Brexit & Due Diligence
by Damian Davies on 27·02·2018
Modern Migration: Millions vs. Billions
During the Brexit debate a lot of the rhetoric was written and spoken about migration into the UK and the millions of people being attracted to living and working here.
The overwhelming majority of people who came to these shores did their homework and made a conscious choice to uproot everything and move to the UK. They did this because they clearly perceived it to be the right decision on lots of levels, particularly when you take into account the difficulties of moving to a new country with a different language. Certainly not something to be done on a whim. The logistics of organising such a move are horrendous. By definition they must have believed they would be a lot better off.
What, you might ask has this got to do with financial services due diligence? Well, we all know how onerous it is to carry out regular due diligence on everything from investment providers to platform providers to SIPP providers; the list goes on.
The thing is, what happens when for whatever reasons, you as a Financial Advisory practice decide that it's time to move to another provider whether it be for investments, platform or SIPP and pension? Not a decision to be taken lightly, however if you do decide to make a change your primary duty of responsibility is to do what's best for your clients.
As a firm, The Timebank are seeing the consequences of that due diligence and changing business models and philosophies. Billions, not millions of assets are being moved from one provider to another by advisory firms. Just like people migrating its being created because of the inherent belief that the clients will be better off moving to another home.
The Timebank has been doing this for its clients and has been instrumental in providing the technical and administrative support for the migration of in excess of £2 Billion of assets. This is a substantial figure, but one we believe will only accelerate over time.
We have been in a fortunate position to be able to help our clients with the substantial research, due diligence, administration and provision of advice that it takes to move such a huge amount of assets. However, if you as an organisation carried out your regular due diligence work and had to do this, how would you cope? Would you have the time and resources to organise it so it didn't disrupt your business and your clients?
It's a bit like Banks with current accounts or Utility providers, once the inertia and loyalty is taken away and its made easy, people move. This is the new migration of the next decade as Firms do what's best for clients.
We have already seen at the beginning of 2018 various DFM's cutting their AMC's substantially. This will help cement what funds they hold and attract new funds in, so long as performance holds up versus its peers. Investment management costs being cut across the industry can only be good for investors.
Martin Vaughan, Chartered Wealth Manager at the award winning Clear Capital Management LLP said, 'as a Discretionary Investment Manager we have also seen advisory firms realising their expertise is providing excellent financial planning advice. Advisory firms are recognising that their expertise and skill is in the ability to provide a well-structured and well thought out financial plan to help their client achieve their objectives. When doing this these professional financial planners recognise that they can leverage the knowledge and experience of other professionals such as Discretionary Investment Managers and outsourced paraplanners to provide a much greater service to their clients'.
So, if you are considering having to move to a new country you would surely want to use a firm that had the knowledge and experience to make the transition as seamless as possible. Similarly, if you are looking to migrate your client's assets to a new home we'll make it easy for you. The hard bit is deciding to go.
Let The Timebank do the work for you while you run your business.