How We Help
Financial
Advice
We help you to quantify your personal, lifestyle and financial goals. Then we develop a comprehensive long-term plan for achieving those goals.
Your tailored plan will lay out all the interconnected elements of your ‘financial big picture’ and it will guide you through the necessary measures required to give you the best chance of reaching your goals.
Once your plan is agreed, we will help you put each element into practice, and we will regularly review and update your plan as your life and the world around you changes. We are with you each step of the way, acting as your sounding board, providing trusted counsel, and ensuring that all your financial decisions are made in a considered, well informed way.
Investment
Management
Crafting your own individual Investment Program, perfectly aligned with your unique goals and values.
We are experts at building and managing low cost, highly diversified, fit-for-purpose investment portfolios designed to give you the very best chance of achieving your investment objectives.
We work with you to understand your objectives and preferences as well as your personal values. And we then help you develop a tailored ‘Investment Program’ that fully embodies all these sentiments.
Once your Investment Program is agreed, we assume responsibility for the day-to-day management of your portfolio, while keeping you abreast of what’s going on through regular structured meetings, reports, commentary and analysis.
This approach ensures all your objectives and sentiments are reflected in your investment approach and that your portfolio is managed in a disciplined and contemporary manner. This in turn saves time, reduces complexity and minimises the costs associated with the management of your investments.
“The investor’s chief problem, and even his worst enemy, is likely to be himself”
Benjamin Graham
Helping you stay disciplined through good times and bad.
Our brains are hard-wired to react first and think second. This benefited the caveman greatly. Didn’t want to miss lunch, didn’t want to be lunch. But reacting first and thinking later is a disadvantage to investors.
When we see that our portfolio values have declined, or we hear the latest media-driven, end-of-the-world hysteria, we want to sell immediately. As a result, the average investor typically underperforms their own investments.
So, how do you respond to market volatility? Do you want to buy when the market is soaring and sell when it’s falling? Do you spend too much relative to your resources? We not only help you set realistic expectations for the volatility of your portfolio, but we serve as a guide when you need reassurance to stay the course. Volatility is a common, albeit, uncomfortable part of investing. Understanding the normal range of positive and negative returns for your portfolio helps you manage your reactions better.
Family
Stewardship
Family wealth is a complex and sensitive area. Whilst preserving and growing wealth are key priorities, a twin goal is to maintain and promote family harmony. This can be a tricky double act. Different family members invariably have disparate levels of knowledge and interest in matters financial, and strong personalities can sometimes overwhelm those less assertive family members. Nevertheless, effective stewardship can manage these issues, while also fostering a climate of learning and shared direction.
We take the time to deeply understand the family’s values so that these may be reflected and documented in a robust family investment policy, designed to last for generations.
When crafted with skill, understanding and experience, an effective investment policy can bind family members to a shared direction, which in turn fosters intra- and inter-generational relationships.
When all the family genuinely “buy-into” the investment framework, a further benefit is that it will serve to protect the family from the unavoidable and regular calls for investment capital coming from friends, colleagues and acquaintances. It will give the family a strong reason to say “no”, while demonstrating discipline and conviction.
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In our experience, making investment decisions in response to inbound offers and ‘opportunities’ can unsettle a well-structured, long-term investment program and impair family wealth. One of the greatest fears faced by families that have created wealth through their own endeavours is that the following generations don’t understand or value the hard work that underpinned this success and have a sense of entitlement to the lifestyle they enjoy.
We place education at the core of our advice, offering coaching to members of the current and next generation, helping the family to articulate their values and establish the framework that ensures the intended legacy of the older generation is fulfilled by the younger.
“The benefits strategic philanthropy can bring to family dynamics and relationships, as well as the impact on chosen ‘for purpose’ organisations, is profound and far reaching.”
Strategic
Philanthropy
Australian families have increasingly sought to include strategic philanthropy in their lives rather than simply passing assets to a charity through their estate. The benefits this brings to the family dynamics and relationships, as well as the impact on chosen ‘for purpose’ organisations, is profound and far reaching.
Helping families develop their own strategic philanthropy plan is a great privilege. Our experience in facilitating these discussions allows the family to focus on articulating their values and defining how they want to structure their giving so that it delivers the most effective impact.
The experience of many of our clients is that establishing a strategic approach to their giving vastly improves the connection, love, and respect across the generations and binds their family to a common purpose in a way that fulfils like few life events they have shared.
Our unique experience supporting families engaged with structured philanthropy ensures that we can guide the family through all aspects of their strategy. This includes: defining the family’s objectives, determining the appropriate structure, developing the investment strategy, researching and supporting the gifting program and subsequently measuring the impact of the gifting
Our Costs
Our services are rendered through a transparent cost structure. There are no lock-in periods or hidden costs. We view our relationship with you as a partnership and want you to understand how we work with you and for you.
We offer flat dollar fees for project work and financial advice, in addition to a percentage/tier-based approach to portfolio management.