HOW DO I KEEP TRACK OF WHOS MANAGING MY MONEY?

Investment planning and tracking the performance of investments used to be a concern for only the seriously wealthy. Times, though, have changed, and the 21st Century family is now increasingly looking to secure future wealth through strategic investment planning.

Investment planning can be a minefield for many people. Remarkably few people take time to plan what to do with their assets. What is more, deciding where to invest today is confusing for many potential investors under the weight of the formidable range of products and options available in the financial services market.

Where do you start? One option is for people to manage their money themselves. Yet very few of us have the time, knowledge and qualifications necessary to understand the most tax-efficient ways of managing an investment for the future and this is an area fraught with danger.

The only real viable solution is to find the superior financial advice of a wealth expert with access to the appropriate investment products and fund managers best suited to handle your money and interests. The smart move is to get your money into funds that will be well managed for your benefit over the longer term – and then try to sit back and forget about them.

It should be said that the very best investment managers have no way of knowing exactly when markets will move one way or another, or are able to say with any degree of exactitude when is the best time to invest in a stock market related investment.

But good managers can distinguish between companies that are better managed than others and what sectors are expected to do well according to trends. So the key is to find superior investment managers to handle your money – and rely on them to keep track of how your investments are performing.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? If only it were! No one company has a monopoly of investment management expertise. And there are relatively few really talented investment managers - and it is likely they are managing large funds for institutional clients rather than spending their time managing dozens of individual portfolios.

It is crucial to try to assess a number of factors, like the particular individual who will be handling your fund, the strength of the support team and whether the firm employs its own investment analysts or relies on those of other firms. In addition, it will be important to determine the firm’s investment style, the principles and disciplines it follows and how well it sticks to them.

One of the beauties of an organisation like the St. James’s Place Group is that, instead of employing its own investment managers, it uses a number of leading firms to manage its funds. These firms have been carefully selected and are continuously monitored with the help of independent consultants and where necessary, the managers are changed without charges or tax implications for the investor.

By spreading between the St. James’s Place Managed Funds, each run by a leading investment management firm, the investor can get massive diversification of risk. Furthermore, the company’s Investment Committee ‘manages the fund managers’ on behalf of its clients in order to aim to generate consistently superior investment results.

Please remember that past performance is no guide to the future.

Jacqui Bevan is an Associate Partner of the St. James’s Place Partnership. She can be contacted on 01628 474192.