Case Study: Active Management – What could help you sleep better at night?

Could you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today as a financial adviser?

I joined Lloyds Bank in 2010 and worked within the branch network. I moved into a relationship management role within the Private banking team in 2012. It was here that I was able to get to know clients and it brought the complex understanding of their needs to my attention - I loved it. I went on to complete my level 4 financial adviser exam and moved from being a part of the Private Banking lending team to joining Schroders Personal Wealth (SPW) when the company launched in 2019.

Everything I do is client centric – they are always at the focus and the heart of what I do. I’ve always liked meeting new people and the fact that my role as a financial adviser allows me to develop long-lasting relationships with clients and build a rapport with them gives me a great deal of job satisfaction. Getting to know and help people achieve their financial goals and aspirations is something quite powerful and allows me to deal with incredibly interesting people.

Each client you form a relationship with and give advice to is different. They have different needs, circumstances, preferences, and willingness to take risk. When it comes to active management, are there key factors or implications you consider as an adviser that you share with your clients to help them make the best-fit investment decisions for their portfolios?

We manage clients’ investments so that they can focus on other things in life. Life can be busy. Everyone has their own passions, troubles, jobs and dreams that they enjoy and work towards so, my role as a financial adviser is to take the worry and stress away. I’ll often ask my clients – what helps you sleep at night? If this helps you sleep at night, then it’s a service worth choosing.

Advisers at SPW are long-term investors, but we also have the knowledge of short-term, tactical asset allocation. Clients don’t tend to like volatility, unlike our fund managers who understand the opportunities it can bring, so the trust and expertise that active management has, provides the opportunity to give a huge amount of comfort to clients, especially in uncertain times.

Is there a particular scenario that you’ve experienced with a client where you’ve helped them make changes to their investments to better reach their objectives for their portfolio, through your knowledge and experience of being a financial adviser?

I have a client who had previously moved part of her investments away from us at SPW, so when I took over the relationship from a previous adviser, I asked why one part of their investments were with us and one wasn’t. She made clear that she didn’t want to pay the additional costs of bringing that portfolio over and was still happy to manage it through.

Clients don’t tend to act in the first meeting, and this was a clear example of this decision-making process. I was able to grow a relationship with her and build a rapport, through getting to know each other better over subsequent meetings and conversations, I gained her trust. During this time, the market became more volatile and, simultaneously, her life became busier so I began to highlight to her that if she were to bring her self-managed investment all under one roof to form part of her ongoing advice with us, would really benefit her. We spoke about the effects of inflation and making her money work harder – she began to realise that if she continued to self-manage part of her portfolio and cash, she was not going to meet her objectives of growth and having money available for her retirement. She could also reap the benefits of tax efficiency – she had a General Investment Account (GIA) with us, but she wasn’t utilising her Individual Savings Account (ISA) held elsewhere. By bringing the ISA across could allow us to be able to utilise her ISA allowance annually, which she was very pleased with.

Through leveraging the investment expertise that we offer and reiterating the importance of having a well-diversified portfolio, she knew she was going to have enough wealth for her lifetime. Furthermore, with our help, she could maximise her wealth and truly benefit from this decision moving forward.