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For many travelers, Antarctica is a bucket-list destination, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to touch all seven continents. In 2023, a record-breaking 100,000 tourists made the trip. But the journey begs a fundamental question: What do we risk by traveling to a place that is supposed to be uninhabited by humans? And as the climate warms, should we really be going to Antarctica in the first place? SHOW NOTES: Kara Weller: The Impossible Dilemma of a Polar Guide Marilyn Raphael: A twenty-first century structural change in Antarctica’s sea ice system Karl Watson: First Time in Antarctica Jeb Brooks : 7 Days in Antarctica (Journey to the South Pole) Metallica - Freeze 'Em All: Live in Antarctica Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…
Content provided by Investment Quorum. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Investment Quorum or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Content provided by Investment Quorum. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Investment Quorum or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
At Investment Quorum we have always taken it seriously that we must be benchmarked by others. It is all right for us to say we think we know what we are doing but we think it is right that others come in and look at our processes look at what we do and look at what we do for clients and give us an opinion on that. Some of that is done very formally, for instance we were the first UK wealth manager to achieve the highest 3 star or ‘Exceptional’ Investor in Customer status and that is all around what our customers think about us and what our clients say. We also have won several awards within our industry, I have been assessed as one of the UK’s top wealth mangers, Investment Quorum is recognised as one of top 25 wealth management companies in the UK. We have picked up awards for financial planning, we have picked up awards for investment management, for client care and for client communications. That is not to show off. What it is to say is that we invite people and organisations in to benchmark our processes to see that we are appropriately delivering what our clients need from us.…
Wealth management is the combination of financial planning, investment management, investment consultancy and risk tolerances appropriate to a client. The scope of financial planning and wealth management is all about protection for their family, any debt and liabilities and, of course, building towards retirement, income in retirement for those approaching and those in retirement and around that there are issues such as investment portfolios, Trusts, tax efficiencies and making sure of the very best chance of optimising for success are built in.…
Understanding risk is really important. I think it is important both from the wealth manager’s point of view but particularly from the client point of view. The minute you take money from a deposit account, well arguably there is still risk even on a deposit account, particularly after 2008 when we say that banks weren’t infallible. But the minute you take money from a bank account and move into equity markets you are taking investment risk. It is incredibly important people understand that and that they are comfortable with the level of risk that they take. Portfolios are comprised of different asset classes, property, cash, equities, bonds and the combination of those dictates the level of risk that is being carried in the portfolio. We take talking to clients about risk incredibly seriously. We even have a specific document that we discuss with clients and it talks about all the different risks involved and there are many of them. It is not just market risk there is political risk, tax risk, default risk, liquidity risk, there are lots and lots of them. That is why I think it is important that clients understand what they are getting into when they venture into the investment markets.…
Should someone wish to decide investigate becoming a client of Investment Quorum, it is a pretty detailed process. The first meeting, typically is about an hour or an hour and a half. Typically it is held at our expense. We think it is right that potential clients can look us in the whites of our eyes and see if we are what they are looking for. We discuss during that meeting what we charge, how we charge it, what the client is looking to achieve, when there retirement date is, what investment experience they of investment already so it is quite a detailed process covering a lot of ground. If at the end of that meeting they feel they wish to move forward with us we will give them a named adviser so they know they have a point of contact from there on in. The administration team would then begin gathering all of the information from all of their existing policies, plans and holdings and then feed it back to their named adviser to analyse it in accordance with their discussions and build a financial or investment plan for discussion at a subsequent meeting. Moving forward from there we would be looking to meet clients at least once a year, we believe have to deliver value to clients and therefore talk to them constantly with a weekly markets update, they receive quarterly valuations of their portfolios as well as regular financial planning content and events. It is a fact that most of our clients have been with us for many, many years as we work very closely with them.…
Pensions are a big issue in financial planning and wealth management. Particularly at the moment as there are so many changes going on. We are right in the middle of the transition from the paternalistic State and employer through to the full responsibility pretty much being passed on to the individual. This is also a huge demographic change, we are living longer, we are retiring earlier despite what the government is trying to do. We have to somehow overcome this problem of having twenty or thirty years of retirement with no earned income. At Investment Quorum it is pretty much one of the cornerstones of what we do for clients. People have pensions that they have gathered throughout their working lives, they have a bit over here and a bit over there. The idea is that it should be consolidated, reviewed, looked at properly and get working for you. It is incredibly important to do this as young as possible. The last thing anyone wants to do is run out of money in retirement.…
It’s hard to describe a typical client of Investment Quorum but I think they have one thing in common they have chosen to get very involved in their own financial affairs but they are looking for help, they are looking for support. They are usually very involved themselves, they take an interest and they are not ‘fire and forget’. They are from across the spectrum, we have diverse clients, we are City based so we have clients from the City but we also have clients from as far away as Scotland and the West Country, we even have clients in Europe. But the one thing I think they are looking for in a wealth manager is that very close co-operation. They understand that there are larger organisations out there, perhaps with more resources but they have taken the choice to work with a firm which really puts there interests at the heart of what it does.…
We take a six step process to financial planning. In fact we follow the ISO 22222 standard which is the international planning standard. There are a couple of them but that is arguably the main one. Step 1 is gathering the information from the client that is relevant to the financial planning process. Step 2 is sitting down with the client and talking to them about their goals, their aspirations, what they are trying to achieve and by when. Step 3 is analysing that information based upon the discussions and the information gathered and that information could be existing holdings, any investments they already have, mortgages, loans, expected inheritances etc. Step 4 is constructing the plan. Step 5, once it has been agreed with the client is implementing the plan and of course, Step 6 is monitoring and reviewing the plan. In financial planning terms people have lots of changes in their lives, they get made redundant, they have children, they send children to university they approach retirement so it has to be a dynamic plan that moves and adapts with them and supports them in their financial journey.…
Our approach to investment management is based upon a multi-asset approach. So what do I mean by that? What I mean is that it takes cash, bonds, equities, real estate and some alternative investments all blended into a portfolio. Those portfolios are risk graded because not every client is able to take the same risk or has the same capacity to recover from losses should they occur within the short term. So we offer a range of seven risk-graded portfolios, multi-asset class all designed to achieve what the client is looking for. Some clients have different requirements also so some of the portfolios are for growth, some are for income and some are for growth and income blended so we have a very comprehensive suite of investment portfolios available to clients.…
Investment Quorum differs in that we are one of the smallest in the UK, we have a team of eleven. Wealth management is typically delivered by the private banks or big investment managers. We think the failings there have been very much that people come and go, the teams can be unstable, the wind changes, new management comes in, different processes happen. This is what we do for a living, day in day out. It is the only thing we do. Stability of team, stability of client and working extremely closely with those clients to optimise their chances of success. We see clients every year, many more than once a year and I think that is incredibly important.…
The investment quorum is a team. There is myself, there is the Director Private Clients, Petronella West and she has around 25 years of financial planning experience and my Chief Investment Officer, Peter Lowman, has over 40 years professional investment market experience mainly gathered at Cazenove’s but for the last 7 years within Investment Quorum. The Customer Care Team, Operations, Lisa Ryall and Paul Goodrich have been around for many, many years. We are a very stable team, people tend not to come and go and there as many support members of our team as advisers in the team and we think that this is incredibly important. We work on a very collegiate basis, everyone is involved with everyone but, of course, clients want stability of advice so they will have a nominated adviser who always looks after them. That’s not to say that they are the only one to work with the client but they always have a named adviser. In fact what we have seen as clients arrive to us from larger organisations they have become very fed up there with being passed from pillar to post, people have come and people go and they have to constantly re-explain what they are looking for so that is not the way we operate. At Investment Quorum clients it’s a very stable team where you are looked after by the same people.…
As part of the overall wealth management process it is perhaps worth describing some of the typical things that are going on right now. We are doing a large probate valuation for a client. We have just worked out with a client how to take tax-efficient retirement income where he is not paying his highest marginal tax rate. Another thing we are doing right now is we are setting up a Trust for a client who has just inherited money from his father on behalf of his brother who has learning difficulties. I have just taken on a client who has just sold his business so substantial wealth he has never had before so it was a very interesting learning curve for both of us working together. The point of this is to make the capital last for the rest of his life as he has chosen to retire at fifty-five. He is therefore looking at a thirty, thirty five or event longer retirement. It is a very interesting investment portfolio to manage on his behalf. Another example would be a client who has sold a substantial house, they are down-single as the children have left home, gone through university and the fees are all paid off. It is a big rattling family house so they decided to sell and we are now managing the spare money from the sale. They are actually now doing a self-build home and we also assisted with the financing of that which was interesting too but it is all about the investment portfolio going forwards. This is particularly interesting as the husband and wife team and one has a much higher tolerance to risk than the other and that led to some very interesting discussions with and between them. Financial planning is not just about the individual sometimes it is about the business and we do work for company directors and business owners. One of the things we have just completed which was for one of our corporate clients. They started the business about eight years ago with virtually no turn over, eight years in several million pounds of turnover and they had no boardroom protections. What happens if one of the three key individuals and something happened to them? So there has been a round of arranging key man insurance, critical illness insurance, life assurance etc - the very building blocks of financial planning. So it is a very varied, interesting working week. I think that many of the problems that come along are of incredible importance to our clients and we take pride in being just the people to help them.…
This podcast touches on how important it is to understand just who you are investing with and what you are investing into and with whom - so we would always advise you to proceed with caution when investing.
This podcast touches upon some of the changes that have already happened and outlines some of what may be to come in 2016. Pensions in 2016 will be of particular interest to private clients undertaking pension planning, either pre or post retirement.
IQ's CEO, Lee Robertson discusses the following in this short podcast: -Who actually needs wealth management? -What sort of comments do people make about your job? -Is it possible to be your own wealth manager?
A short podcast with IQ's CEO, Lee Robertson, discussing the following: -How does a relationship between a financial adviser and a client work? -What divides investors and their advisers? -What can be done to prevent conflict?
A short podcast with IQ's CEO, Lee Robertson, discussing the following: - How is technology changing the financial services industry? - How has technology already changed your job? - As technology develops, do you think financial advisers could be phased out?
A short podcast with IQ's CEO, Lee Robertson, discussing the following: -What is the active versus passive argument? -How would a passive fund manager work? -How would a active fund manager work? -Which is better - active or passive?
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