How We Work

You are at the centre of everything that we look to put in place

Our 5 Step Process

  • 1
  • Discovery

  • This foundation session is for really listening to you, the client. We find out who you are, where you’re at on your journey, and where you want to be. Your values, goals, dreams and personal circumstances are the vital information required, in order for Atticus to provide bespoke expert advice to enable you to achieve the best possible outcome.

  • 2
  • Information

  • After the Discovery session, we focus on your existing assets, liabilities, income, expenditure and your future assets and liabilities. Any possible windfalls, and policies you may have are also enquired of. This helps us understand your financial position and the resources we have available to make your goals a reality.

  • 3
  • Plan

  • Building on this foundation, we can work together to put in place a comprehensive financial plan, that will help you to achieve your financial and lifestyle goals. This plan will be unique to you, and free from bias since Atticus Financial Planning are an independent.

  • 4
  • Action

  • After presenting the financial plan to you, we agree the appropriate strategies and what we should implement. We will then put in place the agreed plans, putting you on track to meet your financial goals. Our IT systems and processes are state of the art enabling an expedited service.

  • 5
  • Review

  • We will review your plans on a regular basis, tracking and reviewing performance and amending the plan where necessary. It is a crucial part of any plan to ensure that it remains on track and suitable.

What we do

All our planning revolves around your personal goals, circumstances and ambitions. You are at the centre of all our advice and recommendations.

Plan

We create a financial road map for you, reviewing your current position and highlighting the steps you need to take to secure your future.


Protect

Having implemented your financial plan, we make sure that you have protection in place to ensure that, if the worst happens, your plans will not be derailed. This will protect your family and make sure that the fundamentals (wills, insurance, lasting powers of attorney) are in place.


Manage

By managing your investments and pensions, we can ensure:

  • The risk taken are appropriate
  • Costs are minimised
  • The plans remain suitable

Review

By reviewing the plans on an ongoing basis, we are able to:

  • Spot any potential problems
  • Take steps to remedy areas of concern
  • Give you peace of mind that your plans are on track to make your dreams a reality

It is always crucial that your money works as hard as possible. By reviewing mortgage rates, savings accounts and looking to pay debt back when beneficial, your finances can be improved. Making your savings and investments as tax efficient as possible will also enhance your returns.

Investment

A key part of what we do for clients is put in place an investment portfolio.

How will we structure your portfolio?

At Atticus Financial Planning, the make-up of any portfolio is determined by your personal preferences and requirements. These include your:

  • Goal
  • Attitude to risk
  • Investment time horizon
  • Investment preferences


The impact of cost on returns

As investment professionals, we accept that we cannot control the movements of the market. We therefore focus on those things we can control, such as costs and asset allocations.

When investing money, we aim to maximise returns while minimizing risk. Therefore, efficiency and reducing charges is important. In a process where we may be expecting to generate annualised growth of 5% or 6%, a 2.5% ongoing fee can have a substantial impact over time.

At Atticus Financial Planning we favour passive funds over active funds for the following reasons:

  1. Most fund managers don’t outperform their index or benchmark over the medium to long term.
  2. Separate studies by Gary Brinson and Roger G. Ibbotson show that that over 90% of a portfolio’s return is derived from overall asset allocation (proportion in shares, gilts, property, geographical regions, specific industries etc.) rather than stock selection or market timing.
  3. Passively managed funds typically have lower charges and help to keep costs down while providing the investor with the average return of the market.

Now, we understand that not everyone agrees with us. In these situations, we have access to a wide range of actively managed funds, should these prove to be the most suitable option following our initial discussions.

Impact Investing

More and more investors are keen to invest their money where it will make a difference.

In the past, this has been purely down to ethical considerations and a desire to improve society, the environment or workers' rights.

Previous attempts at ethical investment have been stymied by the relative nature of ethics itself. In other words, what may be considered ethical by one person may be considered unethical by another.

In addition to this, ethical investment was often accused of narrowing to a dangerous degree the range of investment choices available to a fund manager, resulting in more volatile and risky returns.

However, there has recently been a move toward investing in companies that show a good record in terms of:

  • Positive impact on the environment
  • Positive impact on society and their community
  • Positive impact with regards their own internal governance

By investing in these companies, it has been shown that an investor’s outlay can have a really positive impact. Furthermore, companies which measure favourably on these Environmental/Social/Governance metrics, also tend to demonstrate higher levels of long-term growth and better management, with a focus on the long-term future of the company rather than short term gains.

There is now an increasing demand for funds that can offer societal renewal, environmental regeneration and improvement of workers’ rights, while still offering good returns.

If this is something you would like to discuss further, please contact us.

If you think we could help...

 
Call us on 01420 446 777