For many years, expatriate investors have
needed to work out for themselves who can
be trusted to build and manage their wealth
management plan. Financial advisors were
numerous, and all claimed to be better than
the others and, of course, more
trustworthy.
While no one wants to go through another financial
meltdown as we did recently, at least the disaster exposed
many companies who weren’t everything they said they
were.
Out of these troubled times, we now see a more
professional and organised industry appearing, with tighter
regulation and better co-operation between reputable
financial management organisations.
Seeing a need to demonstrate to clients this more
professional approach, and in an effort to help investors
make informed and sensible decisions, Imperius Asset
Management teamed up with other forward thinking
organisations to create the Federation of European
Independent Financial Advisors. FEIFA’s golden-globe,
emblem is rapidly becoming the ‘kite mark’ for regulated
and secure wealth management organisations in Europe.
Professional pensions & retirement advice
At Imperius Asset Management we
appreciate just how important it is to consider
retirement funding as part of a wealth
management plan, and we also know the dangers of
finalising the plans without a thorough review by a pensions
specialist.
With regular press announcements of pensions fund deficits
and collapses, many people will be approaching the end of
their working life with insufficient capital and savings to
support their planned lifestyle in retirement.
We feel that this gives us a special responsibility, and have
partnered with a panel of pensions advisors to make sure
that we can do all that we can to help you make the most of
their entitlements and the preferential opportunities open to
our expatriate clients.
Effective back office solutions
The back office operation of a thriving
financial services business is both
complex and demanding – so much so
that it can often distract very capable
advisors from their principal activities. As a growing wealth management organisation, we soon
realised that it is more important to spend time with our
clients and their financial plans, than to build and maintain
the structures that are necessary for our services to be
delivered.
Many in our industry will tell you that it is not possible to
outsource the back office functions of their business, and in
most cases this might very well be the case. Indeed, it
took us a long time, and a great deal of effort, to develop a
relationship with Intelligent Back Office Solutions Ltd, a
specialist financial services consultancy, that we trusted to
partner us in delivering our wealth management solutions.
We have been working with iBOS for over a year now, and
during this time we have developed a partnership and trust
that gives our directors and consultants the freedom to
spend more and more time meeting clients and managing
their financial plans.
Qualified and innovative investment advisors
One of the greatest dangers to a
wealth management plan comes
from unqualified
and ill-informed individuals selecting the underlying investments making up
the ‘growth’ part of your life assurance policy.
While our consultants have a very good understanding of
the funds used in our portfolios, we do not rely on their
judgement alone when selecting and reviewing the final
mix.
This is the role taken on by our partners at Novium AG, a
specialist investment advisory based in Zurich,
Switzerland. Constructing, reviewing and managing funds
are the things that they have been doing for a very long
time, and we know that our clients have a better financial
future by including them in our team.