Investment Quorum provides wealth management advice to a diverse variety of individuals, professionals and institutions.  This section of the website outlines a few examples of the recent situations and challenges we have assisted clients with over the years.  We hope you will be able to identify with our approach and range of skills and feel able to contact us for assistance.

Bill and Katherine - ongoing retirement planning:  Bill and Katherine were introduced to us in 1997 by a financial journalist with whom we had worked on financial case studies.  They were both journalists and had collected a range of different pension schemes including personal pensions, preserved final salary schemes, and AVCs.  Bill was taking early retirement but Katherine would continue to free-lance in journalism.  They wished to totally review their pension planning for efficiency and peformance.  Further, Bill was more nervous about retirement and was unsure if he had accumulated enough pension funds to actually stop working.

We assisted Bill with his retirement negotiations ensuring the offered pension enhancement for early retirement was optimal.  We then undertook a total review of Bill and Katherine's financial affairs.  This included all other investments, property values and assisted them work out their ongoing budget.  We tidied up all of the varying pension elements into a single plan for each.  During this process we were able to help Bill come to terms with the fact that he could indeed stop working and actually take a very low-risk approach to investment management whilst still safeguarding the lifestyle he and Katherine hoped for in retirement.   Eleven years on and as many financial and lifestyle reviews later, Katherine is now also winding down towards retirement and we are still assisting them both with their ongoing planning in terms of income in retirement, portfolio management and eventual annuity purchase.

Sandra - discretionary investment portfolio management:  Sandra approached us after reading of our Gold Standard Award for independent financial advice in 2007.  She had sadly recently been widowed and was having to learn the ropes of her financial situation as previously this had all been managed by her husband in conjunction with a private bank arm of a high street bank.  She was uncomfortable with much of the tone and content of their advice and wished for a second opinion on their suggestions for her capital.

We took a long time to get to know Sandra at what was a particularly traumatic time.  We were particularly careful to ensure that we assisted her learn the basic principles of investment and wealth management so that she knew that the decisions she made were in her best interests and not those of any institution.  After being informed of her decision to move her funds to a discretionary investment portfolio management service with IQ we reduced the risk profile of the portfolio from that which had been used by the private bank to a level which more accurately reflected Sandra's risk tolerance.  The portfolio was aligned to produce income, her primary requirement, in a tax efficient manner.  Institional class investments were utlised to reduce the overall cost of the service.   We have just had our first review and are very proud to have been asked by Sandra to speak to her sister who also has become dissatisfied with her investment advisers.

A religious charity - investment services:  We were contacted by a religious charity to discuss their investment funds.  These were invested with another investment manager and the trustees were becoming worried that many of the underlying investments were not reflective of their firmly held religious and ethical beliefs.  The investment managers did not appear to be taking account of previous instructions so we suggested that we ensure they compiedy with the Trustee Act 2000 and ensure that their paperwork was all in order including their Statements of Investment Principles and Objectives and assist them revisit the underlying investment strategy with the incumbent fund managers.  This strategy was then revised to accurately reflect the updated investment objectives and principles ensuring a much higher degree of comfort for the trustees that the charity was investing in assets acceptable to their order and those individuals who had bequeathed monies.  We continue to provide advisory services to the charity on a twice-yearly basis.