Wealth Horizon

himalshelat

Hello All

I came across the website wealthhorizon.com after reading about them in This is money.
Anyone else has any experience dealing with them.
I am tempted to go with them because it's easier and does not seem to have high fees. But I could be wrong.
Any suggestion is welcome.

Thanks for reading.

JoeBlack78

I was tempting to go with a similar service (nutmeg) as someone who is in the early stages of learning about the stock market.

In the end I went with a ftse allshare tracker. Good for a beginner (no personal choice involved) and fee's are very low (I got 0.4% which includes platform and fun managers fee's).

bowlhead99

The fees will end up being similar to something like Nutmeg, about which there are a few threads. Like Nutmeg they don't have a track record on their discretionary management service (these guys only been going for a month or two). The difference is that they do provide you limited 'advice' as to which portfolio they suggest, after you provide some information on a questionnaire, rather than just suggesting a risk level and giving you wider choices and saying it's a pure execution-only service.

But for £25 on a £10000 portfolio it is not going to be hours of discussion, it's going to be mostly (or entirely) computer generated and you'll end up with some sort of standardised portfolio similar to what you could have selected from the risk levels high, medium, low, high-medium etc at somewhere like Nutmeg or on a DIY platform. Unless your questionnaire responses and personal data is contradictory, and then they'll have a human ask you some more things before proceeding (presumably still with some sort of standardised portfolio).

On their FAQs, they do seem to have some caveats. For example:

Does this service provide advice?
Yes. Within this service we will make a ‘Personal Recommendation’ based on the information that you provide us, so it’s crucial that you answer all questions honestly. We go to great lengths to target your portfolio to perform within risk parameters that are right for you. This is quite different to many services on offer that provide an unadvised ‘execution only’ service.

This service offers a discretionary investment service, supported by an Adviser. The automated process is designed to provide advice of a restricted nature based on restricted information provided by you: it is NOT a full advisory service. An Adviser, however, is on hand to answer any questions you may have – just call us if you need help at any point.

Once you have taken the decision to invest, the investment management team makes decisions to buy and sell investments on your behalf in line with the risk grade you have selected. You do not have to give your consent for every transaction; instead, you agree that the investment management team will take responsibility for your investments when you accept the Terms and Conditions. In these terms, there is a commitment and promise to manage your account with skill, care and in accordance with the information you provide.

So, they're saying they provide advice, which ostensibly gets you FCA / ombudsman protection, but in their second paragraph they are saying it "is NOT a full advisory service" and the advice is of a restricted nature based on a basic and limited fact-find, they're not asking every question under the sun. They'll give you some information and a suggestion that hopefully matches what you asked for, but it's your choice to go ahead with it of course and presumably if you don't choose to follow up their initial advice with lots of questions which they answer incompetently, it would be pretty difficult to prove they mis-sold you something. And the advice isn't going to be independent, because the answer will always be to invest in one of their own discretionary managed portfolios (unless it is to not invest at all, which I imagine does not really happen)

I suppose if you're looking at an investment, something's either advised or it isn't. If you can get advised for not too much cost compared to not-advised, then you might as well have it be advised because to you the consumer it should be safer. However don't be lulled into a false sense of security. Safer in that sense just means fit for purpose, and you can imagine they know what minimum questions they need to ask and what data points they need to have considered, to later defend against a charge of bad advice and it not being fit for purpose.

Meanwhile their solution will be for them to invest you into a basket of tracker funds (which would only have underlying charges of 0.1-0.3% p.a.) while charging you maybe as much as a whole percent p.a.- depending on fund choices and size of pot - to cover ongoing advice (rebalancing the portfolio to 'ensure it remains on track' and the actual management service and the underlying fund tracker fees themselves).

You might find you can do a bit of reading yourself and work out what investments are all about, and then you wouldn't need to pay anything like 0.25% for a basic risk preference check, or 1% a year to run a basket of trackers. A percent a year is 10% of your assets after ten years and is quite a bit to give up for the 'stamp of approval' that it was all advised and managed for you. But this 'advised' basis doesn't mean the investments can't or won't lose money.

If they tell you that the equities component of the fund could lose 40% in a year but produce graphs to show that over the last 20 years they would have made 200-300% if they had rebalanced between asset classes at the right times, people will say, yes 300% sounds nice please sign me up. If you have indicated that exposure to those large potential gains is something you want, you might be facing quite large losses if you change your mind and want to exit sooner than you originally thought. Advised or not, there are no guarantees.

But if you're in a position where you know all this and generally understand what funds are all about but just simply can't be bothered picking and choosing them to make your own portfolio on the cheap, then paying someone seems quite a legitimate thing to do, even if you are paying a chunk of money for a standard automated off-the-shelf solution which ends up being quite profitable for them and less so for you.

There is probably room in the industry for a company that offers dirt cheap 'advice' with basic protections, tied to one set of solutions , alongside those that offer expensive independent advice about your whole financial situation, and those that offer no advice to allow you to cheaply DIY.

JoeBlack78 wrote: »

I was tempting to go with a similar service (nutmeg) as someone who is in the early stages of learning about the stock market.

In the end I went with a ftse allshare tracker. Good for a beginner (no personal choice involved) and fee's are very low (I got 0.4% which includes platform and fun managers fee's).

Joeblack's solution is to DIY. He decided to put his whole portfolio into an index based on the stock market of one relatively small country in the world, with his investments skewed to the largest companies in the index meaning he is heavily exposed to some industries and not very much to others. It is a specialist fund. He is all in on company shares, and not at all exposed to 'fixed interest' loans to companies or governments or to other 'non equities' such as property. To have that single specialist fund as your entire portfolio is poor quality investing. However he believes it is 'good for a beginner' because he didn't have to make any personal choices.

What he missed was he DID take a very important choice to buy one single specialist fund and have all his eggs in one basket, instead of buying a portfolio of specialist funds to make a balanced portfolio, or just buying a single generalist fund that contained a variety of underlying asset types.

Joeblack is saving half a percent a year of management fees by using his limited investment knowledge to DIY and put together a specialist portfolio that would be way above the risk tolerance of a typical UK investor. He thinks simply by choosing one popular index that he has heard of, it is a perfect beginner's investment. If he had paid the extra half percent to someone like Nutmeg or Wealth Horizon, you can guarantee they wouldn't have put him all into such an unbalanced high risk specialist fund. They would have made him a more balanced portfolio.

Of course, if he's only investing £500 and really wants to use it as a learning experience of what can happen if you put your eggs in one basket, before coming up with a better plan when he has a larger amount to invest, that's a perfectly valid thing to do. Horses for courses.

Mistermeaner

post / reply : spam

edit: not you bowlhead

colsten

from_the_Wealth_Horizon_website wrote:

Wealth Horizon is a trading style and name used by Self Directed Investments Limited.

If you check Self Directed Investments Limited on the FCA register, you get an email address that suggests they are parmenion.co.uk

Obviously a company with a massive identity crisis. I wouldn't give them a penny of my money, or a minute of my time as if they don't really know who they are, they might not know whose money they have invested.

bowlhead99

colsten wrote: »

Obviously a company with a massive identity crisis. I wouldn't give them a penny of my money, or a minute of my time as if they don't really know who they are, they might not know whose money they have invested.

That seems somewhat harsh. Are companies not allowed to operate through multiple brands now?

Better not use this board's perennial favourite budget-price execution-only stockbroker x-o.co.uk then. Don't give them a penny of your business, in case they lose your money because they think they're also Sharedealactive and Jarvis. And you can't use the other one in the same price range, iWeb, because they're also Halifax Sharedealing. As are BOS Sharedealing.

And I'd better not buy any Ariel washing detergent, because Procter & Gamble also own the Bold and Fairy and Daz and Lenor brands... so they might not know whose clothes they are trying to wash.

Avoiding a business because they have multiple services or distribution channels seems to be cutting off your nose to spite your face - though I personally wouldn't use Wealth Horizon.

colsten

Bowlhead, why on earth would any of the financial services companies wish to trade under multiple different names? Were I grew up, the brand name was sacred, and all your efforts got directed to improving the brand, not to weakening it by launching a competing brand. That is still the case with the major brands.

Which of the most successful brands in this world would dilude their success by launching inferior versions of themselves? Apple, Google, Coca Cola, Mc Donalds, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Samsung, BMW, Oracle, Mercedes Benz, Disney, Honda, SAP, Gilette etc etc etc - any of them?

Any company that feels the need to start trading under a different name has lost their way and is trying to hide something.

masonic

colsten wrote: »

Any company that feels the need to start trading under a different name has lost their way and is trying to hide something.

Trading styles and alternative brand names are just a means for businesses to tailor their products to different demographics without alienating their existing customer base. It's a completely valid way of operating. You and I are both posting to this forum under pseudonyms, yet I don't think either of us is doing so for nefarious purposes.

colsten

bowlhead99 wrote: »

And I'd better not buy any Ariel washing detergent, because Procter & Gamble also own the Bold and Fairy and Daz and Lenor brands... so they might not know whose clothes they are trying to wash.

You are confusing product offerings with company brand. At no stage would P&G have considered to create a new company just because they wanted to launch a new washing powder.

Apple wouldn't have considered changing their company name just because they added the iPhone to their Mac range of products. MacDonalds wouldn't change their company name just because they add another 'healthy' wrap to their menu.Etc etc etc.

bowlhead99

colsten wrote: »

Any company that feels the need to start trading under a different name has lost their way and is trying to hide something.

Exactly an hour and a half prior to this post you said on a different thread:

colsten wrote: »

Crucial to know is that iWeb is pretty much the same as Halifax Sharedealing, and administered by them, just iWeb is cheaper.

Halifax Sharedealing/iWeb websites are very basic but their services are perfectly good to hold your investments IMO.

Why were you not warning people off in that thread about how Halifax had lost their way and what they were trying to hide by using multiple brands for slightly different services and price points ?

Strange that having had (I presume) experience of a business providing quality services though different sub brands / front ends / price points you are happy to tell people they are perfectly good, while here you are bashing another regulated financial services business for doing the same.

masonic

colsten wrote: »

Apple wouldn't have considered changing their company name just because they added the iPhone to their Mac range of products.

But they would consider launching a new budget phone or tablet under a new brand name if they wished to enter into that market - reason? Consumer snobbery. That's why the budget Heinz baked beans have supermarket own brand labels on them.