Strategic asset allocation is the cornerstone of our portfolio design process. Following detailed discussions with your adviser, together we make decisions in three main areas:

a) Asset Class: Each client’s account may be broadly determined as Conservative, Balanced, Growth or Aggressive. This decides your portfolio’s Equity/Bond/Commodity split. There may also be allocations to property, private equity and hedge funds, and we will make tactical weighting adjustments from time to time.

b) Geographic Mix: You will also have a preference for Domestic (100% UK), Semi International (50% UK) or Global weightings, which will determine the geographical disposition of your investments.

c) Active and Passive: We then decide, together, the extent to which the portfolio should contain low cost index trackers called ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), and actively selected stock, mainly from our RAID system (see Investment Process). This will determine the level of risk over and above that already implied in the markets as a whole. This helps lower the cost to you on the part of the portfolio which is simply tracking the market.