Any client entertaining from your wealth manager (£1.4m invested)

[Mumoflovelyboys2]

Hi, I have £1.4m funds invested with a wealth manager that has been taken over and over the last few years the perks have all but disappeared.

I used to get invited to a nice lunch (somewhere of my choosing in central London) to discuss my funds plus other invites such as Christmas afternoon tea, clay pigeon shooting and talks with celebrities plus drinks etc.

All has gone completely and now only get a teams meeting annually - not even allowed into the office for a coffee - I think we’re now below the limit for them to bother. Just wondering if there are any other wealth managers that still perform well but do offer in person meetings and the odd jolly or two?

Isn’t some of the service in the psychological realm, making people feel valued/ looked after

Yep that is pretty much what DH’s user research found and no the bank wasn’t concerned. I don’t know why not! Perhaps because everyone else is doing the same thing so nowhere else is any better?

Grim, innit. Looking forward to seeing their promotional materials shift from "Tailored to your individual requirements" to "Totally impersonal service"!

So my DH has a very niche profession that means he’s a high earner, so yes it’s entirely salary based as neither of us have ever had any inheritance. You can absolutely start investing - you don’t need to have millions or even thousands! There wouldn’t be much point in you having a WM - but you can definitely in invest. Here’s some stuff you might find helpful:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/investment-beginners/

I don’t know who you bank with but look into stocks and shares isa’s. They’re fairly low risk and can make you some money! X

Start with the Rebel Finance School. It's free.

I suppose it’s worse though, when there are people getting the freebies that are coming out of your fund too, and you’re not getting them.

Thanks really useful to know and not me being overly needy. It’s been a slow decline in personal service since they gave us a new relationship banker a few years ago.

i did threaten a complaint over an issue a few months back and funnily enough during that time I got a great service!

Also another bug bear I have is that ours doesn’t offer tax advice. Is that a norm too for WM so you need to then pay additional fees to another firm?

ours signposted us to a separate friendly firm for our tax returns

Ours don't offer tax advice, it's standard. As for the entertainments, I don't bother, they are so naff. We moved to a smaller firm who have better rates and don't do as many client events.

I do my own tax returns. It’s IHT and CGT where I need advice

I didn’t even get a Christmas card this year - rude!

We get a bi monthly teams call, he’s very pleasant to deal with and we are happy with how he manages our funds, his fee seems like good value for money to me. I’d find it a bit odd if he invited me out for lunch or for an activity and it would make me question if I was paying him too much if he spent money entertaining us unnecessarily.

Sorry, posted too quickly/baby brain.

Our manager has put us on calls with others there who give kind of high level tax/structuring advice but, essentially, no. They haven’t given us IHT or CGT in any formal capacity and said “oh use this tax firm for your return and they can also help you with structuring”

My dh’s takes him out for lunch periodically but not an event as such, more if he mentions he’ll be in London for the week on business he suggests lunch/dinner though since dh retired he’s never in London without me plus this chap’s company managed funds personally but also for my dh’s company (currency related). They do sometimes chat on the phone, he has a medical condition and is thinking of relocating out of London was asking about where we live 2 weeks ago

As far as I know, at least with the WM in my bank, you need £10m before you even get a named account manager.
WMs usually shy away from tax advice, you will need to see a specialist accountant.

WM don’t give tax advice and I would be wary of the ones who say they do - you would be much better with a wealth manager who would join a meeting with your accountant (who won’t give investment advice) and sort it all out together.

My opinion is that if you have earned your money through a profession and you are prepared to devote a bit of time and energy to understanding investment philosophy, you aren’t an addictive personality and you can avoid emotional investing or disinvesting, up to around £5m you could be capable of doing it yourself.

After that then WM can offer access to markets that would give your greater diversification or tailoring to your specific circumstances.

Of course that does still leave lots of people who would benefit from a WM. But you need to understand what you are paying for. And I wouldn’t necessarily shun big banks in favour of more personalised outfits - because quite frankly if you know you personally need a WM for £1-4m then you would also benefit from the comfort and durability of a large brand. Due diligencing smaller WMs would be very difficult. Not to say all the large brands are good, but googling would give you an idea of ones to avoid!

May I say, as a public sector worker who will never have a fraction of the wealth of some of the posters in here, I nevertheless find this thread fascinating. My interest comes from having opened a few investment funds in the last 5 years and seeing them grow. I can’t help thinking that if you have the brains to build a multi million pound business, self investing should be within your remit. Then maybe use an accountant for IHT and CHT?

The brains but not the interest in doing do - and you need to be a bit interested.

What happens at £5million that would mean you were no longer capable of doing it yourself?

Well, at somewhere above that level then you should include diversification into private markets. Whilst you can buy into public markets easily yourself, either into single stocks, trackers or actively managed funds, private markets are much harder for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, the sourcing of what private companies are available to invest into is difficult.
Secondly as they are not public, the due diligence is much harder to do yourself. Thirdly, at the amount you would want to invest in any one company, you would need to spread among many companies and the paperwork/due diligence time would be very arduous if you did it at single stock levels, even if the companies would be interested in you as an investor.

So you probably want some sort of fund. And the sale of those are regulated in the UK as 'non-mainstream pooled investment vehicles' and they are prohibited to be sold to retail investors. So you would need to prove you were a High Net Worth investor (which you would be with £5m) but again, you will get much better diversification through an investment manager because they would be able to put the amounts into a fund from a critical mass of clients that make the costs to everyone worth while.

You may be in a position to do some of it yourself, eg with EIS/VCTs (but you are likely to limit yourself to the tax advantaged amounts with those) or if you were a finance professional maybe into your own private equity or hedge fund, but lots of people can't.

Very interesting - thank you!

For under 2m I would look at self investing. You’ll pay a small sum for access to a decent broker but will save lots of your percentage paid to a financial manager.

Spread you portfolio across various funds, gold, crypto, a couple of higher risk single stock if you know the companies current plans of your choosing. YouTube has lots of tutorials on this now.

I’m a WM and tax is very much on my radar. I’m not completing tax returns but we are very much aware of client restrictions or allowances. We deal directly with clients accountants.

I very rarely entertain, but I do see my clients face to face.

I'm an accountant. I have clients using WM's, IFAs and CFPs, as well as a couple of IFAs and a CFP as clients. Tax planning and advice is absolutely front and central to the advice/strategy. I can't actually imagine how a financial adviser could give advice at all without considering the tax aspects as tax is often fundamental to the success/failure of an investment strategy. The CFP I have as a client, and to whom I regularly refer clients is head and shoulders above me when it comes to capital tax advice and IHT advice - he often comes up with brilliant strategies that I couldn't even begin to imagine. It's very strange to hear from other posters that their WM doesn't mention tax or just refers them to accountants.

For those of us grumpy about our WMs… does anyone have any advice on how to find a new one? I’m using one who knows my family, just from inertia. But he’s really not great. I made a complaint that included (effectively) him having a very old fashioned view of women, and to apologise they sent me some pink champaign. Which didn’t give me confidence that they understood why I was cross!