What is the Wrap

Wealth Management Service?

Existing Wealth Management Service clients can click here to visit their portfolio

Wrap Wealth Management Service means different things to different people.

Click here to download a presentation on our Wealth management Service

At its most basic it's an online platform that allows us to aggregate your portfolios and run them more efficiently.

To us it's much more than that.

The Wrap Wealth Management Service provides a new way of working together for you and us.

It helps us deliver an outstanding client experience.

It helps you focus on your goals and it helps both of us plan, implement and review the best strategies for achieving those goals. It can offer greater flexibility and lower cost.

As an adviser it lets us do the thing we do best - advising our clients.
It means less time on administration for us both and therefore, more time for us looking after our clients and their finances.

What it does:

• Helps you focus on your goals
• Helps us dedicate more time to our clients
• Helps us deliver an outstanding client experience
• Helps us both plan, implement and review the best strategies

Investment flexibility; whatever your approach

• Comprehensive wealth management needs flexibility in terms of investment options.
  
• Whatever your approach, the Wrap Wealth Management Service is geared to help us to provide outstanding service to you.

We offer a flexible menu based approach to investing to make sure that your investments perform over time as you would wish them to do. This means no nasty surprises if you don't want to see your capital reduce. It means the potential for outperformance if you are happy to accept volatility. And whether your priority is performance, cost, administrative ease or security we have a solution for you. And if you are not sure, we are happy to help.

Accommodating your own investment approach

One of the key benefits of using the Wrap Wealth Management Service is that it can accommodate a large range of different advisory investing styles

If you're a hands-on client you'll find viewing options to help you. We have our own model portfolio creation process and can have it plugged into the Wrap Wealth Management Service.

If you are a hands-off client who prefers to concentrate on goals-based planning rather than investment management, just leave it all to us and we'll report back to you as frequently as you wish.

Whatever your approach, you're not tied in - we offer different propositions for different clients.

And remember - we never make a change to your portfolio without your express prior agreement.

Investment Ups? (and downs?)

The first stage is to ascertain the level of investment volatility and risk you are happy to accept - from none at all (but beware of inflation!) through to accepting the potential for 100% loss (or 100% gain or more). We do this through a plain English conversation and the use of cutting edge investment psychology profiling software.

Model Portfolios

For most investors, one of our seven asset allocated ‘investment groups’ will then be selected as most suitable.

There’s a downloadable guide to asset allocation here.

First you complete an online ‘risk profile questionnaire’ to find your investment growth comfort zone.

After the Risk Group, we ask you to consider which of four descriptions do you feel best describes your investment knowledge and experience? (K&E)

Then, we ask you to please let us know if you would like us to consider ‘green’, ‘ethical’ & ‘socially responsible’ content as part of your portfolio?

Next is to check if there are any other considerations to take into account.

Now we consider downsides and their magnitude and effect that might have. No one prefers to see the value of an investment go down. But it is a reality. Many investments show single digit swings either up or down, over any given day, week, month or quarter. Some can show 10-20% gains or losses over 6 months to a year. Some even more, either way.

With that in mind we ask you to consider which of five descriptions you feel best describes your investment capacity for loss? (CfL)

Having gathered all this information before we meet, we now have an excellent conversation piece. We’ll consider how the outputs from the above fit your situation and aims. This is the importance of targeting your investments and portfolio to your goals rather than external indexes or benchmarks.

Finally, consideration is given to historical data – not to try to predict future performance – but to consider the highs and lows and relative performance of different asset classes as well as looking to see if any long term trends exist.

After all of the above, we now have what we call your Investment Group (IG)

There is a document that gives more detail on the above process here.

Regular Reviews

Whether aiming for the best returns on other assets or focusing on performance or fees, we will manage, monitor and review your portfolio in line with your requirements - and feel free to change your mind at any time! And unlike many other advisers or stockbrokers we make no charge when 'switching' so you can be sure that any recommendation to change your investments is made with your portfolio in mind, not our fees.

There is a short video on the benefits of rebalancing here.

Tax Wrappers

As well as the content of the portfolio providing returns, another important aspect is tax. The UK tax landscape seems to be constantly changing so we offer a full range of tax wrappers for use in the Wrap Wealth Management Service. From deposit timed accounts to cash ISAs, investment portfolios to Pensions, and onshore to offshore, whichever tax wrapper - or combination of tax wrappers - works best for you we will ensure your portfolio is structured in the most tax efficient manner possible.

Behind the scenes

We've put a great deal of thought into the 'below the waterline' elements too. For example, when we rebalance a client portfolio, we will make sure that all of the deals (buys and sells) get placed at the same valuation point so you are not 'out of the market'. If we do a switch for you, we place the sell deals at the next available valuation point and place the buy deals immediately the sales have been priced. This significantly reduces 'out of market time' for our clients and there is no charge for this service.

Direct Securities Trading

Not all clients have mutual funds. Some want to use direct gilt holdings, direct equity holdings, investment trusts and more. That's why we have integrated the online securities trading platform from Self trade into the Wrap Wealth Management Service.

Our Charging Principle

"We believe you should find it easy to understand the total cost of investing".

So, how does this principle relate to reality?

• We will provide you with a clear personalised, calculated initial fee, where appropriate.
• We will provide you with a clear personalised, calculated annual charge, where appropriate.
• All costs are shown explicitly, just like a bank statement.
• We offer discounts for larger portfolios. It's even possible for you to combine your portfolio with a family member to access these discounts (as long as one family member has in excess of £500,000 on the wrap).
• We don't charge for re-registering onto the Wrap Wealth Management Service.
• We don't charge for re-registering away from the Wrap Wealth Management Service.
• We don't charge for fund switching - so you can be sure any changes we recommend are in your best interest, not to generate fees for ourselves.
• We don't charge if you decide to stop using the Wrap Wealth Management Service.
• We don't have minimum usage agreements or penalties.
• We will always explain and detail our costs outside of any tax wrapper or investment fund costs so that you can be certain we are providing you with a service you value.
• That is it, there are no hidden costs.

All this matters because we believe we can only work together if you are not under any financial or contractual pressure to use the Wrap Wealth Management Service.

The Wrap Wealth Management Service is a great way to simplify this for us both, especially compared to the rag-bag of charging structures many people have in terms of older legacy products. We believe the most important thing is that we both understand the total charge for investing.

Summary

In today's world, good is no longer good enough.
I find that my clients want a high-quality investment service, where information is instantly available and investments can be changed quickly and easily. The Wrap provides this service, with clients able to consolidate their investments, including their pension, in the same place. Once The Wrap Account is administering these investments, I am free to act as a true financial planner and wealth manager for my clients.