what percentage charge does FWM levy for its services, and how much work can a client realistically expect to be done for them for that fee?

I'm talking about the TER on the whole portfolio. What is more, is that many IFA portfolios include Fund of funds/Fund of hedge funds! So that's the IFA employing someone, to employ someone to employ some people to pick some securities. Specialist. I have seen IFA portfolios with TERs in the region of 5-6% before.

I've never seen such a portfolio. Even a fund of funds typically has TERs under 3% inclusive of all annual charges (from which the IFA will be paid trail commission, which can therefore be rebated or used to pay the ongoing servicing fee).

What products made up this 5-6% TER portfolio?

Accountability.
Client: "My portfolio lost money Mr. IFA. Why?"
IFA: "The funds you held went down."
Client: "Why did you recommend them then?"
IFA: "I thought they would go up."
Client: "So you're saying your advice wasn't correct?"
IFA: "No my advice was correct, the fund manager got it wrong. We'll sell that fund and buy another one."
Client: "Why didn't the fund manager pull out of the market?"
IFA: "Well he is tied by the rigidity of his fund. He can only invest 20% in cash you see."
Client: "Well why didn't you just not buy the fund and stay in cash then?"
IFA: "Because I am not an expert on the markets, I am only qualified enough to give advice on other people's products."
Client: "Is that information readily available on the internet and in the public domain, such as the provider's website and prospectus?"
IFA: "Well, yes, but you're also paying for my experience."
Client: "Hmmm. Your experience doesn't seem to be doing me any good. I think I'll be ok on my own."

It's all about time in the markets with the right asset allocation. Trying to time the markets is usually prohibitively expensive and is likely to see someone lose money when the upside comes around again.

However, because my company deals with much larger portfolios than the norm and because we operate on a fee basis, we were able to do a lot more work for our clients over the last year and have come out ahead by switching a large amount of client holdings out of equities and into gilts, then later out of gilts and into corporate bonds. Still later we started moving back into equities, and as such most of our clients have come through this recent turmoil relatively unscathed despite the various problems.

There have been a few bad fund choices over time, but generally these are ones where we have only recommended a small proportion of client money as part of their high-risk allocation within a well-balanced portfolio. Full accountability is essential for us, and we are always willing to explain why we selected a fund and why we feel it underperformed so much. Fortunately it's fairly rare for this to happen.

You misunderstood, I meant the IFAs will do alright.

You'd hope so. They do work for a living after all, not for charity.

Finally, a sensible post. People have forgotten my posts from the beginning. FWM run growth portfolios (generally speaking) of 100% equity in order to try and beat the market (generally MSCI world index). Occasionally they have been 100% fixed interest in anticipation of bear markets. If your investment time horizon for x amount of money is around 7-8 years+ you should most likely be 100% equity.

That's an overly generalised statement. Someone with a low risk profile 8 years from retirement absolutely should not be 100% in equity. In fact, putting them 100% into equity would be grounds for an upheld complaint with the FOS if they later realised what had been done. Someone that close to retirement would be better off sheltering more and more of their portfolio in cash and fixed income as time passes to avoid losing value where possible. The exception would be if they weren't going to be relying on their pension and would be happy letting it grow for a few more years before taking their commencement lump sum.

If someone was proposing to take an annuity and a lump sum in 8 years time, your comment about 100% equities would be downright irresponsible.

A Global tracker is an excellent alternative (in fact what I do). Low fees and wide diversification. In time you will beat the vast majority of mutual funds, private banks, stockbrokers, money managers, IFA portfolios, structured products, whatever. Their main vice is they are very easy to sell when there is a panic and that's how people lose out with them.

What's the 10-year return on a good global tracker? How would it compare to similar sector funds from Invesco Perpetual, Fidelity, M&G, GAM and Schroders over the same period in terms of absolute returns? These are the ones to beat, as they're likely to be fund managers recommended by almost all IFAs while constructing a balanced portfolio.


Just in case it gets lost in the post (another fairly big post after all), what would be your annual fees for managing a client's money? Reading the website it sounds like a tiered structure, but I can't find how much it would actually cost.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by Aegis

Just in case it gets lost in the post (another fairly big post after all), what would be your annual fees for managing a client's money? Reading the website it sounds like a tiered structure, but I can't find how much it would actually cost.

Actually, never mind, I found it. You charge 1-1.5% annually for managing this portfolio for a client. No wonder you don't like fixed fee-based companies, they'll do the same work as you for a fraction of the cost for the larger clients. Take a client with £1m spread across pensions and investments. With FWM, that's going to be a charge of £10k a year with no guarantee whatsoever of the amount of work that will actually be done by the company. A fee-based IFA with a reasonable amount of experience could potentially do well over 40 hours of dedicated work on that same client's portfolio, and could include their estate planning, their insurance needs, etc without requiring a new adviser solely for those subjects.

This is also assuming that the IFA does all the work himself. If he instead passes the admin tasks to an administrator and some of the more basic parts of the financial planning process to a paraplanner, that 40 hour fee could end up being a 3-figure amount without trouble.

Once you start increasing the portfolio beyond this size, it becomes even mor economical to use a fixed-fee model, as £3m translates to £30k with no additional work needed before the fee is taken. Clients out there going into the 8-figure personal net worth level would be paying over £100k a year for the percentage based service, but would they realistically be getting 10 times the work done for them? I believe this starts to highlight the issues with the percentage model.

At the lower end of the scale the value for money is probably better than at the high end (where it's pretty awful), but even then the chances are that if it's like most low-end wealth management I've seen, the client will basically be invested into a model portfolio, which will then be tweaked more or less depending on how much the client is worth to the company.

It's no surprise that you've been trying to show how expensive IFAs are because they offer competition, and apparently can offer it at comparable rates at the low end and at much cheaper rates at the high end of the scale. You might argue that IFAs get it wrong from time to time, but in this very thread you've stated that FWM totally misread the markets in late 2007 and kept client money fully invested in equities through that time. To be honest, I imagine that the services produce similar results, but people can get cheaper advice.

[whiteflag]

[QUOTE=jamesd;26618887]

Whiteflag, please follow the "always declare any interest" bit at the top of every page

Why , no one else does?

and mention that you compete with IFAs

Do I? What do you know that I dont

. Not that it necessarily affects your comments, it's just nice to be transparent

its in my profile for anyone that wants to look

. btw, do you still use the interesting Truth planning approach that might be of broader interest to anyone considering FWM?

Yes- all the time. It is at the core of our business. Cant see how you can advise clients without using it or similar tools.

[xyy123]

Originally Posted by Aegis

Well, I'd like to see your evidence that there's any commission bias first. That way we can look at how many cases become FOS complaints, and from there we can look at how many are upheld. Otherwise the link has been posted here previously, but I don't really have the inclination to go looking for the specific page on the FOS website for you right now.

The fact that there is a commission involved is a conflict of interest in itself. Some financial advisors will be more tempted than others but it is likely to influence some, if not all, regardless. Bear in mind that most portfolio managers, not just IFAs, use 3rd party products and as such, will be open to the search when you look at how many complaints involve such providers when you look at the Portfolio Management department in the FOS, not the FOS as a whole.

So a customer holding nothing but cash for a year would still pay their full fee with you? It might not be a conflict of interest, but it certainly sounds like an incredibly expensive savings account. You presumably can't count NS&I products as assets under your management, do you recommend those on a regular basis or is there a conflict of interest because that represents a chunk of your fees walking away from you if you advise the client to fully utilise such savings vehicles?

Please stop referring to me as you (i.e. FWM). I don't work there anymore.

Yes, clients have held cash/fixed interest for over a year before with the intention to reinvest in equities. And they have achieved higher returns than cash over the period so it was worthwhile.

You'll get a bespoke equity portfolio through an IFA. The only difference is that the bespoke part will be in the funds used and the amounts invested into each sector. You'll also have the added advantage that each of the funds is then managed by someone whose job is solely to know his sector and to do the best he can to maximise profit in that sector. Yes, it's an extra layer of charges, but it's better in my view to have that local expertise separate to the overall investment strategy.

This just made me laugh. You unknowingly stumbled into my pet hate of why I hate most funds/IFAs.
1. How is a retail fund bespoke to a client? Its not.
2. If I get a Japanese Industrials fund and Japanese industrials are heading nowhere but down, will the fund manager either call me to tell me to sell out of his fund or invest his fund in 100% cash and fixed interest? No. Neither. The IFA won't tell me japanese industrials aren't the place to be because he's not an investment expert so the decision rests with me. I'm not an investment expert because I'm using an IFA... As far as I am concerned, the only funds worth looking at are global funds with enough flexibility to be 100% invested or cash as they see fit. And I'll buy that direct, thanks.

You need to go and read Determinants of Portfolio Performance by Brinson, Hood and Beebower. You'll probably dismiss it since it goes against everything you have 'learned'. However, it is a massive study lasting several years based on empirical evidence. Its conclusion is that portfolio performance is based primarily (70%+, some say as high as 90%) on asset allocation. Now I don't mean something like 60% equity, 25% bonds, 10% cash, 5% alternative. Static, balanced portfolios are destined to underperform in the very long term. I mean be in equities when equities are doing well and in cash or bonds when they're not.

20% or less is based on the style (i.e. geographic, sector, big cap/small cap, growth/value etc.). So having a specialist, frankly, is NOT worth the extra layer of fees. 10% or less is on security selection.

What products made up this 5-6% TER portfolio?

All the usual tricks. WithProfits and Endowments, structured products, commercial property, funds, fund of funds, fund of hedge funds etc.

That's an overly generalised statement. Someone with a low risk profile 8 years from retirement absolutely should not be 100% in equity. In fact, putting them 100% into equity would be grounds for an upheld complaint with the FOS if they later realised what had been done. Someone that close to retirement would be better off sheltering more and more of their portfolio in cash and fixed income as time passes to avoid losing value where possible.

1. Have you ever even done any Monte Carlo analysis? Any at all? I know its based on historical data but most performance projectors are. Over longer time horizons (ten years or more), equities historically provide the greatest return, outperforming bonds in 98% of the 20-year rolling periods since 1926. Even at only ten years, equities beat bonds nearly 90% of the time.

The idea that someone should be all fixed interest when they retire is absurd. It does not take into account, at all, how much income they need, nor their objectives. If they physically need 20k a year to live from a 200k portfolio, increasing with inflation every year, it gives them a lifespan of less than 10 years. Having said that, if someone has £1M and only needs 10k, he doesn't need anything other than the lowest risk investment - gilts. He doesn't need anyone to advise him on that or do it for him. Presuming he doesn't have any ambitions to pass on his assets and therefore make them grow.

2. I don't, personally agree with risk profiles a lot. For one they are subjective - what I consider low risk someone else might consider medium risk. Secondly, a non-sophisticated investor should be telling a manager what their objectives are and having them try and meet those objectives in the least risky way possible.

Most people do not understand market risk and risk profiles basically assume they do. If my objectives are to double my money every year but consider myself a medium risk investor, what is a suitable portfolio for that? By conventional definitions, there isn't one. They also rarely consider their long-term objectives and the best way to meet them.

EDIT: By the way, you can get research pieces from firms like Fidelity (and FWM) that show someone with £250k in 1970 taking income (think it was £30k) going up each year by inflation. One invests in bonds and one invests in a FTSE tracker. The bond portfolio was depleted after about 18 years whereas the FTSE tracker portfolio was worth considerably more, almost double I think.

After the first two years the tracker portfolio was worth less than half its original value, which is when most people would have thrown in the towel and gone to cash. And that is why most people never make any decent money in equities.

What's the 10-year return on a good global tracker? How would it compare to similar sector funds from Invesco Perpetual, Fidelity, M&G, GAM and Schroders over the same period in terms of absolute returns? These are the ones to beat, as they're likely to be fund managers recommended by almost all IFAs while constructing a balanced portfolio.

How many of your clients have held only those funds that have outperformed the market for the last 10 years?

Originally Posted by Aegis

Actually, never mind, I found it. You charge 1-1.5% annually for managing this portfolio for a client. No wonder you don't like fixed fee-based companies, they'll do the same work as you for a fraction of the cost for the larger clients. Take a client with £1m spread across pensions and investments. With FWM, that's going to be a charge of £10k a year with no guarantee whatsoever of the amount of work that will actually be done by the company. A fee-based IFA with a reasonable amount of experience could potentially do well over 40 hours of dedicated work on that same client's portfolio, and could include their estate planning, their insurance needs, etc without requiring a new adviser solely for those subjects.

This is also assuming that the IFA does all the work himself. If he instead passes the admin tasks to an administrator and some of the more basic parts of the financial planning process to a paraplanner, that 40 hour fee could end up being a 3-figure amount without trouble.

Once you start increasing the portfolio beyond this size, it becomes even mor economical to use a fixed-fee model, as £3m translates to £30k with no additional work needed before the fee is taken. Clients out there going into the 8-figure personal net worth level would be paying over £100k a year for the percentage based service, but would they realistically be getting 10 times the work done for them? I believe this starts to highlight the issues with the percentage model.

FWM has over 50 research analysts (all CFA qualified) that work standard working weeks for every client's portfolio (because they're all very similar).

So thats 50 x 5 (days) x 8 (hours) x 48 (weeks) = 96,000 hours per year.

That's obviously not including the dedicated client service representative they get (also CFA qualified) at the end of a phone whenever they need them and meet with them once a quarter. Or including the time of the in-house financial planner/pension specialist they get as and when they want it for no extra cost. Or the admin team. Or the portfolio evaluation group. Or the expertise of an industry guru who invented the price/sales ratio and is a self-made billionaire through his own investments.

I think that's better value, thanks.

Plus, you have missed the entire point that even if the person with a £3M portfolio is getting advice through a fee-based IFA, he is still investing in FUNDS and STILL paying 1.5% at least anyway!

[whiteflag]

Originally Posted by xyy123

The fact that there is a commission involved is a conflict of interest in itself. Some financial advisors will be more tempted than others but it is likely to influence some, if not all, regardless. Bear in mind that most portfolio managers, not just IFAs, use 3rd party products and as such, will be open to the search when you look at how many complaints involve such providers when you look at the Portfolio Management department in the FOS, not the FOS as a whole.


Please stop referring to me as you (i.e. FWM). I don't work there anymore.

Yes, clients have held cash/fixed interest for over a year before with the intention to reinvest in equities. And they have achieved higher returns than cash over the period so it was worthwhile.


This just made me laugh. You unknowingly stumbled into my pet hate of why I hate most funds/IFAs.
1. How is a retail fund bespoke to a client? Its not.
2. If I get a Japanese Industrials fund and Japanese industrials are heading nowhere but down, will the fund manager either call me to tell me to sell out of my fund or invest his fund in 100% cash and fixed interest? No. Neither. The IFA won't tell me japanese industrials aren't the place to be because he's not an investment expert so the decision rests with me. I'm not an investment expert because I'm using an IFA... As far as I am concerned, the only funds worth looking at are global funds with enough flexibility to be 100% invested or cash as they see fit. And I'll buy that direct, thanks.

You need to go and read Determinants of Portfolio Performance by Brinson, Hood and Beebower. You'll probably dismiss it since it goes against everything you have 'learned'. However, it is a massive study lasting several years based on empirical evidence. Its conclusion is that portfolio performance is based primarily (70%+, some say as high as 90%) on asset allocation. Now I don't mean something like 60% equity, 25% bonds, 10% cash, 5% alternative. Static, balanced portfolios are destined to underperform in the very long term. I mean be in equities when equities are doing well and in cash or bonds when they're not.

20% or less is based on the style (i.e. geographic, sector, big cap/small cap, growth/value etc.). So having a specialist, frankly, is NOT worth the extra layer of fees. 10% or less is on security selection.


All the usual tricks. WithProfits and Endowments, structured products, commercial property, funds, fund of funds, fund of hedge funds etc.


1. Have you ever even done any Monte Carlo analysis? Any at all? I know its based on historical data but most performance projectors are. Over longer time horizons (ten years or more), equities historically provide the greatest return, outperforming bonds in 98% of the 20-year rolling periods since 1926. Even at only ten years, equities beat bonds nearly 90% of the time.

The idea that someone should be all fixed interest when they retire is absurd. It does not take into account, at all, how much income they need. If they physically need 20k a year to live from a 200k portfolio, increasing with inflation every year, it gives them a lifespan of less than 10 years. Having said that, if someone has £1M and only needs 10k, he doesn't need anything other than the lowest risk investment - gilts. He doesn't need anyone to advise him on that or do it for him. Presuming he doesn't have any ambitions to pass on his assets and therefore make them grow.

2. I don't, personally agree with risk profiles a lot. For one they are subjective - what I consider low risk someone else might consider medium risk. Secondly, a non-sophisticated investor should be telling a manager what their objectives are and having them try and meet those objectives in the least risky way possible.

Most people do not understand market risk and risk profiles basically assume they do. If my objectives are to double my money every year but consider myself a medium risk investor, what is a suitable portfolio for that? By conventional definitions, there isn't one. They also rarely consider their long-term objectives and the best way to meet them.


How many of your clients have held only those funds that have outperformed the market for the last 10 years?


FWM has over 50 research analysts (all CFA qualified) that work standard working weeks for every client's portfolio (because they're all very similar).

So thats 50 x 5 (days) x 8 (hours) x 48 (weeks) = 96,000 hours per year. That's obviously not including the dedicated client service representative they get (also CFA qualified) at the end of a phone whenever they need them and meet with them once a quarter. Or including the time of the in-house financial planner/pension specialist they get as and when they want it for no extra cost. Or the admin team. Or the portfolio evaluation group. Or the expertise of an industry guru who invented the price/sales ratio and is a self-made billionaire through his own investments.

I think that's better value, thanks.

Plus, you have missed the entire point that even if the person with a £3M portfolio is getting advice through a fee-based IFA, he is still investing in FUNDS and STILL paying 1.5% at least anyway!

whether you agree with this and Aegis's posts I think they are probably amongst the best Ive seen on here.

[jamesd]

Originally Posted by xyy123

Plus, you have missed the entire point that even if the person with a £3M portfolio is getting advice through a fee-based IFA, he is still investing in FUNDS and STILL paying 1.5% at least anyway!

0.25% or so in institutional units seems more suitable at that size, unless there's a fund that is appropriate and not available that way.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by jamesd

0.25% or so in institutional units seems more suitable at that size, unless there's a fund that is appropriate and not available that way.

Indeed. An IFA client paying the full AMC on a managed fund is pretty much unheard of.

[Myrmidon_J]

Originally Posted by xyy123

The idea that someone should be all fixed interest when they retire is absurd.

Similarly, the idea that anyone should be invested 100% in equities (or: growth assets) approaching retirement is nonsense.

A client of ours received advice from our firm, and from another, two years prior to retirement (in 2007). He chose the latter and the adviser recommended a portfolio invested heavily in commercial property, property securities and other equities.

Our recommendation was a portfolio consisting of 25% growth assets and 75% fixed interest / cash.
Boring, eh?

But, unlike the other firm, we had actually paid attention to the client's stated aim of preserving the value of the 25% tax-free lump sum payable on retirement.

Can you guess what happened next?

[jamesd]

Someone got an unpleasant redress bill?

[xyy123]

Originally Posted by Myrmidon_J

Similarly, the idea that anyone should be invested 100% in equities (or: growth assets) approaching retirement is nonsense.

Originally Posted by xyy123

The idea that someone should be all fixed interest when they retire is absurd. It does not take into account, at all, how much income they need, nor their objectives.

...and...

Originally Posted by xyy123

EDIT: By the way, you can get research pieces from firms like Fidelity (and FWM) that show someone with £250k in 1970 taking income (think it was £30k) going up each year by inflation. One invests in bonds and one invests in a FTSE tracker. The bond portfolio was depleted after about 18 years whereas the FTSE tracker portfolio was worth considerably more, almost double I think.

Originally Posted by Myrmidon_J

Can you guess what happened next?

I'm guessing he outperformed the market from October 07 until March 09 and underperformed since then and will carry on doing so going forward. But if he definitely has enough money to last him the rest of his life, going up with inflation every year, and has no ambitions to pass more onto anybody, then good luck to him. But then, if that was the case, why would 25% in equities be of any use to him?

[Myrmidon_J]

Originally Posted by xyy123

I'm guessing he outperformed the market from October 07 until March 09 and underperformed since then and will carry on doing so going forward.

You misunderstand.

The client chose the advice of the other firm and was invested 100% in growth assets when "the s*** hit the fan". Consequently, his potential tax-free cash payout fell by almost 40%.

I'm unsure if redress has been sought or indeed paid.

The client believed he had a very positive attitude towards risk ("opportunity", etc.) and rejected our initial proposal of 100% in defensive assets - hence the 'token' 25%. My personal opinion is that he genuinely did not believe that the "downs" of stock market volatility would happen to him.

Our opinion was that although his risk tolerance might have been very high (it was later revised down), his risk capacity was very low - as he had earmarked a specific sum for a specific purpose.

I would certainly agree that 100% equity (growth assets, whatever) investment should never be discounted; but in this instance, it was clearly inappropriate.

I think the asset allocation of the portfolio should absolutely reflect income requirements, objectives, etc. - but also attitude towards risk.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by Myrmidon_J

You misunderstand.

The client chose the advice of the other firm and was invested 100% in growth assets when "the s*** hit the fan". Consequently, his potential tax-free cash payout fell by almost 40%.

I'm unsure if redress has been sought or indeed paid.

The client believed he had a very positive attitude towards risk ("opportunity", etc.) and rejected our initial proposal of 100% in defensive assets - hence the 'token' 25%. My personal opinion is that he genuinely did not believe that the "downs" of stock market volatility would happen to him.

Our opinion was that although his risk tolerance might have been very high (it was later revised down), his risk capacity was very low - as he had earmarked a specific sum for a specific purpose.

I would certainly agree that 100% equity (growth assets, whatever) investment should never be discounted; but in this instance, it was clearly inappropriate.

I think the asset allocation of the portfolio should absolutely reflect income requirements, objectives, etc. - but also attitude towards risk.

My own portfolio is near 100% in equities at the moment (with a new investment in a property fund made fairly recently). My own risk profile is pretty much at the top end of the scale, and my investments aren't time-constrained. As a result I'm comfortable with the ups and downs I'm likely to see.

However, I would be a complete idiot if I recommended that same strategy to someone a couple of years from retirement who was looking to preserve their existing pension pot as best they could. I hope that your ex-client DOES go after that company for unsuitable advice, because they've clearly failed in their duty to actually listen to what the client needs.