2 partner, owner managed firm.

Excellent, long standing relationships with clients.

Looking at succession and wanting to implement more consistency in process.

Firm have been operating with various investment models for some time, but have never had it properly documented as a Centralised Investment Proposition document.

Concerned over the implications of PROD.

Firm realised they were confusing their service proposition with their CIP.

Concerned the lack of a clearly documented investment process would prevent the growth and succession planning they wanted to implement.

• To understand the investment process within the firm.

• To convert this into a detailed Centralised Investment and Retirement Propositions document.

To understand the investment process within the firm.

• A day consulting with the firm over their models, their clients but also their goals for the business.
• From this, we identified a number of new client segments with identifiable characteristics.
• We determined how the characteristics of the segments determine the requirements of different investment outcomes. 

To convert this into a detailed Centralised Investment and Retirement Propositions document.

• We designed a CIP process.
• We mapped the different segments through the new CIP process.
• We researched all available products, services and investments to find a matching shortlist of manufacturers (providers) and instruments (products).
• We produced reports that demonstrate a match between the client characteristics and the product CIP outcome characteristics using our own PROMatcher tool.
• We undertook due diligence on all the shortlisted products to determine the most suitable manufacturers (providers) and instruments (products) for each segment.
• We then designed an online tool for the firm to process every new client through to determine both the segment and the CIP outcome.

An example of the feedback from the client:

As a small firm, holding the knowledge and thought process behind the CIP in the adviser’s head was workable but not ideal. Producing a documented CIP process stopped the sleepless nights that had been troubling the owners since the introduction of PROD. The firm now have a clearly defined collection of client segments and a matching investment process for each segment. The firm are able to operate more collaboratively internally and also look at their succession plans.