Why sustainable investment matters | IFA 87 | April 2020

Russia emerged from Communism in 1991 – the year we began

The times that made us, named us

Investec Asset Management is now called Ninety One

Investing for a world of change

Ninety One is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Investments involve risk; losses may be made.

The internet went public in 1991 – the year we began

The times that made us, named us

Investec Asset Management is now called Ninety One

Investing for a world of change

Ninety One is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Investments involve risk; losses may be made.

For today’s discerning financial and investment professional

Why sustainable investment matters Investing to solve environmental challenges

April 2020

ANALYSIS

REVIEWS

Using ETFs in ESG

Interview with Ama Seery, ESG Analyst, Janus Henderson

ISSUE 87

COMMENT

INSIGHT

A pleasure doing business We’ve got great news for you. We’ve launched a brand-new online service for advice firms, designed to let you manage your clients’ NS&I portfolios more easily.

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CONTRIBUTORS

April 2020

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Ed's Welcome

6 Brian Tora An Associate with investment managers JM Finn & Co.

Ed's Rant - Dark Days Michael Wilson tries his best to consider what defensive strategies might be appealing to investors struck by fear over the coronavirus

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Better Business Tracey Underwood of PACE Solutions has practical tips on the use of CRM systems within the financial planning business

Richard Harvey A distinguished independent PR and media consultant.

Tracey Underwood Founder of PACE Solutions

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The future of advice Sharon Sutton, Managing Director at Thornton Chartered Financial Planners assesses some of the challenges which lie ahead for the advice profession

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IFA Magazine special focus on ESG An introduction to this month's special feature looking at sustainable investment

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Responsible investing using ETFs Christopher Mellor, Invesco, looks at some of the ways in which this can be achieved and the advantages of doing so

Michael Wilson Editor-in-Chief editor @ ifamagazine.com

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Brian Tora - The sustainable investment debate Brian Tora looks at whether this is simply the latest trend or set to become a mainstream part of the investment process

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Investing to solve environmental challenges

Sue Whitbread

M&G’s Ben Constable-Maxwell highlights how your clients can target sustainable returns and positive impact for the planet

Editor sue.whitbread@ ifamagazine.com

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Investing for a more inclusive global society M&G's Ben Constable-Maxwell extends his commentary on impact investing as he looks at some businesses which are widening access to financial services

Alex Sullivan Publishing Director alex.sullivan @ ifamagazine.com

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Sustainable investing in the spotlight Sue Whitbread talks to Ama Seery, ESG Analyst, Janus Henderson Global Sustainable Equity fund, about the principles and practice of sustainable investment

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Insurance Doctor

Kim Wonnacott Technical Sales and Marketing kim.wonnacott@ifamagazine.com

In this month’s guide to professional indemnity insurance, Dan West of Apex Insurance looks at the impact of coronavirus on adviser business' insurance needs

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The long way home Marc Beattie of Arlo Wealth offers practical tips on expat advice as Brexit uncertainties unfold

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EIS in the spotlight focus on the new EIS fund launch from ARIE Capital

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In defence of the trust Guy Abrahams, Partner, Private Client at Forsters, explains why trusts remain a vital wealth planning tool

Designed by: Becky Oliver IFA Magazine is published by IFA Magazine Publications Ltd, Arcade Chambers, 8 Kings Road, Bristol BS8 4AB Tel: +44 (0) 1173 258328 © 2020. All rights reserved ‘IFA Magazine’ is a trademark of IFA Magazine Publications Limited.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any printed or electronic retrieval system without prior permission.

All material has been carefully checked for accuracy, but no responsibility can be accepted for inaccuracies. Wherever appropriate, independent research and where necessary legal advice should be sought before acting on any information contained in this publication.

The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up and you may not get back the amount originally invested.

IFA Magazine is for professional advisers only. Full details and eligibility at: www.ifamagazine.com

IFAmagazine.com

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Tapping into women’s wealth Parmenion's Emma Thomas explains the new #AdviseHer campaign

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The power of paraplanning Caroline Stuart reflects on a day in the life of a PFS Purely Paraplanning event

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Pencil full of lead Richard Harvey tries to make sense of pension taxation policies in his personal tale of getting older in 21st century Britain

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Career Opportunities From Heat Recruitment

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April 2020

E D'S WE LCOM E

BEAR NECESSITIES

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o, here we are firmly in bear market territory. Not just in the UK but right across global markets. With everything that has been going on and the world in crisis it’s hard to know how to begin to write this month’s introduction to IFA Magazine.

Let’s start with the coronavirus itself. With the impact of this global pandemic now having reached Europe – indeed as the new epicentre of the pandemic – this virus which few of us had ever heard of at the start of this year has now affected all of our lives in one way or another.

Business is in crisis, people’s lifestyles have changed beyond recognition, panic has set in over the economic consequences of the virus and we’re all in the dark wondering what on earth is going to happen next?

With governments around the globe taking the problem incredibly seriously, actions are underway to try and stem the spread of the virus to try and save lives and protect the viability of health services. We have witnessed fiscal stimulus packages and monetary policy working in tandem. Monetary authorities are throwing every tool – and huge amounts of money - which they have at the problem in an attempt to stave off recessionary forces which come ever closer. But will it all work? There can be little doubt that the impact of this pandemic will be hard hitting and dramatic on business and people alike. Quite to what extent we will only know as time ticks on and we find out how effective all the different measures taken in response to the crisis have actually been.

ever be the same again. That’s a topic for another day. As individuals, we can only work with the authorities and do our bit to be good citizens, abiding by the rules and looking out for each other. For businesses, there are other considerations with many disaster recovery plans finally seeing the light of day after so many years of what ifs.

Perhaps after all this is done, our perspective might have changed. It might not.

THE NEED FOR ADVICE One thing is for sure. Despite all the turmoil, the need for sound professional advice has never been greater. Clients need your reassurance that sticking to the long term plan and trying not to panic when all around are losing their heads is not an easy thing to do. But it is the right thing.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the dark days of 1987 (yes, including yours truly) will know that it is during such crises that a level head is essential. Your clients will need reassurance. It will be a busy time for financial advisers and planners. Trying to keep calm and focus on clients’ needs, with strong lines of communication to ensure that they know you are there looking after their best interests is essential.

Sue Whitbread Editor IFA Magazine

In the meantime, the IFA Magazine team – like most of our readers - is firmly entrenched at work within our own homes. On a daily basis we are looking on in constant amazement wondering when - and even if – life will

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DARK DAYS Michael Wilson tries his best to blue-sky the available investment options, against the shadow of that big grey-black cumulonimbus on the horizon.

So what can we make of future asset allocation and stock selection decisions given the coronavirus?

It’s a tough job but someone's got to do it.

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rat, there goes our summer holiday in la belle France. It isn’t the fear of what the friendly southern French will think of our stroppy Brexit nation that’s stopped my wife and I from booking the usual ferry to Le Havre this year, you understand? Or from getting the camping equipment out again for another blissful month in the south?

Nor has our decision been shaped by the prospect of sharing a boat with 1,500 total strangers who we won’t know intimately until it’s time to join the disembarkation queue. No, it’s the prospect of finding ourselves one fine morning in a corner of some blissful field in sunny Aveyron, with a sudden temperature and a dry cough - and no easy way of summoning medical help.

Oh, certainly, we could always call our travel insurance company if that happened, but would it answer the phone?

Would the local French health facilities treat us with the same urgency as EU nationals, which we nominally aren’t?

“Probably” is the answer - but perhaps “probably” isn’t good enough when the risks entailed by a possible “no” are so significant?

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GETTING PERSONAL These are serious questions, although I’ve tried to couch them in lightweight terms. It’s only when we get down to personal levels of risk that we can properly understand how other people might perhaps react if the current coronavirus situation should persist. Would the populations of the industrialised nations cancel everything and hunker down at home while they waited an entire year for an antivirus to become available? Would factory workers, who mostly

. It ’s only when we get down to personal levels of risk that we can properly understand how other people might perhaps react if the current coronavirus situation should persist

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can’t telecommute, turn up for work? Or would they have anything to do on the production lines if the component parts from China hadn’t arrived on time, or at all?

How many manufacturing companies would swiftly find themselves in deep financial trouble if their international supply chains were to fail? And how would their banks cope with the bad loans that might result? And what should we make of the dreadful prediction that mortality rates among Britain’s over-eighties might reach 15%? (They said that on the BBC last night, so it must be true….)

How would all of that impact on pension funds? On house prices? On consumer prices in the shops? Or on the national budget, which might find itself with fewer state pension claimants in future, but with massively increased healthcare costs? Wouldn’t all that quickly result in a tidal wave of government paper issues, both at home and abroad? And wouldn’t the new paper drive up bond yields, and where would that leave the equity markets? Better, or worse, or just less worse than usual?

We don’t know, of course, and we run the risk of getting into serious bad-taste territory if we delve too deeply into some of these potential scenarios. But for today, I want to focus on the expected demand for safe investment options.

Which is altogether predictable.

Disclaimer, of course. By the time you read this, you’ll know more about the nature of the coronavirus than anybody did at the time of writing. You’ll know whether China’s attempts to limit new contagion have been as successful as they appeared, and whether the 20% drop in Chinese exports during February were better or worse than the expected trend?

You’ll know more than I do about the key metrics of this virus. How long does it take to incubate before it shows its symptoms? (We think from three to 14 days.) Can you catch it from someone with no visible symptoms?

(Yes.) How many people can be directly infected by one carrier? (Hundreds, in the case of the Korean Shincheonji religious sect; dozens in the case of one care home in North America.) Which is more dangerous, skin contact or eating food prepared by a sufferer? (The former, although eyes and mouth are particularly vulnerable areas.) How long until a patient can be considered cured? (14 days seems to be holding firm.) And if you recover from coronavirus, can

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April 2020

you catch it a second time? (We don’t know for sure, but we think so.)

You’ll also know whether the severe coronavirus outbreaks in Italy, Korea and other countries were as serious as they appeared to be at the time, and where the latest hotspots are? You’ll have read the latest on the situation in America, where coronavirus diagnoses are being systematically under-reported because there aren’t enough testing kits? And probably, you’ll have learned about large-scale immigration curbs. President Trump has already said that Europe’s coronavirus outbreaks are the result of a misguidedly liberal approach to migration, so we already know where that line of argument is likely to lead.

U OR V RECOVERY? So, on the clear understanding that you’ll know more than I currently do about the emerging situation, let’s tackle the next two big-picture questions. How will the recovery take shape when it eventually happens, and should a client be encouraged to buy the dips?

How will the recover y take shape when it eventually happens, and should a client be encouraged to buy the dips?

The first question will probably be easier to answer than the second, because, although we don’t have any idea of what may ensue for the world economy, we do at least know which questions to ask. (See above.)

My own macro assumptions, for what they’re worth, are: (a) that up to one fifth of workforces might be unavailable for work at peak periods; (b) that major industrial exporters are likely to limit their shipment capacity by 20% or more; (c) that oriental supply backlogs are likely to hit western producers almost as hard as their Chinese contemporaries, and may last for many months; (d) that banks are likely to find themselves propping up troubled

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but essentially healthy businesses; (e) that central banks will be forced, perforce, to loosen controls and organise rescue packages in order to avert financial runs; and (f) that governments will be able to come to the rescue with elevated spending. Which will probably raise bond yields and hurt fixed interest investors. But hey, what do I know?

To that, I’d add (a) that there is no particular reason to suppose that the Trump administration will back down from its trade war threats because of weakness from its adversaries; and (b) that the current oil price dispute between Saudi Arabia and Russia – the main reason for March’s sharp decline in crude prices – is a quite separate issue from the coronavirus thing and should be evaluated on its own merits.

So, are we looking for a V-shaped recovery, as in 2008, or an extended U-shaped recovery? Or an L, perhaps? The omens are mixed, but let’s at least make sure we know what they represent.

A V-shaped recovery, in my book at least, is one where markets have been panicked into an oversold state which can be abruptly reversed on the strength of a simple development, such as a successful central bank bail-out or a market-loosening exercise, or a sudden flip-over of some critical threshold such as the price of oil. Whereupon demand snaps back to its usual level, the patient recovers quickly, and normality is restored. A great weight of pentup investor appetite (all that cash on the global sidelines!) comes into play, and the world is saved in the twelfth reel of the film.

A U-shaped recovery also assumes that supply and demand can be brought back into balance in the medium term, but that the patient will require longer to recover, because of the structural damage caused by the crisis.

Perhaps there are thousands of companies that are in no condition to resume full activity yet, because (for instance) their credit lines have run dry.

Perhaps they’ve been forced to shelve essential restructuring, or their inputs have become too expensive and unreliable, or the smooth running of their contract

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Some day, Beijing will be back on form. There, someone’s got to say it.

management has got grit in the gearbox, or they’re suffering from lingering mistrust among their partners. Or maybe their end-consumers are nursing too many fears to allow normal trading. (Never underestimate the lingering power of emotional setbacks.)

Or maybe they’ve just come to realise that they can live quite happily without something they used to think was essential? Restaurant chains are already suffering steep share price falls because of precisely that. Cruise liner companies, airlines and gyms all stand to suffer that indignity. Think about it.

But a U-shaped recovery still assumes that normality will resume eventually. Not so an L-shaped recovery, which isn’t a recovery at all. Instead, the initial fall produces a recession which doesn’t manage to pick itself up off the floor for a decade or even longer – and which may eventually get still worse. The classic example in modern times has been Japan’s 1990 price plunge, which abruptly took the Nikkei 225 from almost 40,000 to 16,000 in 1992, and eventually to just 8,000 in 2003. Since when the index has nearly tripled, but still struggles to make half its 1990 level.

Japan’s over-hyped economy had been suffering from a huge structural imbalance that eventually toppled it and made it impossible to get back on its feet. Ludicrously cheap lending, encouraged by the government, had created an asset bubble which left the banks holding so much bad debt that it took them 15 years to even admit how much it was.

A systematically corrupt government system had added to those woes, and constant currency manipulation had not helped matters either.

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Japan’s long-term problems were also down to the emergence of China and Indochina as rival manufacturers of its trademark engineering products – and at much lower cost. I don’t see too many of those issues in the present coronavirus situation. Unless, of course, China ends up on its industrial knees because of some dreadful worsening of the situation? Heaven forbid. Some day, Beijing will be back on form. There, someone’s got to say it.

BUY THE DIPS? As March entered its second week, the rumour in London was that private investors were buying funds and company shares on the dips, but that most institutions weren’t. That’s a hopeless generalisation, of course, because it’s generally hard to tell which is which. But if it’s true, then it underlines the three most fundamental axioms of the IFA market: ride the downturns, don’t try to time the market, and be prepared to leave the decisions to people who are paid to know what’s going on, because they’re better at it than you.

The second of those injunctions, about market timing, is by far the most touchy of the three, because anybody who’s read the papers or consulted the online investment forums will believe he’s got the inside track on why this is the time to buy or sell. Very few people genuinely have that ability, or the self-discipline to act on it: the rest of those investors who make money are simply lucky. (Yes, I’ve been lucky….)

But the horrific 8% jolt to the Footsie on 9th March (and the accompanying 7% drop on Wall Street) were enough to knock the grins off the dip-buyers’ faces. It transpired that the worst of the shock was down to falling oil prices, which we’ll look at in a moment, and not to coronavirus issues at all. But if it encourages clients to be a little more cautious and to stick with what their advisers tell them, then that’ll perhaps be a good thing.

One person who says we should buy the dip is President Trump, whose Economic Council head Larry Kudlow told

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April 2020

One person who says we should buy the dip is President Trump, whose Economic Council head Larr y Kudlow told US investors to do exactly that in late Februar y – just before the market dropped by another 13%.

US investors to do exactly that in late February – just before the market dropped by another 13%. Some day, Mr Trump will claim the credit for having pointed us toward a massve gain, but it doesn’t look like happening any time soon.

What has happened here is that the markets no longer expect the second-quarter bounce-back that they were forecasting in February. For China, where coronavirus infections were stabilising, second-quarter economic growth was being estimated at 3.5%, down from 6.0% in final-quarter 2019. But for the rest of the world, the spread of infection was creating enough uncertainty to drag that optimism into a global counterbalance. This isn’t going to be a quick recovery – which is why the perception of an extended U-turn is looking more likely.

STICK TO FIXED INTEREST? I’ve been mistrustful of the “overpriced” bond markets ever since the late 2000 decade, when they were a lot less overpriced than they are now. To that extent, I’ve missed out on ten years of spectacular capital growth, which serves me right for being such a smart alec.

But currently, with the Treasury bond yield falling from 3.1% in late 2018 to just 0.42% in March 2020, and with some UK seven-year paper falling below zero, it’s clear that this is a very nervy and unattractive scenario.

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E D'S RANT

April 2020

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It’s also a source of worry for UK pension providers, The driver for that wasn’t China, but an insistence by given that even a 15 year gilt was delivering only 0.66% Saudi Arabia that it was going to open the taps and pump in late February. What price a defined benefit package much more oil – much to the discomfiture of a furious now? That’s a question thatRwill be weighing heavily on Russia, that EDNIREV LEHCAR NIKSOH ELLE HCIM which SYwould ERFFErather J ESIUO L Riyadh had played its NODGNAL DETSLIM LANOITANRETNI SD RADNATS .OC“stabiliser” & RENNUG employers’ minds. traditional role as and kept its production rentraP xaT rednuoF rotceriD gniganaM down when prices were low.

What happens next? Nobody can really tell, but it’ll be hard to make much of a return with rates like these. Any upturn in inflation (which seems quite likely) would leave many investors underwater. Hmmmm….

They ’re not making oil any more, and despite the advance MAHNAC XELA DLEIFSELGNI DIVAD ofYLexpensive LONNOC EDAJ alternative It’s funny, a couple of years ago we wouldn’t even have been KU PWI LEAHCIMRAC NOTGNIRREH DYOLL TOCSA technologies, rentrreally aP reganaM snoitisiuqcA & ygeit tartSstill has many OEC asking this question. And we still can’t find a place years of dominance left. for cryptos in any proper portfolio, because it is after all CRYPTO-CURRENCIES?

speculating and not investing – it produces nothing, and it has no fundamentals apart from the number of people who want to buy it at any time. Yet we might have expected that cryptos would be whooping it up with the gold bugs (up by 15% since January). And they’re not.

SAFI ROF DENGISED POHSKROW YLNO EHT :SRENNA LP LAIC NAofN IFthey Dwent NA Instead which, lower, and lower, and lower.

Some say that’s because Mohammed bin Salman, the Rather unbreakable, elas sunexpectedly, senisub ruthis oy n alp uoy phugely leh otliquid sdnert noitaulacountry’s v tnerrueffective c dna ruler, tekra reyub ht dnatauthority srednU ism exerting hisepersonal international Saudi government noitaredcurrency isnoc ru(excuse oy esime mixwhile am Iugiggle) oy eruhas snfallen e ot feilerover xat his ’srminions. uenerpOthers ertne say rofthat yfilthe auq ot w oh wonKis by 25% – anot getting strapped for eerfin -ssdollar erts terms laed since eht mid-February ekam ot ecn vdbecause a ni sraey ecn egilid eud ro f ecash rapthese erp days, ot wand oh that etaiticcan’t erpafford pA it’s in lockstep with equities, butylbecause there have hold onna antsimportant lagel flesruoy tbeen cetorp nactouo y wback oh d rednU revenue stream. rather a lot of scammers milking the unwary. Chinese But I’ll tell you one thing. They’re not making oil any scammers, mostly. (Make your own jokes.) You’d have been more, and despite the advance of expensive alternative better off sticking to bullion, which had gained 15% in the technologies, it still has many years of dominance three months to mid-March. .dedeen I tahw tsuj – tnellecxe saw ranimes ehT‘ :0Funny, 202that.

NI SU NIOJ left. By the second week of March the Brent price had em pleh ot ,siht ekil tekram eht ni gnihton si erehT plummeted to just $37 a barrel, from $70 in early resivda-itlum ,lapicnirP - ’elbativeni eht rof eraperp COMMODITIES? retsehcnaM nosiamlaM - hcraM ht5 January. And with Goldman Sachs forecasting further dlefifehS ,mrfi severe pressure as the dispute develops, the sector seems nodnoL ,bulC 8 ehT - hcraM ht02 Let’s get this over with quickly. Yes, my BHP mining shares unduly cheap at present.

CEN ampasting, ahgnim riB ,gniby tne30% G ein hTthe - lfour irpAweeks ht42to ranimes eht dnuof I dna rentrap ssenisub yM‘ have taken dropping Not that e h t n i lleI’d s oencourage t gnikooyou l erto a emarket-time, W .evitamobviously….. rofni ylemertxe n o d n o L , b u l C 8 e h T y a M t s 1 mid-March as the shrinking markets for Australian sales to f o n a l p n o i t c a r a e l c a e v a h w o n d na sraey 2 txen inm the CEChina N macoincided hgnimriBwith ,gnaitproper neG erumpus hT - reb etoil pemarkets, S ht52 d n a l a p i c n i r P ’ ! u o y k n a h t – e n o d e b ot sdeen tahw where the company nodnisoalso L ,bactive. ulC 8 ehT - rebotcO ht61 mahgnimriB ,rennalp laicnanfi If you haven’t noticed the cheap petrol at your local service station recently, it reflects a 30% drop in crude oil prices – much of it happening in the first week of March. :srentraP

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April 2020

BETTE R BUSI N ESS

THE CRM DILEMMA How can you make sure that customer relationship management systems work effectively and efficiently for you and your financial planning business? Tracey Underwood of PACE Solutions has practical tips which you can follow to support your business success

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ustomer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs) fulfil an important role within a financial advisory business.

Unfortunately sometimes due to previous bad experiences with CRMs, many companies fail to implement a system, preferring instead to develop their own ‘database’. These ‘databases’ generally consist of several disconnected excel spreadsheets, an outlook diary and/or a paper-based system. Whilst this may satisfy the needs of some firms in their early development stages, if a firm wants to grow and develop into a professional financial advisory practice then it needs to invest and develop its IT infrastructure effectively and with their future needs in mind.

COMMON PROBLEMS Many firms may say that they function perfectly well without using a CRM however when digging deeper some common issues arise such as: 1. The firms tend to be overstaffed Staff are employed in roles which could be replaced by the CRM. Examples of these job roles include data inputting from one document into another, checking spreadsheets, creating new spreadsheets, and creating targeted mailshot lists.

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2. There are no clear systems and processes in place Without automation of processes, individual team members will adopt their own way of processing work rather than that of the firm. The firm will then end up with a set of individuals using a system to address their own needs and a dysfunctional process resulting. As a result, timescales are not met or tasks are missed completely.

3. There is no corporatisation Following on from point 2, individuals will create their own letters, reports, valuations etc. The client experience will therefore be different depending on the individual they have dealt with.

4. Poor management information The firm doesn’t know what level of income each client generates or whether they are profitable. As a result, the management team are unable to make sound business decisions.

THE CRM EFFECT Ultimately, using a CRM should help the firm to: • Increase quality and efficiency (i.e. by reducing time spent on no-value or low-value tasks)

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• Decrease overall costs

• Valuations:

• Increase profitability

- To include platform and legacy assets

However, many firms’ frustrations at the idea of using CRMs derive from their previous experiences and also the time taken to implement the system. This is because many firms expect a CRM system to provide a quick fix and often don’t put in the time and investment necessary prior to implementing the system. They try out the system initially, decide it does not meet their needs and then give up on it, despite the internal team supporting its implementation.

The lack of senior management investment into the system and no single person having overall responsibility for managing it can also hinder the successful integration of a new CRM.

- Year on year returns

Many firms would also pin point that their frustrations lie in the fact that the system cannot produce exactly what they want. They might stress that they can obtain this either from their platform provider or from a simple spreadsheet.

Examples of such details include: • Management information including: - Total income & funds per client per client proposition - When client reviews are due and held - Professional Indemnity Insurance information

April 2020

Usually this information cannot be produced from the CRM system because the firm has inherited a system where information hasn’t been input correctly and therefore the outputs are incorrect. Rather than address the data inputting issue, the firm will create a new spreadsheet to provide them with the information they need.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS Whilst some CRMs have struggled to keep up with the requirements of the modern advisory planning service, over the last couple of years there have been advances

I cannot stress enough that processes cannot work if they are written down on a piece of paper – they simply will not be followed

- GABRIEL information

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which, over time, will ultimately reduce the dependency on spreadsheets and staffing issues.

New technology developments mean that CRMs are now extending their links with platform providers from valuation and income links to include client data transfer.

Links are also being developed to lifetime cashflow systems and fact finding. The ultimate aim of this integration is to reduce the amount of data inputting, thereby reducing the

Implementing a new CRM is neither an easy nor short-term process. It will require a significant amount of time and effort but if done properly the business and its clients’ will reap the rewards

required and when it has been completed. This repetition will reduce errors and ensure that you deliver a timely service for your clients.

Before deciding to implement or change your current CRM, I would recommend documenting your requirements to fit in with the businesses needs. Think about what you are doing now and also what you intend to do in the future and how a CRM could address these needs. Implementing a new CRM is neither an easy nor short-term process. It will require a significant amount of time and effort but if done properly the business and its clients’ will reap the rewards.

Finally, do not design your own CRM system. Although an ‘off the shelf’ CRM will not provide you with 100% of what you require, a 90% solution is definitely better than spending your time and money building a system which constantly requires further development and detracts you away from your core business activities and clientfacing role.

About Tracey Underwood

room for error.

CRMs are creating intuitive processes that guide the team to the next stage of the process; ensuring members of the team take ownership of their work. I cannot stress enough that processes cannot work if they are written down on a piece of paper – they simply will not be followed. By way of contrast, implementing your review process within your CRM will flag up when the next review is due, who has responsibility for its completion, what documents are

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Tracey is the owner and founder of PACE Solutions. The business provides support for financial planning firms by focusing on operational practices including; recruitment, compliance, processes, client proposition and business strategy. This is achieved not only through a consultancy process but by hands on implementation to ensure that firms achieve effective results that would otherwise not be achieved through consultation only.

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M AGAZINE

TH E FUTU RE OF ADVICE

April 2020

THE FUTURE OF ADVICE

What are the challenges which lie ahead for the financial advice profession? Sharon Sutton, Managing Director, Thornton Chartered Financial Planners, assesses the situation for financial advisers in 2020 and beyond

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ith all the huge worry, disruption and confusion caused by the coronavirus pandemic, we might just take the time to consider some of the key trends for financial advisers this financial year ahead – aside from the turbulence of stockmarkets and economic news.

It feels as though the stormy and incredibly challenging first quarter is synonymous in some ways with dominant issues emerging over the advice landscape in the next 12 months.

So what are they?

It is easy to focus on the things that affect the advice profession and see these as internal challenges. However, much of what affects us as financial advisers and planners has a significant knock on effect to the consumer. This is particularly the case where there is a structural challenge to the way that the profession can operate, resulting in reduced access to advice for the consumer.

PII AND FSCS One of these is of course the current hardening of the professional indemnity market. There are also the broader questions as to whether the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme is fit for purpose within an everburgeoning regulatory landscape.

The perfect storm of these two factors represent not only a potential existential crisis for parts of the advice profession, but also a significant possibility of reduced consumer protection in future. Even if the impact of the current PI crisis is contained, there is significant risk that,

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due to the resultant cost increases, even more consumers will find themselves disenfranchised and unable to access affordable advice.

Much of the focus from the profession so far has been around the impact on costs; the challenge of being able to obtain compliant PI insurance at all, and the clear lack of fairness of the current way that the FSCS levy is calculated in its existing form.

The profession has been mobilised, lobbying MPs in an attempt to get Government to look at the key challenges and to implement effective change. However, it will take time, being inevitably viewed through the Westminster coronavirus and Brexit prisms. Parliamentary time will be at a premium this year so any legislative changes to the FSCS or PI markets won’t be quick.

CONSUMER IMPACT In the meantime, can we focus on likely consumer detriment if the situation is not resolved? I believe that we, as a profession, should look at what we can do to improve the fundamentals ourselves.

We live in the age of money where every decision we make is affected by our skill and competence with it.

In no other complex environment would we expect people to survive without any training. To me this is unbelievably negligent.

The lack of access to affordable advice and people being disenfranchised when it comes to matters of personal finance has not just arrived out of the blue, and isn’t solely a result of the FSCS or PI crisis. There’s been a serious lack of

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focus on financial capability in schools and a trend for the profession to focus on the needs of the wealthy, without ensuring that there is an advice ladder for those who are in the process of accumulating assets.

LOOKING AHEAD So at a time where it is all too easy to become inward looking, I believe that to flourish in the years ahead our profession needs to be outward-facing. We need to look at how we can engage with as many people as possible and ensure that we focus on working with all stakeholders, charities, government, and consumer groups in developing an advice ladder to support everyone at every stage of their financial life.

Addressing consumer education and engagement in personal finance will mean that not only are we ensuring the future sustainability of the profession by enabling next generation consumers to feel confident buying financial products and advice, but we are also benefitting those consumers directly.

As a profession, we need to support the over-stretched education system and engage students in aspects of personal finance. We need to engage people at their place of work and through media, and we need to support the charity sector who do such great work in helping people with personal finance capability.

The Personal Finance Society (PFS) has 26 regions throughout the UK and the PFS Discover programme provides an opportunity to adopt a school, directly influence future lives and help address financial capability

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shortfalls. Some of the larger banks are launching initiatives to engage young people, but the closure of their branch networks means IFAs have the opportunity to fill that void.

Being a small jurisdiction with its own regulatory, tax and legal system is not without its challenges. However, we strive to make a difference and a number of initiatives have had a great impact here on the Isle of Man. For example, local PFS members have had the opportunity to work on joint campaigns with the regulator to build public trust and promote consumer confidence, while many local businesses are involved in the Junior Achievement initiative, a charity dedicated to helping the Island’s young people gain the essential skills they need when they leave full time education.

Ultimately the future success of our community depends on us, just as much as we depend upon it for our success.

About Sharon Sutton @sharonsutton99 Managing Director, Thornton Chartered Financial Planners, Past President Personal Finance Society.

Having founded Thornton in 2000, Sharon became the Isle of Man’s first Chartered Financial Planner in 2009 and was UK President of the Personal Finance Society 2017/18 having been first elected to the board in 2012. She was awarded the Chartered Insurance Institute's Award 'Building Public Trust in Life and Pensions in 2019 for her work in leading the PFS Financial Planners Practitioner (Power) panel (2017 to date).

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April 2020

ESG SPECIAL FOCUS

WHY SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENT MATTERS With the world in crisis as we try to mitigate the worst effects of Covid-19, will the lessons ultimately learned from our experiences during the pandemic boost interest and awareness about sustainable investing? An IFA Magazine special focus looks at some of the detail behind sustainable investment strategies

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ver the following pages of this special IFA Magazine focus, we talk to experts in the field of sustainable and impact investing in order to gain insight and to find out what they do and how they do it.

With news headlines and our daily lives dominated by the impact of the coronavirus, panic and fear have continued to spook investors as a result of the most volatile periods for global stockmarkets for a generation. However, the primary concern mounting daily is over people’s lives and health the viability of public health systems to cope with increasing numbers of critically ill patients lining up for treatment on ventilators around the world.

Our focus has shifted into new territory. Now, we are approaching the midst of this crisis. But at some point, we have to believe that things will stabilise as they appear to have done in China and other Asian countries.

We see from news reports that efforts towards developing a vaccine and possible treatments for the virus continue

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apace. This brings hope. Eventually, as and when we start to see current social mobility restrictions lifted, analysis will begin into what we have learned from this terrible pandemic. We’re already seeing reports of air quality improving due to the change in habits of the population at large. There have even been reports of fish returning to the canals in Venice. But what is it likely to do for the world of investment? Will it change thinking? With investors in panic mode and markets selling off it can sometimes be difficult for rational thought to take place. But that is what is needed.

A NEW PARADIGM? For years, interest in sustainable and impact investing has been on an upward trajectory as investors and investment managers refocus their objectives to take account of environmental, social and governance factors. And this is not only about investing just in those businesses which purport to ‘do no harm’ but latterly the focus has shifted

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We’re already seeing reports of air quality improving due to the change in habits of the population at large. There have even been reports of fish returning to the canals in Venice

more towards those whose activities have a genuinely positive impact on our population and our planet. At IFA Magazine, it is our view that the experience of Covid-19 crisis will hasten the movement towards sustainable investing. But do we know enough about it? What is really involved in assessing sustainability and how to specialist investment managers carry out their analysis?

With different approaches being taken by different groups, it is an ideal time for advisers to do their

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research and get to grips with this important investment consideration.

EXPERT THINKING But what do the experts think? In this edition, we are grateful to all those sector experts who have spared the time to talk to us about what drives their process in ESG/ sustainability investing and have given us their insight and analysis on the matter. Markets are used to uncertainty but the current environment is unlike anything seen for generations. However, sound investment strategies and solid processes on asset allocation and risk management will underpin the longer term success or otherwise of individual sustainable investment funds.

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April 2020

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RESPONSIBLE INVESTING USING ETFS With the increasing scope for advisers to access ETFs which operate on sound ESG principles, Christopher Mellor, Head of EMEA ETF Equity Product Management at Invesco, looks at some of the ways in which this can be achieved and the advantages of doing so

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t’s safe to say that 2019 was a landmark year for ESG as the investment theme entered the mainstream. In fact, exchange traded funds (ETFs) that include ESG considerations were among the fastest growing segment in Europe last year, with the broad category enjoying a 130% increase from net new assets alone. While new ESG investors may be gaining their first exposure, some investors are looking to integrate ESG throughout their portfolio, but the objectives, risk tolerance and performance expectations may vary widely from one investor to the next. As demand for ESG broadens, it’s important you have clarity on what each product in the market aims to do so you can make informed decisions for your clients.

The same reasons that passive ETFs in general have seen such phenomenal growth over the past decade also applies to ESG investors, although passive ESG ETFs have been a relatively new development

In the early days of ESG (or ethical investing, SRI, green or any of the other labels that have been used), funds would often be chosen based more on what was being excluded or how the fund manager would select stocks and less on performance. Yes, the investor would look at the track record, but performance tended to be of secondary importance. While some funds may have outperformed the market over the long term, exclusions generally resulted in performance deviating from the broader benchmark over shorter time periods, sometimes for the better and other times the worse.

If it was a small holding in a well-diversified portfolio or the investor didn’t need a certain return, then that performance profile might have been perfectly acceptable. If, on the other

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hand, the fund was going to be a significant part of the portfolio, then a greater level of reliability might have been required, even if returns cannot be guaranteed.

The same reasons that passive ETFs in general have seen such phenomenal growth over the past decade also applies to ESG investors, although passive ESG ETFs have been a relatively new development. ETFs offer many potential benefits that could be attractive whether you are interested in ESG or not.

Features of the ETF structure UCITS vehicle

Ensures diversification that meets regulation guidelines

Transparency

All costs are visible and full list of holdings are published daily

Tradability

Can be bought and sold throughout the day

Cost effectiveness

Typically have lower costs than other types of investment

CORE EXPOSURES INCORPORATING ESG CRITERIA Much of the recent interest, especially in the ETF space, has been for ESG alternatives to core equity exposure.

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Most ESG investors want a fund that at the very least excludes “undesirable� companies and many may also want the fund to favour companies that are performing well from an ESG perspective. While the specific exclusions may vary and funds can apply a variety of positive screening strategies, what is now more consistent is that most investors also have an expectation for financial performance. In many cases, this is for the fund to have a similar risk and return profile as a broad nonESG index.

You just need to look around the market to see a notable increase in the availability of portfolios constructed entirely of ESG funds, whether through advisory or a direct robo platform. And wealth managers and financial advisers can reduce total portfolio costs substantially by

You just need to look around the market to see a notable increase in the availability of portfolios constructed entirely of ESG funds, whether through advisor y or a direct robo platform

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April 2020

ESG SPECIAL FOCUS

investing in passive ETFs. The good news for financial advisers and clients alike is that there are now an increasing number – and variety – of ETFs offering targeted exposure to most of the main asset classes.

US EQUITY EXPOSURE WITH IMPROVED ESG SCORES PLUS POTENTIAL PERFORMANCE ADVANTAGE For example, the S&P 500 index is the most widely followed benchmark for US large-cap exposure. Given that this bucket could account for as much as 40% of some globally diversified growth portfolios, your choice of exposure can make a huge difference in terms of overall portfolio performance. But how can you get exposure to the S&P – or at least the potential for similar performance – with ESG criteria?

The S&P 500 ESG index has been designed to do just that. Back-tests suggest that the risk and return profile of the ESG index could be similar to the broader S&P index, with similar sector exposures, but with a substantially improved ESG score. As we’re talking about passive exposure, it’s important to understand the index and how it’s constructed. First of all, the index excludes companies involved in tobacco or controversial weapons, as well as those with poor ESG records. Once all those names are removed, the index selects the companies with higher ESG scores in their industry group, selecting stocks until they cover 75% of the industry group market cap.

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The result is a market-cap-weighted index of currently 311 stocks, each an industry leader in ESG, which has similar sector exposures to the broad index. We recently launched an ETF that aims to deliver the performance of this index, less a very low ongoing charge figure of 0.09% per annum. We expect the ETF to appeal to a broad range of investors but particularly those who want S&P performance potential but with better ESG scores.

What could make this ETF even more attractive for investors who are really interested in performance is in the way the ETF replicates the index. This ETF holds a basket of high-quality securities and aims to achieve the index performance through swaps (a type of derivative whereby the swap counterparties agree to pay any difference between the return of the basket and that of the index). While the basket of securities will differ from the index, we are applying the same key exclusions to the basket as the index.

So, why not just replicate the index in the “normal” way?

By using this replication method, the ETF is able to capture gross dividends, with no withholding tax, which offers a potentially significant advantage over physically replicating ETFs that are subject to dividend withholding tax of between 15-30%. This is specific to the US equity market and is one of the reasons why our standard S&P 500 UCITS ETF – which uses the same proven replication method – was the most popular S&P 500 ETF in Europe last year.

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CORE EXPOSURE FOCUSSING ON COMPANIES WITH IMPROVING ESG PROFILES Most ESG ETFs, however, will use physical replication.

For instance, we have ETFs that aim to follow MSCI indices, which are among the most widely tracked benchmarks in addition to the S&P 500. These indices also apply negative screens in order to remove a range of controversial businesses. They then weight constituents by the product of their market capitalisation and overall ESG score. What is interesting here is that they include a measure of momentum to the score, which effectively increases the weight of companies with improving ESG characteristics. Investors who believe that ESG drives the financial performance of a company could be attracted to this facet. What is also relevant is that, like the S&P 500 ESG index, back-testing suggests these MSCI ESG indices could offer similar performance to their broad non-ESG equivalents, which could make them suitable replacements for core holdings.

FIXED INCOME IS THE NEXT BIG AREA FOR ESG In 2019, equity products took in around 80% of total flows into ESG ETFs, despite fixed income more generally capturing around half of all flows. One of the reasons was the limited number of ESG fixed income products on the European ETF market. We expect to see the gap narrow in 2020 as new indices are developed and

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new passive products are launched. We launched our first fixed income ESG ETF earlier this year. The Invesco GBP Corporate Bond ESG UCITS ETF was in fact the first GBP-denominated corporate bond ETF in Europe with ESG criteria. Similar to our equity offerings, we designed this ETF to be a core holding in investor portfolios.

In conclusion, whether you are looking for equity or fixed income funds that are going to be suitable for your clients who want to align their portfolios with their own principles, ETFs are now offering a way for you to deliver a solution with potential improvements to both costs and, dare we say, performance.

About Christopher Mellor Head of EMEA ETF Equity & Commodity Product Management Chris leads the EMEA ETF equity and commodity product management team at Invesco, responsible for providing support and analysis for the range of equity and commodity ETFs. Before joining Invesco he worked as an investment strategist, focusing on market timing and tactical allocation across regions, sectors and styles for Sunrise, State Street Global Markets, Credit Suisse and Societé Générale.

Chris holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Inorganic Chemistry from Balliol College, Oxford. He is also a charterholder of the CFA Institute.

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April 2020

ESG SPECIAL FOCUS

THE SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENT DEBATE Is sustainable investment simply the latest trend or is it a factor which is set to become mainstream?

Brian Tora considers the evolution of this increasingly important element of the investment process

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he investment industry loves acronyms and using initials, rather than spelling things out properly. The benchmark UK index, the FTSE 100, is nearly always referred to as the Footsie. Savings vehicles like PEPs and ISAs might well contain an OEIC (pronounced oik), while IFA is seldom written out in full.

Jim (now Lord) O’Neill is credited with producing the term BRIC to represent the larger nations of the emerging market (EM) world while he was at Goldman Sachs and now we have the second-tier countries – Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey – or MINT. A new set of initials has become very popular of late – ESG. Relating to a measure of how potential investments should be considered, these letters – as IFA Magazine readers will no doubt be aware - are short for Environmental, Social and Governance. They are increasingly being used by the professional investment community to demonstrate that they are taking important issues into account when constructing portfolios. This is all about social responsibility rather than performance. It does not really compare with the trend for ethical investing several years ago when managers sought to demonstrate that a good

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performance did not depend on buying shares in industries such as armaments and tobacco.

SUSTAINABILITY AS A DRIVER The main focus appears to be on measuring the social responsibility of the companies which managers select to include in their portfolios. With so much focus now on climate change, waste management and maintaining a sustainable environment, how companies are dealing with such issues is becoming an important part of whether they are suitable for inclusion in a portfolio. Many fund management groups have appointed sustainability officers to oversee the stock selection process. And a whole industry has grown up around measuring the appropriate metrics and feeding the information back to managers.

This is not a simple process. Indeed, in a recent video released by a leading US fund group, the lack of sufficient data was highlighted, as was the need to broaden the scope of those businesses that needed to be monitored.

And in a significant diversion from the original ethical investment scope, bonds issued by companies considered

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With so much focus now on climate change, waste management and maintaining a sustainable environment, how companies are dealing with such issues is becoming an important part of whether they are suitable for inclusion in a portfolio

to be ESG friendly are now in the mix of available assets.

Indeed, amongst the many emails I have received recently regarding ESG investing, the launch of an Exchange Traded Fund invested in the bonds of suitable companies was an offer that the managers clearly thought would be attractive to investors.

IS IT INVESTOR DRIVEN? For the most part I doubt that it is - certainly as far as the retail investor is concerned -though there will be large pension funds that will clearly take such an input into their portfolios very seriously. In some measure ESG investing could be considered as little more than a sophisticated lobby group to make less compliant companies change their approach to sustainability. It is certainly not about finding wind farms, solar panel manufacturers or green waste disposal companies in which to invest. But fund management groups will be keen to emphasise that they are seeking to improve corporate behaviour.

INFORMATION IS POWER There are now training courses available on ESG investing.

Major groups, like Federated Hermes, the combination of Pittsburgh based Federated Investors and our own Hermes, which manages amongst others the Post Office pension fund, have put out significant research on how ESG compliant companies might affect portfolio performance.

Let’s face it, complex algorhythms allow those with a mind to justify a particular approach to investment to slice and dice data to arrive at interesting, but not always useful, conclusions.

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m far from being against ESG investing. Indeed, more focus on how we build a sustainable planet must be a good thing. Those television images of waste plastic disrupting our sea and river life and the apparent melting of the ice caps are issues we all need to be concerned with. And ESG is about more than these major worries. Gender balance, treatment of employees, executive pay – all might fall into the matrix that managers will be taking into account as they choose the companies to back.

I’m not sure all this will have any impact on portfolio performance, but it just might turn out to be a force for good. It may even become a necessity if investors start insisting that the managers of the funds in which they invest adopt a sustainable approach. The climate change protests demonstrate that there is a growing concern over how we look after this planet of ours. I expect to need to learn more about ESG investing as time goes on.

Those television images of waste plastic disrupting our sea and river life and the apparent melting of the ice caps are issues we all need to be concerned with

GOING VIRAL Meanwhile, there have been other issues to occupy my mind at the moment as I sit down to write about sustainable investing. The coronavirus has seized the news headlines and dominated investor sentiment for weeks now. Such has been the volatility this outbreak has engendered that trying to report on how it might affect market behaviour, knowing that a few weeks will intervene between my assessment and you reading this, is clearly pointless. It could turn out to be a major contributor to economic performance – or perhaps it is already history. I hope the latter.

Brian Tora is a consultant to investment managers, JM Finn.

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April 2020

ESG SPECIAL FOCUS

INVESTING TO SOLVE ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES Ben Constable-Maxwell, Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing at M&G Investments, highlights how your clients can target sustainable returns and positive impact for the planet

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rom toxins in the air we breathe to heavy metals in our rivers, there is no shortage of environmental challenges that need to be addressed.

Awareness of these issues is undoubtedly rising among investors, as is interest in solving them. Yet despite this progress, a rising population that consumes more as it grows richer heaps greater strain on the planet.

Where companies can develop solutions that enable the modern economy, while at the same time lowering our environmental footprint, there are powerful opportunities for investment success to go hand-in-hand with delivering a positive environmental impact

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There is persistent tension between fostering global economic development and reducing the cost to the environment. Addressing this issue is at the heart of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which codify the world’s most pressing sustainability issues.

Where companies can develop solutions that enable the modern economy, while at the same time lowering our environmental footprint, there are powerful opportunities for investment success to go hand-in-hand with delivering a positive environmental impact.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF INNOVATION With global energy demand forecast to rise 27% by 2040, there is an understandable focus on how electricity can be generated to promote more inclusive and sustainable growth. How we use energy is often overlooked, yet there is great potential to reduce emissions through innovation.

The impact of ‘retrofitting the world’, using technologies that make it more energy-efficient, is demonstrated

by Schneider Electric, a French industrial group that

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is leading the digital transformation of the industrial automation market.

One way in which the company is having an impact is through innovative solutions that look to tap the value of data to maximise the efficiency of systems. From office air conditioning to electricity grids, the systems underpinning the modern economy are increasingly automated and digitised. Being connected to the ‘Internet of Things’ means critical data can be collected from across smarter systems and then analysed with real-time information, then used to optimise processes.

More efficient systems that cut electricity use will not only save money for Schneider’s customers, but should also result in tremendous environmental benefits. The company aims to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of its customers by 100 million tons between 2018 and 2020.

This is equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions from 17 million homes’ electricity use.

The scale of the long-term investment opportunity – and positive environmental impact – is clear. IHS Markit forecasts that 73 billion devices will be connected to the internet of things by 2025 , up from 27 billion in 2017.

AIMING FOR IMPACT THROUGH ACTIVE INVESTING This is just one illustration of how a company can deliver benefits for the environment far beyond its own operations, and be a catalyst for wide-reaching change.

To better gauge a company’s impact, fund managers can consider how it enables other companies to conserve energy or water, for example, or otherwise reduce their environmental footprint.

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There are clearly multi-billion-dollar opportunities for innovative companies that can successfully deliver products and services that help solve the world’s environmental challenges.

Where active investors can successfully identify these companies, they can not only target sustainable long-term returns for your clients, but also a demonstrably positive impact for the environment.

The value of the fund's assets will go down as well as up.

This will cause the value of your investment to fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you originally invested.

To find out more about impact investing at M&G, visit: www.mang.co.uk/positiveimpact

About Ben Constable-Maxwell Ben is Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing, M&G. He joined M&G in 2003 as an Investment Specialist supporting the Global Equities team. He then moved to the Corporate Finance and Stewardship team in 2013, where he began focusing on corporate governance and ESG at international companies. Ben has been responsible for developing the incorporation of ESG in M&G’s investment processes and sits on M&G’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee, which oversees Responsible Investment activities at M&G including the firm’s membership of the UNPRI. Ben graduated from the University of Newcastle-uponTyne with an Honours Degree in Classics before spending four years in the Equities team at Invesco Perpetual.

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April 2020

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INVESTING FOR A MORE INCLUSIVE

GLOBAL SOCIETY Ben Constable-Maxwell, Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing at M&G Investments, extends his commentary on the importance of investing in companies which deliberatively set out to deliver a positive impact as part of their mission. Here he identifies a couple of businesses which explicitly aim to advance the respective societies they operate in by widening access to financial services.

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n the words of Nobel Prize winning economist

Amartya Sen, “poverty is the deprivation of opportunity”.

Alongside access to education and healthcare, the availability of basic financial services is a fundamental ingredient to giving people the means of escaping poverty and leading better lives.

Yet according to the United Nations, 2.5 billion people – more than half of the world’s adults – are excluded from financial services . Among the poorest in global society, the overwhelming majority do not have a safe place to save money or means of borrowing for the long-term.

Advancing financial inclusion should be a priority for those of us looking to deliver a positive impact through our investments. As well as helping to address one of global society’s greatest challenges, we can also aim to participate in the growth opportunities that will be unlocked.

fundamentally shape their chances of improving their economic circumstances.

For the financially weak, access to loans – to build a business or fix their roof – and savings products – to put away money for family or retirement – as well as insurance

Alongside access to education and healthcare, the availability of basic financial services is a fundamental ingredient to giving people the means of escaping poverty and leading better lives

PROMOTING FINANCIAL INCLUSION

products – to protect them in hard times – improves their chances of living a full and healthy life.

The most basic financial services allow each of us to protect ourselves against hardship and invest in our future.

Whether or not someone has access to these services will

For developing economies, it can help enable them to break free of the vicious cycle of poverty and enter a virtuous cycle of economic growth.

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EMPOWERING MARGINALISED COMMUNITIES Levels of extreme poverty are falling in India, but it remains home to an estimated 76 million people living on less than $1.90 a day . The world’s second most populous country is also urbanising rapidly, presenting challenges that are exacerbated by increasing housing demands.

The primary goal of an organisation such as the Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), for example, is to promote home ownership in India by providing long-term mortgages to low and middle-income families.

As well as loans, which are also offered to companies for building and purchasing commercial property, HDFC offers insurance and asset management services through more than 4,800 branches.

By a key metric of financial inclusion, India is making great progress. Between 2011 and 2017, the share of adults with a financial account soared from 35% to 80%.

Financial inclusion is also rising in Georgia, a society that inherited little financial infrastructure following the end of communism and civil war in the early 1990s. The share of adults with accounts rose from 33% to 61% between 2011 and 2017. As one of the country’s two main retail banks, Bank of Georgia has since played a major role in advancing financial inclusion within low-to-middle income groups.

I believe both companies, by granting millions of people access to basic financial services, and on terms that are not predatory, in my opinion, deliver positive social impact aligned with several of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), most clearly Goal 8 – “promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth”.

ACTING ON GOOD INTENTIONS Impact investors can aim to generate positive social or environmental impact through our investments. It is the notion of intentionality that, in my opinion, sets impact investing apart from responsible investment approaches more generally.

The companies we invest in should themselves deliberatively set out to deliver a positive impact as part of their mission. Both HDFC and Bank of Georgia, for

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example, explicitly aim to advance the respective societies they operate in by widening access to financial services.

It is the notion of intentionality that, in my opinion, sets impact investing apart from responsible investment approaches more generally

Where companies can succeed in delivering essential financial services to those excluded from them, I believe they can have a tremendous positive impact for individuals and societies.

Over the long term, this success could be expected to translate into sustainable financial returns for their investors, who can therefore aim to do good without compromising on their own aspirations.

Important information The views expressed here should not be taken as a recommendation, advice or forecast. The value and income from any fund's assets will go down as well as up. This will cause the value of your investment to fall as well as rise. There is no guarantee that any fund will achieve its objective and you may get back less than you originally invested.

About Ben Constable-Maxwell Ben is Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing, M&G. He joined M&G in 2003 as an Investment Specialist supporting the Global Equities team. He then moved to the Corporate Finance and Stewardship team in 2013, where he began focusing on corporate governance and ESG at international companies. Ben has been responsible for developing the incorporation of ESG in M&G’s investment processes and sits on M&G’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee, which oversees Responsible Investment activities at M&G including the firm’s membership of the UNPRI. Ben graduated from the University of Newcastle-uponTyne with an Honours Degree in Classics before spending four years in the Equities team at Invesco Perpetual.

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April 2020

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SUSTAINABLE INVESTING

IN THE SPOTLIGHT Sue Whitbread talks to Ama Seery, ESG Analyst, Janus Henderson Global Sustainable Equity Fund about the principles and practice of sustainable investing

IFAM: HOW IMPORTANT DO YOU THINK SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENT STRATEGIES WILL BE FOR INVESTMENT FUNDS GOING FORWARD? IS THIS JUST THE LATEST FAD OR IS IT SET TO BECOME A CORE ELEMENT OF THE INVESTMENT SELECTION PROCESS FOR FUND MANAGERS AND ADVISERS ALIKE? AS: I will never say that responsible investing is a fad. Our fund is almost thirty years old so to us the approach is just good investment sense. Of course, we are very happy that more and more people are seeing that now and putting their money behind these strategies too.

Looking ahead, I think that more importance than ever before will be attached to sustainability, especially because the issues that this seeks to address are becoming more acute. On a regular basis we are seeing the impacts of climate change on our TV screens and in our lives. As this becomes more and more prevalent, investing sustainably is going to make more sense. It’s here to stay.

IFAM: WHAT ARE THE INVESTMENT OBJECTIVES OF THE GSE FUND? AS:Within the fund, we seek to try and address sustainable development as well as incorporating innovation and long-term compounding growth.

Our aim is to invest in a way which allows sustainable development, promotes innovation and delivers healthy

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returns for our investors. The way we do this is we look to invest in companies which provide a positive impact for the environment and society whilst at the same time allowing us to stay on the right side of disruption. That means not investing in certain areas which we think will be disrupted in the future. We have a ‘do no harm’ mentality, and by this I mean that we don’t want to be invested in areas which harm the environment and society. Now, more than ever, we feel that this approach will provide our clients with consistent growth over the long-term. We can see this evidenced over the last ten years in our strategy as we have consistently outperformed our benchmark over that period.

IFAM: IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT MAKES THE FUND DIFFERENT? WHAT DO ADVISERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE FUND WHEN DOING THEIR INVESTMENT RESEARCH? AS: One of the biggest things which makes us different is our longevity in this space.

This is not a fad. We are not jumping on any bandwagons.

We’ve been doing this for almost 30 years and as a result it has informed our investment process. When we started investing sustainably back in 1991, this was only a few years after the Brundtland Report. This report was created by a UN Commission back in 1987 and describes sustainable development as meeting the

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needs of the present without compromising future generations' ability to meet their own needs. This is the most widely used definition of sustainable development. Our entire investment philosophy is based on this foundation. Over the years we’ve added to our philosophy with all the additional refinements of this definition. This includes what is known as the triple bottom line – sometimes called the 3Ps – people, planet, profit. It can also be expressed as environment, society and economics. The triple bottom line informs our investment process which has environmental and social impact themes as well as having environmental and social avoidance criteria. We’ve also gone on to include another refinement which results from the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly with regards to enhancing our reporting. We produce an annual sustainability report in which we are able to show the portfolio’s contribution to the UN SDGs not in a traditional mapping sense but showing the actual percentage contribution to each goal. I think that this is a key differentiator for us and our fund.

Another factor is transparency. The annual sustainability report is provided to clients but we also produce a quarterly positive impact report. In this, we provide details of all our holdings along with justifications as to why they have met the standards to be included in the impact category. We also report to our clients based on our voting and engagement on a quarterly basis. Our investment criteria and principles are easily accessible for anyone to access and review. Having this level of transparency is important to us.

The team approach is firmly embedded here and is a unique aspect of how we work. From my own experience as a sustainability professional, for the last twelve years, I’ve never done a piece of sustainability work where I haven’t brought in other people from different backgrounds to enhance what I’m doing. That’s how we work at Janus Henderson. For example, the main sustainable investment team is made up of Hamish Chamberlayne who is Head of SRI, co-portfolio manager Aaron Scully who is based in Denver, Colorado, and me.

Between Hamish and Aaron, they have almost 40 years of investment experience but the fact that they operate from two different locations and two sets of different investment experiences is a big advantage. Aaron tends

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to focus on our US holdings with Hamish concentrating more on Europe and Asia Pacific holdings.

When I do sustainability analysis I don’t do it alone. I usually do it in conjunction with the sector experts and the Governance and Responsible Investment (GRI) team in Janus Henderson. But our knowledge pool can be even wider than that. For example, we hold Nike and Adidas in our portfolio. Recently I found out that one of our sales team is actually an expert in sneakers! So we have actually brought him into the analysis process and included him in the company meetings. His input is helping to inform our investment process which is great.

Another relevant area is that we also collaborate with other people outside of Janus Henderson. As an example of this, one area which I’ve been looking a lot at is cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I’ve worked with a children’s rights charity on this and they have people working on the ground in DRC. Normally, such a charity would be worried about reputational risk in working with finance professionals but they’re making an exception for us because they see that we are trying to do some good.

Finally, we are positioning ourselves as thought leaders in the space. For example, I held a webinar about our SDG reporting methodology. As part of that I discussed how we measure the portfolio contributions to each of the sustainable development goals. Not only are we coming up with new metrics on how to measure impact but we are also sharing those ideas with the community.

IFAM: COULD YOU EXPLAIN THE CRITERIA WHICH YOU USE TO EXCLUDE OR INCLUDE PARTICULAR COMPANIES WITHIN YOUR FUND SELECTION PROCESS? AS: There are many facets to this process. Firstly, we have ten positive impact criteria in total. Five of these are environmental and five are social and we use these to determine whether a company is having a positive impact.

The way we do that is to look at the company’s products and/or services. We want to see that at least 50% of the company’s revenues are positive impact. After that we have exclusionary criteria – where we seek to avoid environmental and social harm. Within that we have the traditional “sin” sectors such as alcohol, armaments,

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ESG SPECIAL FOCUS

pornography, gambling, tobacco etc. These will all be avoided as well as us having exclusions on human rights, modern slavery and corruption criteria. We also have some rather unique avoidance criteria around fossil fuels. For example, we won’t invest in fossil fuel extraction and refining and seek to avoid fossil fuel power generation. We don’t invest in nuclear power, or contentious sectors like airlines and fast-food. We uniquely have exclusions on animal testing, fur, intensive farming, and meat and dairy production. We also exclude chemicals of concern. These include substances banned by WHO or companies creating products with an ozone depleting potential.

You might think that all this might narrow our investment universe, but it is not narrow at all. As society has been shifting, our investible universe has got bigger every year.

A good example is that our fund’s benchmark – the MSCI World Index - has approximately 1600 underlying companies. Our investible universe not far from that size.

IFAM: HOW DO YOU MANAGE RISK WITHIN THE FUND AND ENSURE THAT A BROAD ASSET ALLOCATION STRATEGY RESULTS? AS: For us, risk management is a multi-faceted approach.

One of the important elements is the construction of our investment universe. Because we’re not investing in areas which do environmental and social harm, we are minimising the risk of disruption to the portfolio. A good example of this is the tobacco industry - an industry where quite a few businesses have been in decline. That’s because they’ve been disrupted by changes to smoking habits as well as increasing legislation. It makes sense as a first risk management measure to only be invested in winners and not to be invested in companies at risk of future disruption.

Also key to risk management is our fundamental analysis.

We carry out thorough bottom-up fundamental research and analysis where we look at firms in terms of multiyear revenue compounding, the culture of innovation, financial resilience, predictability of revenues, consistency of margins, cash flow, and having a strong balance

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sheet. These are all considerations as part of the risk management process. ESG analysis is carried out as part of this too, a process which includes using third party data providers such as MSCI, Sustainalytics and various others. Where we see severe ESG risk we won’t invest. As an example, we saw that a plastics ban was coming from the European Union so any company which was heavily invested in plastic we saw as particularly risky and we sought to avoid.

We are not sector constrained and whilst we do look at sectors as part of our portfolio construction the main thing for us is end market. As an example, we can look at an information technology sector company like Autodesk.

Autodesk makes software products primarily for architects and engineers. Therefore, this holding is governed more by what is happening in the construction sector rather than IT. Another example, Teladoc, which offers video conferencing GP appointments is classified as IT even though its business is healthcare.

When it comes to geographical diversification, we do follow our benchmark as we are a global fund.

Across the portfolio we will typically hold between 50 and 70 stocks. We currently have 58 holdings which ensures that we have a broad asset allocation approach.

We have three different position sizes as part of our portfolio construction process – these are small, standard and substantial. Our small position size is between 0.25% and 1% of total assets whilst standard exposure is 1.5% to 2% and substantial position represents anything above 2%.

Our small position sizes are typically for companies that may be less liquid or at an earlier stage of their life cycle. As a result, we wouldn’t want to have a larger position. Our standard position is the initial size for most of our investments when they enter the portfolio.

Finally, for those holdings in which we have a strong conviction, these are given substantial position. These are the companies where we see a superior combination of predictable revenue growth, financial strength and valuation upside. It typically represents 30-40% of the overall portfolio.

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April 2020

IFAM: WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE KEY TRENDS IN ESG? ARE YOU HEARING PARTICULAR ISSUES BEING RAISED BY CLIENTS?

downturns. This has been the case with our own strategy which has outperformed its benchmark. That is not to say that we wish for downturns of course, far from it.

AS: One trend which I’ve certainly noticed is an increase in scrutiny - especially an increase in third party certification and legislation. We work hard to provide our customers information about what we do so that they can tell their clients. We produce an annual sustainability report and quarterly reports on impact and voting and engagement which all support transparency. We’ve also achieved third party certifications on the strategy including the ISR label from France, Febelfin from Belgium and FNG-Seigel from Germany . We consider this as important as we want to give our clients confidence that we are who we say we are, and we do what we say we will do. After all we don’t have anything to hide.

Within our own strategy we’re looking at how best we can deal with the current situation of this global pandemic, its implications and impacts. Many commentators are suggesting that pandemics could reoccur in the future. We are looking into how we position future holdings to deal with future pandemic situations so that we invest in environmental and social solutions. In terms of what we do and how our investment strategy works, the current situation doesn’t change things for us. It just heightens the importance of why we are sustainable investors.

One of the biggest trends in this space is the push away from fossil fuels. Many clients are coming to us expressing the strong view that they don’t want to have their money invested in fossil fuel companies. I think this trend will continue. Taking this into account, we have been working with P1 Investment Management and the University of Oxford – as co-founders of Net-Zero Carbon 10 (NZC10).

The NZC10 target helps funds better align investment policies with carbon-neutrality, not just emissions reduction. We’ve already had some successes. For example, we started to engage with Microsoft about becoming net zero carbon based on scope 1,2, and 3 last year. We asked the company if it would look to become carbon neutral and we were delighted that Microsoft announce earlier this year that the company would be carbon negative by 2030 and have offset all the emissions ever produced by the organisation by 2050. That is an incredible achievement on Microsoft’s part. I will be monitoring progress of this commitment over the next few years.

IFAM: IS THERE ANYTHING WE CAN DRAW FROM THE CORONAVIRUS SITUATION REGARDING HOW SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGIES HAVE REACTED? AS: In general, we’ve seen that a lot of sustainability strategies have been more resilient during the market

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About Ama Seery Ama Seery is an ESG Analyst at Janus Henderson Investors, a position she has held since 2018. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Seery worked as a sustainability professional in the property sector, first as a scheme manager for BREEAM (green building certification) and later teaching others how to certify green buildings before moving into constructing them.

Ms. Seery graduated with a master’s degree in interdisciplinary design for the built environment from Cambridge University, Wolfson College. She holds the Chartered Environmentalist designation and has 12 years of sustainability experience.

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April 2020

I NSU RANCE DOCTOR

INSURANCE DOCTOR CORONAVIRUS AND THE IMPACT ON ADVISER BUSINESSES Continuing our series on the IFA’s guide to Professional Indemnity insurance, Daniel West of Apex Insurance looks at the implications of Covid-19 on adviser firms’ insurance considerations

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I NSU RANCE DOCTOR

March April 2020

With the effects of the global coronavirus pandemic hitting individuals and businesses across the UK, the impacts are very wide ranging indeed. Some of these changes to working practice have implications for advisers when it comes to the question of insurance. This month, we attempt to highlight some of the key areas that you should consider within your advice business.

The World Health Organisation will never:

THE POTENTIAL IMPACT ON PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE RENEWAL TIMEFRAMES

• Conduct lotteries or offer prizes, grants, certificates or funding through email

In our previous article for IFA Magazine on the subject of PI insurance, we highlighted the importance of starting your renewal process early due to the change in market conditions. Now, with the government attempting to combat the spread of Covid-19, like all businesses across the country, insurance brokers and insurance carriers are making the decision to have their staff work from home wherever possible. This will certainly add further complications to the renewal process for PI insurance, so please begin reviewing your insurance as soon as possible.

POTENTIAL CYBER AND DATA CLAIMS FOR PROFESSIONALS IN RESPECT OF COVID-19 There is a potential GDPR risk in respect of employees working from home. With many staff working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, it raises the important question for advice businesses as to what security measures should your organisation have in place for this process?

On this matter, we defer to The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) response via their official website (ICO.org.uk). The warning there is as follows: ‘Data protection is not a barrier to increased and different types of homeworking. During the pandemic, staff may work from home more frequently than usual and they can use their own device or communications equipment. Data protection law doesn’t prevent that, but you’ll need to consider the same kinds of security measures for homeworking that you’d use in normal circumstances.’

Criminals are disguising themselves as the World Health Organisation (WHO) to steal money or sensitive information.

If you are contacted by a person or organisation that appears to be from WHO, verify their authenticity before responding.

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• Ask you to login to view safety information • Email attachments you didn’t ask for • Ask you to visit a link outside of www.who.int • Charge money to apply for a job, register for a conference, or reserve a hotel

• Ask you to donate directly to emergency response plans or funding appeals Beware that criminals use email, websites, phone calls, text messages, and even fax messages for their scams.

HOW CAN WE HELP? If your advice business is yet to receive your professional indemnity insurance renewal invite, we strongly recommend that you chase your broker/insurer for this as a matter of urgency. Alternatively, please contact us and we can supply you with copies for completion.

We can’t stress enough the importance of having a fully comprehensive cyber and data insurance policy in place.

We have access to some of the strongest cyber products in the market, which can include free antivirus software, accredited qualifications and award-winning claims handling services.

For more details, please visit http://apexinsurancebrokers. co.uk/commercial-insurance/cyber-liability

About Daniel West Cert CII – Associate Director Daniel has been with Apex Insurance Brokers for 5 years and specialises in the placement of IFA and Financial Institution Professional Indemnity Insurance (PI).

As an independent broker, Apex can offer one of the most extensive choices of IFA insurers available, with specialist sector and product knowledge to offer their clients some of the best terms available in the market.

Their extensive IFA insurance experience allows them to fully understand your business, advise how to best present your risk and what insurers are best suited to your firm.

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April 2020

ARLO WEALTH

THE LONG WAY HOME The road back to the UK for expats requires careful navigation to avoid costly mistakes. Marc Beattie, COO at Arlo Wealth, offers practical tips for advisers to consider as Brexit uncertainties unfold

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t’s not quite crunch time for British expats in Europe, but it will be soon enough. Around 785,000 Brits currently live in the EU, most of them in Spain, France or Germany. It has been a disquieting period for them since the 2016 referendum.

surprising that some British expats are calling it a day and heading home. Depending on the conclusion of the negotiations over the UK and EU’s future relationship this year, the numbers returning home could soar. Financial advisers would do well to be ready.

The withdrawal agreement passed in January finally brought some comfort – confirming that those already living in an EU state could continue to live and work there – but it’s not without complexities. British citizens must apply for residence, and the process varies between EU countries.

TAKING IT IN THE ROUND

It’s also not clear whether British citizens living in the EU will be free to move to other countries within the block after the end of the year. Perhaps most worrying, rules on non-British family members’ rights to move back with returning UK citizens are complicated. At the very least, they will need to register through the UK government’s settlement scheme by March 31, 2022.

With so many uncertainties to consider – and even ignoring the continuing weakness in the pound – it’s not

With so many uncertainties to consider – and even ignoring the continuing weakness in the pound – it ’s not surprising that some British expats are calling it a day and heading home

The first thing that advisers should do before dealing with overseas clients returning to the UK is to make sure it’s legal to do so. Advisers will usually need a MIFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) licence to provide investment advice cross-border. Those who don’t have one will therefore need to look into it – or consider referring expats onto a specialist.

Provided they are in a position to do so, though, advisers should start with a broad review of the client’s financial circumstances. It’s important to have the full picture of their situation, needs and plans. This will form the basis of the strategy and the steps for their return to the UK, helping to avoid costly mistakes.

It’s probably helpful at this stage to also develop a timeline that ends with the date of their return. Determining that date at the outset provides an opportunity to think through the tasks and time required. It can also help to simplify things; timing the return for the start of the UK tax year might avoid the need to file for the same year in both countries. (Double taxation treaties usually mean they won’t have to pay tax in both countries in any case.)

A target date can also be a useful motivator to keep things moving, and both adviser and client can work towards it.

While every individual is different, two areas are likely to require particular attention. The first is deciding what to

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do with their overseas assets, including investments and property. It’s a key area where good planning can pay off.

In some cases, it may make sense in terms of tax to sell overseas investments before returning to the UK. Doing so while resident in the EU means investors escape UK capital gains tax – up to 20% for those with an income over £50,000, and 28% for residential property.

They will, though, be liable in the country of residence.

Some, like Belgium, Luxembourg and Slovenia have no CGT; in others, such as France, Germany or Spain, CGT can compare to the UK, but depends on a range of factors.

Again, to make a sound judgement, advisers need a full picture of the client’s circumstances and the tax code of the country in question.

However, even if they’re moving from a low or no CGT tax jurisdiction, advisers shouldn’t assume they have to dispose of investments. Offshore bonds, for example, aren’t liable for CGT at all, sitting pretty much in a tax-free environment. Any gains taken from these can also be offset against unused personal income tax allowance in the UK. In any case, moving back to the UK often involves considerable upheaval. Given this – not to mention asset price and currency volatility around Brexit – it’s a good idea to know which investments need to be crystallised before moving and which, for the time being, can be kept in hand.

PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE The second key area for many returning to the UK will be pensions – not least because around a quarter of the 785,000 Brits living in Europe are over 65.

Many will have a Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme (QROPS), essentially the expat pension. For those who repatriate, it’s simple enough to transfer the QROPS back into a UK registered scheme. This will have the attraction of simplicity if, for example, the client is not retired and will be contributing to a UK pension in future.

HMRC treats the QROPS repatriation as a transfer, not a contribution, and there are also no tax issues regarding the income eventually drawn.

Savers should be careful, however, and the lifetime allowance (LTA) may make them think twice. The LTA puts a £1 million limit (£1,055,000 to be precise) on pension contributions attracting tax relief. Anything over will be taxed at 25% if withdrawn as an income and 55% if accessed as a cash lump sum. Transferring a QROPS, perhaps into a UK self invested personal pension (SIPP), will bring that sum within the LTA calculation. Keeping it in the QROPS, by contrast, keeps it outside.

This is most obviously an issue for those who have already accumulated more than the allowance in their pension pots

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UK pensions are ver y simple in regard to the fact that they don’t count as part of the member ’s estate for inheritance tax purposes; the rules abroad are not always so kind to beneficiaries

– usually retirees. But it’s also potentially an issue for those earlier on in their careers and returning to the UK. If future contributions – their own and their employers’ – risk taking them over the LTA, it may worth keeping the QROPS in place even if it does mean having two separate funds.

Again, there’s no simple rule. There are downsides to a QROPS, too – particularly when it comes to inheritance.

UK pensions are very simple in regard to the fact that they don’t count as part of the member’s estate for inheritance tax purposes; the rules abroad are not always so kind to beneficiaries. Likewise, UK pension reforms mean British schemes provide flexible access, while some QROPS providers do not.

As ever, a lot will depend on the countries in question and clients’ individual circumstances. The first step for expats, then, is deciding whether or not to return to the UK. Once that decision is made, though, the second step has to be taking expert advice as soon as possible and getting a thorough assessment of their needs.

About Marc Beattie Marc is COO at Arlo Wealth.

He has been working in the Wealth Management and Private Banking Industry since 1999. Prior to co-founding Arlo Wealth & Arlo Group with his business partner Daniel Dickinson, Marc spent 5 years building the footprint of a UK Private Bank in the Middle East & Asia, assisting their rapid growth. Before this, Marc worked for 14 years at Lloyds Bank (International) in various countries including Brazil, Hong Kong, China as well as London, Jersey and the Isle of Man, always working with expatriate clients.

Marc is considered one of the UK’s leading Wealth Management professionals specialising in all matters impacting UK clients living & working Overseas & Non UK nationals with UK assets.

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ARIE CAPITAL

April 2020

EIS IN THE

SPOTLIGHT New EIS Fund launch from ARIE Capital is set to combine tax efficiency with technology opportunities for investors

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RIE Capital is launching its latest EIS investment fund for 2020. As advisers look to tax year end planning, many will be interested to see that qualified UK-based investors can take advantage of the current EIS legislation to invest in a wide range of companies via ARIE Capital’s access to technology opportunities.

At the same time, qualifying UK-based companies (with certification from the HMRC) can use the EIS regulations to help attract investment.

The intention of the fund’s managers is to benefit both investors and companies by providing a tax-efficient investment structure that will help all parties to thrive.

WHY ARIE CAPITAL? ARIE Capital began investing in technology companies in 2016, following on from two early technology investments that its parent company, Taurus Asset Finance, made in 2013. Taurus proceeded to launch a venture capital fund in 2014 and EIS funds too started to be raised in 2014.

As Stephen Margolis, Chairman and Founding Partner, ARIE Capital explains: “I partnered with Simon Tobelem – our CEO - in 2014 to launch ARIE Capital as a venture capital fund. We decided to look to raise money for

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the fund in China in 2015 with the result that $32M was raised for investment. The first investments were made in 2017 by the venture capital fund and now runs at an IRR in excess of 80%. The concept of having an EIS Fund is to support and supply the bigger fund with investment opportunities”.

Since 2013, the company has made fifteen technologybased investments. Their dedicated and experienced team is proud of its vibrant and diverse portfolio, which is focused on the development of EIS opportunities and to cultivate exciting new technologies. Two exits have already been made – via sale of Redux to Google in 2017 which provided upside for both EIS investors and the main venture capital fund. Sale of Flo Live in 2019 provided upside for the main venture capital fund.

ARIE Capital is partnering with companies and founders that are well known to them and which have already shown considerable growth and development. The aim is to help nurture these companies so that they will be ready for further funding in the future (from ARIE Capital itself or other investors).

FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION The EIS fund will be supporting a diverse selection of companies, all of whom are well-known to the investment

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• Be based in the UK and have received EIS- or SEIS- qualifying certification from HMRC

The EIS fund will be supporting a diverse selection of companies, all of whom are well-known to the investment team and which have met their strict criteria

team and which have met their strict criteria. Across its portfolio, ARIE Capital maintains a constant focus on companies that are at the cutting edge of technological innovation.

Margolis comments “I truly believe that we have a different offering (to the other platforms). With our focused approach, investors can see what they are investing in and can have confidence in our managers who have a track record which can be relied upon. With our globally-minded structure and experienced team, we offer your clients the opportunity to invest in companies that might not come your way via the traditional routes.

In this way, we present a fund that is full of unique investment opportunities that are both exciting and with significant upside potential.”

For more information visit www.ariecapitaleis.com

Companies applying to the ARIE Capital EIS fund should meet the following criteria: • Have a proof of concept and/or existing revenues • Have existing IP/patent(s) that provide a barrier to entry • Operate primarily on a B2B model (some exceptions may be possible) • Have a full-time/dedicated management team

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April 2020

TH E USE OF TRUSTS

IN DEFENCE OF THE TRUST

Guy Abrahams, Partner, Private Client at leading law firm Forsters, explains why trusts remain a vital wealth planning tool

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rusts have taken a battering over the last ten to fifteen years. Routinely vilified in the media, and treated with suspicion, often unfairly, by the EU, the OECD, and even the UK Government, as vehicles used primarily for money laundering and tax evasion, their many benefits for individuals, families and businesses are frequently overlooked. Tax changes and an increasing regulatory burden have also caused the trust to fall out of favour, at least in the UK. TYPES OF TRUSTS Many trusts are bare trusts, i.e. under which the beneficiaries are the economic owners but for various reasons it is better or necessary to have the assets in the name of trustees. However, there are more complex trusts which can provide a convenient and sophisticated means of holding and managing property for the benefit of others.

Life interest trusts Life interest (or interest in possession) trusts are those under which assets are held by the trustees for the benefit of one or more individuals, or "life tenants", during their lifetime. The life tenant is entitled to all or a share of the income throughout their life and the trustees have power to transfer capital to them. Who is entitled after the death of the life tenant will depend on the terms of the trust.

Discretionary trusts Discretionary trusts are the most flexible type of trust. The trustees hold the assets for a specified class of beneficiaries, none of whom has a prescribed interest in the trust

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fund. Instead, the trustees have discretion over whether, when and to whom (among the beneficial class) they will distribute income and capital.

THE WAR ON TRUSTS Prior to 2006, certain types of trust were treated favourably, or at least benignly, for inheritance tax (IHT) purposes.

These included a special trust for those under 25: the accumulation and maintenance (A&M) trust. Assets in a life interest trust were treated as part of the life tenant's estate for IHT purposes, and so subject to tax only the death of the life tenant.

In 2006, the entire IHT regime for trusts changed. A&M trusts could no longer be created. Any new life interest trusts were taxed under the so-called 'relevant property regime', which previously applied only to discretionary trusts. That regime imposes a 20% charge on assets transferred into the trust (for any value over the settlor's available nil rate band, which is currently ÂŁ325k), ten-yearly charges of up to 6% of the trust fund, and also exit charges when funds are distributed to beneficiaries.

The swingeing changes arose as a result of the Government's suspicion that trusts were simply being used for tax avoidance purposes, without any understanding of the protective benefits of A&M trusts particularly, and the flexibility for succession planning provided by other trusts, appreciated by people at all wealth levels.

Lobbying resulted in concessions being made for trusts arising on death for bereaved minors and young people up to 25, and life interest trusts created by Will.

No concessions were made for trusts created in the settlor's lifetime, with the result that lifetime trusts began

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The popularity of trusts has been further undermined by subsequent regulator y changes, with the introduction in the UK of the trusts registration service (TRS) in 2017 to comply with the European Union's Fourth Money Laundering Directive (4MLD)

to fall out of favour with families in the UK who did not wish to incur a 20% tax charge to create a trust for their children or grandchildren.

The popularity of trusts has been further undermined by subsequent regulatory changes, with the introduction in the UK of the trusts registration service (TRS) in 2017 to comply with the European Union's Fourth Money Laundering Directive (4MLD). The scope of the requirement to register on the TRS will increase in March 2022, following implementation of the EU's fifth money laundering directive (5MLD) in January 2020. This is still under consultation, and further details should be available soon.

FAMILY INVESTMENT COMPANIES With the decrease in popularity of the trust, the family investment company (FIC) has become a popular alternative.

The shareholders and directors of a FIC are generally family members. If appropriate, non-voting, or preference shares, may be given to some or all of the children so parents may control their children's access to wealth until they reach maturity.

FICs have not (to date) been subject to the same level of suspicion or scrutiny as trusts and the applicable tax regime is relatively benign. They are liable to corporation tax (currently 19%) rather than income tax (up to 45% for trustees) and capital gains tax (18% or 28%). However, HMRC are understood to be taking an increased interest in FICs, and it is conceivable that their tax advantages may be reduced in time.

From a succession planning perspective, FICs are more of a blunt instrument than trusts as it is more difficult to take account of the differing circumstances of family members.

This can be mitigated to some extent by issuing different

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classes of shares to family members. A well-drafted set of articles and a detailed shareholders' agreement can also enable directors of the company to more finely tune their responses to different family scenarios. Where appropriate, an overarching family charter or constitution, can provide a complete family governance structure even without the additional benefits and flexibility offered by a trust.

However, the flexibility and protection afforded by a discretionary trust can be used in the context of a FIC. For example, the voting shares (which may, in themselves, be of little value) can be held in a discretionary trust, meaning that the often important division between benefit and control is preserved.

THE FUTURE OF TRUSTS Even with the unparalleled level of trust regulation now in place, the stigma of tax avoidance, evasion and money laundering persists in many quarters.

However, no other wealth-holding vehicle matches the flexibility of the trust for dealing with changes in circumstances. New beneficiaries can be added and others excluded in ways that are, if not impossible, then at least cumbersome within a corporate structure. Capital can be released to one beneficiary, for school or university fees, or to purchase a property, without the need for others to receive identical distributions. Assets are less exposed to the predations of divorce and other life events.

With all their advantages for succession planning, it remains the case that trusts, in combination with FICs or otherwise, should be regarded as a vital tool in any wealth advisor's armoury.

About Guy Abrahams, Partner, Private Client, Forsters Guy's clients include entrepreneurs, international families, private charities and the owners of landed estates.

He often acts as executor or as a trustee of family settlements.

His advice for clients based in the UK mainly concerns how to manage the transfer of assets from one generation to the next, often using trusts or corporate vehicles to mitigate capital taxes.

He has extensive experience in the use of tax reliefs for businesses. His advice for international clients includes pre-arrival planning, and the use of holding structures to protect assets and to prevent unnecessary exposure to tax in the UK. Guy trained at Wedlake Bell and moved to Forsters in 2009. He was made a partner in 2017.

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#ADVISE H E R

April 2020

TAPPING INTO WOMEN’S WEALTH There is a clear need to support more women across the UK to engage with matters of investment, financial planning and the importance of advice. Emma Thomas, Chief Financial Officer at Parmenion, highlights an exciting new campaign designed to improve awareness and boost business opportunities for advice professionals

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t is anticipated that 60% of wealth will be held by women by 2025 . And yet women have pension pots that are, on average, 80% smaller than men .

It’s hard to reconcile those two figures. It certainly begs the question - if women have all this money, where are they putting it? Why aren’t they investing it for long-term growth?

It ’s time to show that a little common sense and some good advice is all anyone needs to become an investor

The answer may lie in new figures from The Wisdom Council (TWC), which is exploring the gulf in attitudes in investing between men and women. Parmenion are working closely with TWC on a new #AdviseHer campaign which champions the need for better financial advice for women.

women saving into a workplace scheme from 40% to 73% between 2012 and 2016 . That’s an extra 632,000 women ‘investing’ their money, though that’s not how they view it.

UNCONSCIOUS INVESTORS While there is a lot of talk about women not investing, the ‘why’ has not been explored in the same depth. TWC statistics show us that understanding this is incredibly important as the first step on the journey to engaging women on better money management. Take the fact that 59% of non-investing women have never thought of investing as an option for them – this insight is invaluable to advisers.

Not least because many women are investors. Autoenrolment into pension schemes increased the number of

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The clear disconnect between the concept of investing and the actual practice of investing needs to be addressed to bring more women into the fold. For years, the idea of investing has been shrouded in jargon and bamboozling phrases and that’s turned half the population away. It’s time to show that a little common sense and some good advice is all anyone needs to become an investor.

TWO DIFFERENT CONVERSATIONS Part of the problem appears to be that when it comes to investing, and money in general, there are two quite different conversations taking place. The importance of

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#ADVISE H E R

better money management is nothing new to women, many of whom are the key decision makers with regards to household finances.

But the money management narrative often directed at women is that they are risk averse, lacking in confidence or simply don’t have the know-how.

Women are systemically sold the idea of not being capable.

A linguistic study of financial adverts and articles, aimed at men and women, showed that 70% of the content presented money was a masculine ideal. Meanwhile 65% of the articles defined women as excessive spenders and 90% told women to cut back on their spending .

These are messages that don’t resonate with many women.

The WealthiHer Report shows that wealthy women consider themselves risk aware, not risk adverse.

It therefore shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone to find that 86% of non-investing women don’t think that people like them are investing. They are told over and again, both directly and subliminally, that investing is a man’s game and they should be cutting back and saving their pennies.

The fact that they are well on their way to having many more pennies than men, makes them an incredibly important pool of potential clients for advisers. In fact, women are the world’s largest emerging market , with an overall value of £350 billion. Working out how to bridge these two conversations is one of the keys to unlocking that potential for advisers.

WHAT WOMEN WANT The final piece of the puzzle is understanding exactly what it is that women want. Because they don’t see money in the same way as men. The meaning of wealth, and the accumulation of it, plays a more important role for women than simply having it.

For the majority of women (59%) money is about family, security and comfort. Another quarter (23%) feel that wealth symbolises freedom and independence.

Those feelings go hand-in-hand with the notion that money should be more than transactional. Women want a more meaningful relationship with it. As such, 67% of women invested already wanted to see their investments ‘do good’ . ESG (environmental, social and governance) and impact investing are on the rise – 71% of investors are interested in the topic - and that trend is likely to continue as mass wealth transfers to women in the next five years.

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The meaning of wealth, and the accumulation of it, plays a more important role for women than simply having it

Many advisers are already au fait with the world of ESG investing. Showing an understanding of these motivations can help to unlock the relationship that will result in longterm client rapport.

ADVISEHER The role financial planners have to play in closing the gender advice gap is pivotal. That’s why Parmenion launched its #AdviseHer campaign. Only through advisers will the message that investing is simple and efficient truly reach a mass market.

It’s important however, that advisers recognise that they need to make some changes to claim a slice of this pie. We all know that there are too few female advisers, and that we are far from achieving gender parity in regard to pay and opportunity in the financial sector.

The way forward is for us to work together to promote diversity of thinking; the way we think about staff and recruiting, the way we think about who our client might be and the way we think about how money impacts both individuals and larger communities. Money is genderless and its time we all saw it that way.

About Emma Thomas Emma is Chief Financial Officer at Parmenion, where she manages the finance team, CASS oversight and all financial areas of the business.

She started her career at Deloitte where she qualified as a chartered accountant and worked with a wide variety of clients. She then worked for Tyco Electronics on Sarbanes-Oxley implementation and a tech start-up ClearSpeed Technology plc as financial controller. Prior to moving to Parmenion, Emma held several positions at Jelf Group plc, most recently Finance Director (Insurance).

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April 2020

THE POWER OF PARAPLANNING

A DAY IN THE LIFE Paraplanners are a friendly and sharing group that’s for sure. Caroline Stuart recounts a day in the life of a PFS Purely Paraplanning event as she attempts to encourage more and more paraplanners to engage with the community

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can’t quite believe we are in our fifth year of the Personal Finance Society Paraplanner Panel and Purely Paraplanning conferences, the time has just flown by!

technical presentation, a soft skills session, a technology session and a practitioner panel. Why have we not shaken it up and changed things? Because we are giving the people what they want.

Our very first event was back in September 2015 in Bristol. I’ve just been having a look over that very first agenda to see what was covered.

The feedback we get from these events is invariably always good but on the odd occasion when sessions haven’t quite hit the mark (which have been few and far between), we’ve learned from them and improved. The PFS Events Team consists of seasoned experts in organising and putting on such professional events and so they are always really well received.

THAT WAS THEN There was a Regulatory Q&A with people from the FOS, compliance providers and the FCA, two technology presentations, a tax and legislation update, a retirement and pensions presentation, a practitioner panel and (my favourite) a session with a hostage negotiator. It’s a jam-packed agenda and I dare say enough to satisfy any paraplanner!

This was closely followed by two more conferences in Leeds and London. By the following year, we had expanded to running them in six in venues all over the country; something we are still doing now.

THIS IS NOW The overall structure of the events, rather surprisingly, hasn’t actually changed that much; we always have a

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In terms of the programme, this year could almost be a replication of that first event; we have some excellent technical sessions, a paraplanner panel, a cashflow session, a writing skills workshop and we have the superb Chris Hewitt from the FCA (a former paraplanner himself in a previous life!) joining us to talk about suitability. All have come from ideas from the Paraplanner Panel and as a result of feedback and suggestions from previous Purely Paraplanning events.

We get paraplanners from all over the country attending these events. It’s not only a chance to brush up skills and knowledge but it’s also a really great opportunity to meet and have a good old natter with your peers, share good ideas and best practice and offer support and suggestions to any issues or problems which other paraplanners may

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be facing. It puts continuing professional development in a whole new light as not only does it provide the space to think in a different way but it sharpens technical knowledge in the specific areas which we require.

In the five years since the Purely Paraplanning events started, we have grown and developed so much as a profession. We are constantly evolving with new people joining, others moving on to different roles within the financial planning space and some, like me, staying exactly where they are – loving being a paraplanner!

That’s why the #PFSPurely events are so good, they really have something for everyone in our profession, whether you are a tech nerd, a tax nut, a pensions geek or a writing freak, we have something for you.

If you’re a paraplanner, I’m sure we’ll have something for you too, so why not check them out and – coronavirus

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notwithstanding - hopefully we’ll see you there!

For details visit www.thePFS.org

About Caroline Stuart Caroline has been working in financial services for twenty years. Seventeen of those have been in paraplanner, senior paraplanner and Head of Technical roles, until she set up her outsource and consultancy business, Sparrow Paraplanning last year.

Caroline is also a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society, is a member of its Paraplanner Panel and has sat on the Board of Directors since 2018.

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RICHARD HARVEY

April 2020

PENCIL FULL OF LEAD When it comes to retirement planning, nothing’s gonna bring Richard Harvey down - even if the UK’s tax rules sometimes fly in the face of common sense

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ver the years, I’ve adopted the Squirrel Syndrome when it comes to pensions.

In common with the furry nuthoarders, I invested my modest assets in several different places, although declining cognitive ability means that I hope I can remember where they all are.

I’ve been more than happy with the performance of the last pension pot I opened up a few years ago with Royal London. They keep me regularly updated in easily-readable, usefully informative letters on how my savings have grown, and what I might expect at retirement.

YER TIME’S UP OLD CHAP But more recently, they have also been telling me that, sorry old son, your time’s up. By that I don’t mean they are forecasting my demise, but simply the fact that when I’m 75 I will no longer be able to make any further contributions as they won’t qualify for tax relief. Which begs the simple question: “Why?” There appears to be a disconnect between the government’s attitude towards pension savings – i.e. that you really shouldn’t be working, earning and saving after State

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If one of the big economic challenges now facing the world is how to sustain an ageing population, then isn’t it sensible to incentivise those in their 60s, 70s and beyond to keep working, stay fit, and continue to pay taxes?

pension age – and the realities of 21st century living for an increasingly healthy and motivated army of oldies.

If one of the big economic challenges now facing the world is how to sustain an ageing population, then isn’t it sensible to incentivise those in their 60s, 70s and beyond to keep working, stay fit, and continue to pay taxes?

WHAT’S THE ANSWER? Every country in Europe is struggling to find a solution to the problem of funding the pensions and healthcare of its

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RICHARD HARVEY

older citizens. For some, the route is to encourage young people to come, live and work in their countries. For others it’s encouraging their citizens to have more kids. Or, as Viktor Orban, that charmless guy in charge of Hungary puts it, “procreation over immigration”.

It’s entirely logical to try and plug the hole in the pensions and healthcare budget by raking in more taxes from the working young. But isn’t it equally logical that encouraging older people to carry on working will help swell the country’s tax take while keeping them out of the local care home?

AGEING WELL In considering that, the policy wonks at the DWP might usefully read a book called ‘The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist’s Guide to Ageing Well’.

Written by distinguished American neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, it delves into the ways in which older people can stave off the inevitable, at least for a few years.

It contains some unsurprising stuff about keeping fit, and recommends running through woods and fields rather than going to the gym (which will come as a merciful relief to many of us); getting out and meeting people, instead

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April 2020

of spending time on Facebook et al; and knocking up an oily fish dish rather than popping a daily Omega-3 tablet.

But one of his most forceful arguments is about retirement. In essence, the advice is “don’t”. It’s a disaster. If you can’t keep working, volunteer instead.

The book also contains some intriguing info on the sex lives of seniors. He claims that conservative men stop having sex in their late sixties, while liberals go on into their eighties. So that’s the last time I vote Tory…

And, bizarrely, that castrated men live 14 years longer on average.

I have half a mind to write to Royal London and declare I have no intention of retiring at 75, and and am off to a clinic in Morocco for a deeply personal surgical procedure.

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CAREER OPPORTUNITIES Position: Financial adviser/trainee adviser Job Ref: 59061 Location: LONDON

Salary: £30,000 - £40,000

This IFA firm has been providing leading advice to a diverse range of clients for over 20 years.

An adviser/trainee adviser is needed to assist a more experienced adviser. Client bank is provided. The candidate must show an eagerness to progress and build up the existing client bank. In addition to a very competitive salary, they also offer a discretionary bonus.

What’s needed for me to be considered?

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Level 4 Diploma qualified in financial planning or close to completing this

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Experience working within a similar role

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Demonstrate extensive advising knowledge

Position: Financial Planner Job Ref: 56683 Location: COLCHESTER

Salary: £40,000 - £50,000

A leading national financial services firm which offers full holistic financial planning to their wide client base is looking for an experienced financial planner to join their team. You will be expected to provide a top-class service and grow and develop a loyal client base. There will be leads provided and you will also be given full paraplanning and administrative support.

What qualifications are required?

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Competent Adviser Status

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SPS held including specialism in Packaged Products

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JO5, AF3 or G60 would be advantageous

Position: Financial Adviser Job Ref: 59178 Location: CAMBRIDGE

Salary: £45,000 - £60,000

An independent wealth & financial planning firm is looking to expand by adding a new member with a strong background within planning and solid grasp of face to face advice.

The adviser will help take on a number of the company’s client's moving forward, alongside building and growing this bank further.

You will have the chance to work with a number of the firms existing connections, with all your leads provided via referrals and professional introducers, with a highly rewarding salary and benefits package with a particularly generous bonus scheme. In addition to the handing over of clients and leads, the firm in question provide a full back office support system and a brilliant team environment.

What’s needed for me to be considered?

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Hold previous experience within an IFA / financial planning practice

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Must be qualified to a minimum industry standard of Level 4 Diploma qualified, ideally chartered or working towards this

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Previous experience dealing with High Net Worth Clients desirable but not essential

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A strong understanding of pensions and investment products advantageous

Position: Paraplanner Job Ref: 58840 Location: GATWICK

Salary: £35,000 - £40,000

This is an award winning financial planning and investment company that has an excellent reputation specialising in proving a wide range of services to private clients, corporations, HNW individuals and financial services professionals.

Due to growth, this company have an exciting opportunity for an experienced paraplanner to join the team and become a vital part of the financial planning process by supporting several highly successful advisers and their HNW clientele. You will benefit from working with a highly experienced team in an environment that provides industry leading training & development as well as exam support towards chartered status.

What’s needed for me to be considered?

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Previous experience within a paraplanning position within a regulated environment

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Hold level 4 Diploma in Financial Planning and working towards Chartered

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Understanding of the full financial planning & corporate advice process

Position: Financial Services Administrator Job Ref: 57713 Location: EXETER

Salary: £20,000 – £25,000

A leading financial planning firm is looking for an experienced Financial Services Administrator.

The chosen candidate will report directly to the Operations Director. This role will include processing new business, managing IFA diaries, preparing for meetings, communicating with clients and maintaining the back-office system. You will also be involved in managing a small team.

What’s needed for me to be considered?

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Experienced in IFA company is essential

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Management experienced

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Excellent IT and communication skills and the ability to deal with individuals at all levels

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Strong knowledge of the financial planning process and up to date regulation changes

Position: Paraplanner Job Ref: 59201 Location: PRESTON

Salary: £30,000 - £40,000

This chartered firm is looking for a technical paraplaner. You will have the opportunity to work in a supportive team environment where progression is strongly supported.

What’s needed to be considered?

In order to be considered for this unique opportunity, candidates need to have •

Level 4 Diploma qualified or working towards this

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Previous experience within a fast-paced IFA Practice

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High level of analytical capability and good communication skills

Position: Financial Planning Administrator Job Ref: 59096 Location: SOUTHPORT

Salary: £25,000 - £35,000

A well-established financial services practice which provides a highly personalised financial planning and investment management service is looking for someone to provide high quality technical administration and analytical support. You will have the opportunity to work in a supportive team environment where progression is strongly supported.

What’s needed to be considered?

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Previous experience within a financial planning or insurance role

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Professional communication manner, both written and verbally

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Any financial services qualifications are desired

Position: Compliance Manager Job Ref: 59117 Location: HARROGATE

Salary: £70,000

An experienced compliance professional is required to join a national IFA group. You will be responsible for setting up and monitoring compliance processes alongside undertaking file reviews and T&C.

What’s needed for me to be considered?

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Experience in managing and overseeing compliance function in an IFA firm

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Level 4 Qualified minimum

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Confidence when communicating with board level directors

Position: Senior Paraplanner Job Ref: 59145 Location: CROYDON

Salary: £45,000 - £50,000

An experienced senior paraplanner is sought by firm which offers flexible working and a host of other benefits.

What’s needed to be considered?

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Level 4 Diploma qualified and working towards Level 6 (Chartererd) is desirable

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Confidence in writing suitability reports and having a high level of technical knowledge

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Experience in working with external software/tools such as FE Analytics, SelectaPension, Intelligent Office

Position: Financial Planner Job Ref: 59071 Location: OXFORD

Salary: £40,000 - £50,000

A Level 4 (Diploma PFS) and either a CFP professional or Chartered financial planner required with a minimum 5 years’ experiencein an IFA in a similar role. Full training and support will be given to further develop your skills and abilities for a long-term career within our practice.

What do I need to be considered?

The firm is looking for someone who is qualified as above plus is a quick thinker, has exceptional communication skills and attention to detail as well as strong IT skills amongst other requirements.

Dan Gratton - Specialist Financial Planning Recruiter I have been recruiting within the financial planning field for just over 2 years now, largely specialising within the placement and recruitment of financial planners and senior back office roles. Prior to this, I was working in the industry for 5 years, as an Associate Financial Planner, so like to think I am somewhat knowledgeable on both the industry and those in it!

A lot of people believe that the job hunt on the build up to Christmas can be quite slow, however we have found quite the opposite, with last December being our busiest month to date. It seems companies are very keen to get their recruitment needs in order, prior to the new year, so there may never be a better time for you to start your search.

You will see below that we have a number of opportunities that we are working on at present and many more on our website should you be open to new opportunities.

Furthermore, should you just wish for further information on the IFA job market at present, opportunities locally or industry information on qualifications etc, please do not hesitate to be in contact. You can reach me on 0117 922 1771 or feel free to email me at dan.gratton@heatrecruitment.co.uk.

What’s next?

If you are interested in any of the above opportunities, please contact us directly. If suitable, one of our specialist consultants will be in contact with you to discuss the opportunity in detail prior to submitting your Curriculum Vitae to the client. During this discussion, we will aim to identify your specific skills and motivations and, where appropriate, can also recommend other relevant opportunities to you that match your requirements.

And finally…

If these specific vacancies are not exactly what you are looking for, please contact us to discuss other opportunities we may be recruiting for that aren’t necessarily advertised.

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Visit the Heat Recruitment website for more details of these and hundreds of other jobs too www.heatrecruitment.co.uk

1991

In 1991, the dismantling of apartheid began.

Russia emerged from Communism.

Grunge signalled the arrival of Generation X. Antarctica was dedicated to peace and science.

And the internet went public.

1991 was a year of unbelievable change.

And it was the year that Investec Asset Management began.

Change is in our blood.

We understand it.

We manage it.

We live it and we lead it.

And now it’s time for us to change.

Investec Asset Management has a new name.

In celebration of our beginning.

And whatever changes come next.

We are Ninety One. The times that made us, named us.

Investing for a world of change

Ninety One is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Investments involve risk; losses may be made.

Russia emerged from Communism in 1991 – the year we began

The times that made us, named us

Investec Asset Management is now called Ninety One

Investing for a world of change

Ninety One is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Investments involve risk; losses may be made.

Grunge signalled the arrival of Generation X in 1991 – the year we began

The times that made us, named us

Investec Asset Management is now called Ninety One

Investing for a world of change

Ninety One is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Investments involve risk; losses may be made.