Investment process

Our Best of breed^TM investment process

Our investment team research, select and monitor investment managers on an ongoing basis to ensure that you have the most appropriate choice available.

Research

We focus on understanding our investment managers' businesses and track records

Our investment manager research process is thorough. We analyse both business structures and track records to identify certain traits that we believe will deliver superior results over the long term.

• Understanding the investment manager's capability: looking forward

We research investment managers' philosophy, research and investment process, people and culture. This gives us an in-depth understanding of how they work, and why their structure should enable them to produce good results in the future.

• Understanding their track record: looking backward

Our research has shown that adherence to a dedicated process and philosophy generates better results over time. By quantitatively analysing the past performance of the investment manager we can assess whether or not results are consistent with the managers' stated approach.

An important element of our analysis is assessing investment managers through a number of full market cycles. Special attention is given to a manager's ability to protect capital in poor market conditions, as we believe that superior downside protection is an important component of long-term outperformance.

Selecting

We take a long-term view on investment managers to get the best result for you. By doing this, we give managers sufficient time to prove their ability so that you have sufficient time to benefit from their skills. Hiring and firing managers based on short-term performance has been shown to be highly detrimental to results.

Our selection criteria

When we select our investment managers, we favour managers that: 

• either own the businesses they work for, or have a large investment in the portfolios that they manage on behalf of our clients. This aligns our investment manager's and your interests;
• have a sound framework for making investment decisions and an ability to think originally and differently to their peers. This framework must have proven success through various market cycles;
• have stable investment teams and a process where decisions are made quickly through open lines of communication;
• are prepared to remain small and flexible. This flexibility enables them to take advantage of opportunities that may not be available to larger managers. Our managers are usually willing to close to new business should size limit investment opportunities;
• will act as stewards of our clients' savings.

Monitoring and reviewing

Our dedicated compliance team assumes responsibility for the overall monitoring of each manager's portfolio to ensure that it adheres to the investment mandate and regulations on a daily basis.

Our investment team continually reviews our selected managers to ensure that the reasons for selecting them remain in place, and the investment results they are producing are consistent with their stated approach. We retain the right to replace any manager that we believe is no longer suitable to manage our clients' savings with an appropriate alternative.