Our Integrated Wealth Management Service brings together wealth planning and investment management to create a plan for clients that is tailored to their needs. It sounds good, but what does it mean in practice?
At Brown Shipley we believe that it’s not just about where your money is invested, it’s about you, your family and what you are trying to achieve with your wealth. All clients of Brown Shipley can meet with a Wealth Planner and an Investment Manager, and although our roles are different we work collaboratively to create a bespoke wealth plan for our clients.
The industry uses all sorts of terminology to describe my role as a Wealth Planner including Financial Adviser, Consultant or Wealth Manager. Wealth Planners start by seeking to understand you, your situation now and your plans for the future.
We ask lots of questions but importantly we listen. We can’t provide the most appropriate advice if we don’t understand what’s important to you and what you want to achieve, both now and in the future.
Once we have a clear understanding of your goals, we discuss and build a wealth plan together. This can cover a range of areas including: Family protection, estate and inheritance planning, retirement and pensions, lifetime cash flow modelling and tax efficient investing.
Whilst the Wealth Planner provides advice on the structure through which an investment is held, whether that be individual ownership, company, pension, trust or other tax efficient wrapper (or often a combination of these), the Investment Manager will tailor the underlying investment elements – stocks and shares, collective funds, bonds, structured products - to fit an individual’s risk tolerance. Your Investment Manager will talk to you about risk and reward, explain different types of assets, and talk about financial markets and what influences the outside world has on your wealth.
It might be helpful to illustrate this with an example:
Mrs Smith, introduced to us by her solicitor, recently received anunexpected inheritance. I went with an Investment Manager to meet Mrs Smith at her home to talk about her current circumstances and family life, the inheritance received and her plans for the future.
Mrs Smith had short term goals - to move to a larger house and pay for school fees; as well as longer-term ambitions to retire at age 60 and have an income of £60,000 after tax each year. The information we gathered at our first meeting allowed me to build a cash flow model to present to Mrs Smith when we met again.
The cash flow model, think of it as a balance sheet showing your current financial position, income and expenditure, allowed us to look into the future and consider the affordability of a new home, school fees and retirement.
It helped earmark money that would be needed in the short term and a balance that was appropriate to invest for the longer term. We talked about making use of tax efficient allowances when deciding where to invest, using ISA allowances and making pension contributions, and taking account of Mrs Smith’s circumstances and that of her husband.
I advised Mrs Smith to open an Individual Savings Account (ISA), a main portfolio and a pension, and we fed this into the cash flow model. With the structure for investing agreed, the conversation turned to investments. Mrs Smith was keen to learn more about where her money would be invested and the returns she might expect but didn’t want to be involved in the day to day investment decisions.
The Investment Manager talked about our research process, different asset classes, investment structures and the risks and rewards of investing.
Together they agreed with Mrs Smith the right approach for her and although Mrs Smith doesn’t want to be involved on a day to day basis, she can still keep track of her investments using our online service ‘My Brown Shipley’.
And that is just the beginning. It is so important to keep in regular contact and make sure the plan stays suitable. Life and the world around us is always changing; a new job, retirement plans, changes in legislation. Together Wealth Planners and Investment Managers regularly meet clients to make sure they are prepared for the challenges and opportunities that come along.
Our integrated Wealth Management Service can help with family protection, retirement and pensions, estate and inheritance planning, lifetime cash flow modelling and, of course, tax efficient saving and investing. We can also incorporate lending solutions to provide further flexibility to your wealth plan.
Rebecca Williams
Client Director
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