Arquitis (“archer” in Latin) is an Independent Financial Adviser company, directly authorised by the FCA to provide financial planning advice on investments and pensions to UK customers. The company was set up by Edward and Katy Archer in May 2016 upon the decision of Argentis Financial Management Limited, with whom Edward has previously had a service contract, to engage all their advisers on an employed basis. Many thanks are due to Argentis for offering every assistance to enable a smooth transition, with the official launch on 1st January 2017.
What we do
Our most important role for many clients is to listen to, and provide, what they want on a bespoke basis. For some, this may be simply the reassurance that somebody is keeping a watching brief over their other advisers (fund managers, stockbrokers) whilst for others we undertake a much more active role. Our only requirement is that our clients take the trouble to understand the advice provided.
Golden Rules
Lots of eggs in lots of baskets
If your main assets are illiquid (such as buy-to-let property), you need investments which provide liquidity. If your main assets are liquid but volatile (such as shares), you need investments which provide steady returns. Many clients get confused between what is an egg and what is a basket, If you have ten varied plans from ten companies all invested in the UK stockmarket, you have a lot of baskets but the same eggs. If you have one plan, for example a pension or trust, invested in lots of different investments, you have lots of eggs in the one basket.
Understand what you are buying
This includes the price. If the adviser can’t explain it to you, they probably don’t understand it either.
Concentrate on the bits where your input helps
You should not spend your time worrying about, for example, which provider we recommend, but on ensuring that we have understood your circumstances and needs correctly and that our recommendations make sense.
How We Apply Them
A key area for many clients is the use of different tax wrappers – pensions and Individual Savings Accounts being the most common. The decision about, for example, how much money – if at all - to invest into a pension and when and in what format to take it out again is a core part of most clients’ planning.
At any one time there is a need for sensible asset allocation. Unlike most of our peers who tend to rely primarily on the completion of an Attitude to Risk questionnaire to determine a mix of (usually) shares, fixed interest, commercial property and cash, the recommendation on how much to invest into risk investments is based first on what you can afford to lose. Within risk investments, the allocation to shares funds for example is based mainly on whether these appear to offer good value relative to alternative investments.
We also spend a lot of time researching individual products which appear to offer good value. In the last decade these have included at various times UK commercial property funds, Venture Capital Trusts, structured investments of various flavours, Enterprise Investment Schemes, conventional shares-based funds, guaranteed investments and life assurance policies of various types. Many of these products will only be suitable for a few clients. We do occasionally make mistakes – the idea is that the occasional mistake is offset by multiple successes.