With our Financial Advisers and Investment Team working so closely together, often close enough that an Adviser can ‘pop’ upstairs to ask the Investment Team a question on the spot, it’s clear the closeness of our employees is a Unique Selling Point (USP) for Courtiers. We sat down with Gary Reynolds and Paul Kemsley to discuss the relationship the Investment Team and Courtiers Financial Advisers have when it comes delivering good outcomes for clients.
Additional to providing off-the-cuff advice, our Courtiers Investment Team offer monthly question and answer sessions for anyone in the business – especially Financial Advisers – to ensure we can always offer detailed insight on the Courtiers funds and clients’ investments. Plus, when needed, members of the Investment Team join Advisers in client meetings, offering clients a chance to speak to everyone who’s working together to ensure money’s being managed in a way that reflects specific goals and attitudes.
When it comes to the Investment Team meeting clients alongside Advisers, Gary confirms that this is a two-way street. Clients and Advisers get the information they need, and the Investment Team are reminded of the people whose funds they run. It’s about the capital they can deliver back to our clients, not beating statistics on a computer screen.
“[The Investment Team] coming face to face with the people whose assets they are running…[means] they understand that what we do has real outcomes on people’s lives. …What we do matters to people at a very, very deep level.
…Never forget that there is somebody who’s reliant on this capital. I think if you can get that mentality into our industry, you’re going to snuff out a lot of the bad practice that’s gone on.” – Gary Reynolds, CIO.
The personal over the professional
Annual Client Seminars are so important. Paul Kemsley explains that a more informal setting allows the teams to meet clients and really get to know them and their needs far more comfortably than in just office meetings. Plus, the client-centric presentations and conversations bring the money alive in a way people understand. The aim is to make sure our clients are kept in tune with how their money is managed, in the way the teams are in sync with each other as well as showing how the planning, management and investment all goes towards supporting the lifestyle the client wants, or the growth they’re interested in. We get to know our clients over a long period of time. Some of these clients, Gary has known for over 30 years, so Client Seminars are a great chance to catch up with them and learn what is going on in their lives. Courtiers is not a money business – it’s a people business.
Ensuring that everything works towards good outcomes is important for all our teams to remember, especially when keeping in mind that money can be such an emotional issue. Sometimes Courtiers Advisers talk to clients about highly emotional topics, and need to make sure the money they have will cover all their needs. From births to deaths, getting on the housing ladder to inheritance, everything is underpinned by finances.
“We understand that money isn’t just money.” – Paul Kemsley, Head of Private Clients
Courtiers has the time and space to invest in clients, sometimes going out of an office setting to discuss long-term goals, get into the nuts and bolts of what they need and what makes them tick, outside of the room. This helps with decision-making and planning, ensuring we have appropriate strategies in place. And while the Financial Advisers focus on this, the Investment Team ensure we are sticking to the mandates set out and that we continue to meet risk appetites.
There must be an absolute, concrete confidence in the Investment Team that they will keep to these mandates; most of the Investment Team’s time is taken up with risk mitigation, ensuring we do stick within these parameters. If there was ever any doubt about us upholding these mandates, the whole relationship would be destroyed.
The best outcome for our clients
“It’s assessing what we’re doing, and ensuring [what] we’re giving the client and getting the best outcome from what we’re doing” – Paul Kemsley, Head of Private Clients
One of the newest regulations from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is Consumer Duty; a regulation that asks firms to ensure their work for clients is fair, clear and not misleading. From someone who has been working in investment since 1982, Gary has seen regulations focus first on the ‘what’ – what should be regulated, then on the ‘how’ – how financial industries should it be regulated. Now, Consumer Duty completes the ‘why’. For us, the ‘why’ is because we are running our clients’ money. When our clients look at their investments, they’re not seeing money; they are seeing their goals and objectives.
“Today, an investor can invest with a lot more confidence, and much better protection. And that’s got to be a good thing”– Gary Reynolds, CIO.
Courtiers Advisers Lloyd Mashatise and Abayomi Bashorun discussed Consumer Duty in our latest Knowledge Exchange, giving us a view on how we as a business are working to ensure we are doing the best by our clients. One of the ways we are doing this is in the vertical integration of our whole service proposition to make sure that at the end of it, we are looking after our clients.
We seem to be ahead of the curve: we were ahead of the curve when we turned to a fee-based proposition before it became mandatory and when we began risk-mapping. Now, our vertical integration seems to focus on what Consumer Duty wants, placing the client at the start, middle and end of our proposition.
Evolving our products – and the British ISA (BRISA)
We’ve built a suite of products to serve clients and deliver best outcomes through Courtiers. We can control these products and it wouldn’t take long to adapt a product if it turns out that’s what clients needed.
“A prime example was our ISA – we moved from the ‘normal’ ISA to the Flexible ISA.” – Paul Kemsley, Head of Private Clients
Will Courtiers introduce a BRISA? The BRISA is still with the government under consultation until June 2024, and Paul is keen to know more then. It’s an interesting concept – investing only in British stocks and funds. Courtiers already has a UK Equity Income Fund –that, in Gary’s words, is “perfect for it”. It’s a good idea to get us investing in our own, UK, future.
“The extra £5,000 into an ISA, I think, is a good thing – I would perhaps like to see a bit more than the £5,000 because ISAs have been stuck at 20,000 for quite a while.” – Paul Kemsley, Head of Private Clients
How do we ensure good outcomes for clients?
“We’ve got our own ISA, our own pension, our own collective, meaning we can plan so much better around those three products using, for the collective, Capital Gains Tax Allowances, the Pension Contribution and the ISA Allowance. In terms of [particularly] switching between the three…it makes it so much easier to utilise that if our clients have all three… we can mix the two up, ensuring we are meeting those allowances and giving that client a good outcome from that Consumer Duty side of things.” – Paul Kemsley, Head of Private Clients
“Paul makes that sound ‘simple as that’. But that has to be done through understanding what the client wants and what their goals and objectives are, at a personal level. So, he’s been quite modest there because the advisory team have to work hard on maintaining those relationships so that they can make the right decisions for those clients.” – Gary Reynolds, CIO.
Paul and Gary agree that Financial Advisers have to work hard to know how to support their clients – it’s through the close relationships that Advisers know the levels of risk and the clients’ goals, giving Advisers the confidence to respond and work with the Investment Team to manage clients’ financial plans and investments. This leads us back to the fact that there needs to be as much focus on the emotional side of wealth management as the financial, as focus on good outcomes for clients across every aspect.
