Case Study
Financial Advice Case Study
Financial Advice Case Study
Mike was single, having previously been married and divorced, he had two adult children and worked as a structural engineer. Mike approached us because he had accrued a considerable sum of money in a bank savings account and wanted to explore the possibility of investing the capital in order to boost his potential returns.
> MEETING
During our free initial meeting we discussed Mike’s investment goals and investment timescales. In addition, Mike completed a risk questionnaire so we could ascertain his attitude to risk and capacity for loss. This allowed us to ensure the investment portfolio we proposed for him was consistent with his attitude toward investment risk. We also worked through a “fact find” with Mike so we had a thorough understanding of his financial circumstances.
> INVESTMENT STRATEGY
We then formulated an investment strategy which centred on the client investing in a well-diversified multi-asset portfolio within an Individual Savings Account (ISA) and a General Investment Account (GIA). A multi-asset portfolio is a diversified collection of different types of investments such as shares, bonds and property funds from different geographical locations, for example the UK, USA, Europe and Asia.
Our ongoing strategy was to use Mike’s annual ISA allowance and migrate capital from his GIA into his ISA each tax year, until all of the capital is invested in his tax efficient ISA.
> DETAILED REPORT INVESTMENT STRATEGY
We presented our proposal to Mike in a detailed report. In the report we included information on the past performance of the investments we were recommending, the strengths and weakness of our proposed approach, information on the different types of tax wrappers we suggested and, most importantly, a detailed breakdown of all of the costs involved in implementing our proposal.
Mike chose to proceed with our advice and having set up his investments we now manage them on an ongoing basis. This means we watch over the performance of the investment funds and switch them when we believe it is necessary to do so. We also rebalance the portfolios in order to keep them in line with his attitude to investment risk.