Expert: William Marshall: Partner and Head of Wealth Investment and Jon Roberts, Head of Compliance Delivery, threesixty services, Facilitator: John Chapman, Orion Consultancy
Key Takeaways:
There are three main areas to focus on when developing a Centralised Investment Proposition:
- Embedded cost controls, offering best possible value for money
- Investment Rigour evidenced across the investment
- Responsible investment: stay ahead of regulations
Context
IFAs are increasingly developing Centralised Investment Propositions (CIP’s) and the market is becoming highly competitive, attracting more regulatory focus and there is a need to ensure that responsible investment is considered, where appropriate.
Key takeaways in more detail:
1. Embedded cost controls
The pressure on costs seems not to have hit the IFA sector as yet but, there is increasing pressure on the services provided by asset managers, DFM’s and platforms.
“The fund industry will end up absorbing some pressure and so underlying investment instrument costs will fall from an average of about 0.85% in adviser portfolios to 0.65%”
The Lang Cat July 2020.
Although the FCA is not a price regulator, the FCA focus is on:
- The clients get demonstrable value and benefit when paying for a service.
- Fees are transparent and clearly disclosed as well as easily comparable by consumers.
2. Investment Rigour evidenced across the investment process
Three key aspects:
- Regulation is placing increased emphasis on evidencing of process
- Process should be robust, transparent and repeatable
- Seek efficiency of implementation of investments and platform on boarding
Specifically:
- Make sure the CIP proposition is in line with the needs of the target clients
- Understand the clients knowledge and experience, financial situation, investment objectives and the type, level and cost of the service needed
- Segment your clients and offer a range of CIP solutions
- Decide whether to offer your clients your own CIP solution or adopt one created by a third party
- Document the investment process
- Establish an investment committee that can be responsible for all aspects of the firm’s investment processes as well as formulising product and fund selection
3. Responsible investing, stay ahead of the regulators
- Currently no formal regulatory obligation to proactively include ESG considerations in the advice and investment process but, this is likely to change
- FCA is focusing on building a regulatory framework that helps firms deliver reliably sustainable investment products and helps consumers make better informed choices
- To stay ahead, integrate RI across the investment process and client engagement.
