Professional Money Managers
Why we use professional money managers
We recommend professional money managers as we do not believe we can select underlying investments (e.g. individual stocks) better than those investment managers we hold in high regard. For this reason we rarely recommend specific securities. It also allows our clients access to investment strategies that are not generally available or economically viable to retail clients.
How we select our professional money managers
We assess the following attributes of fund managers:
- style and approach – See “Investment style” for more information;
- financial stability;
- likelihood of retaining key persons;
- attitude to risk management;
- past performance (this may be with their previous fund if they have recently changed funds);
- attitude to tax minimisation;
- true to label; and
- fee structure.
We obtain this information by various sources, including:
- taking directly to the fund manager;
- talking to their competitors;
- talking to hedge fund brokers and industry peers;
- external asset consultants including Standard and Poor’s and Zenith Partners; and
- Futuro’s investment committee.
Please note that Futuro Financial Services uses a list of approved products selected from research by Standard and Poor’s, Zenith Partners and Futuro’s investment committee. Investment products not included on this list may only be recommended where it is considered suitable for a client and has the specific endorsement by the investment committee on a case by case basis.
Individually Managed Accounts
Individually Managed Accounts are investment portfolios that are managed by investment managers through a custodian where the underlying investments are beneficially held by the investor and not the investment manager.
Advantages of this approach are:
- Complete transparency of transactions and costs of the fund manager;
- Ability to sell stocks before year-end to crystallise capital gains or losses; and
- Individual tailoring of investment portfolios (eg an investor could ‘black list’ BHP if they required).
