What Clients Say
You feel you have them on your side to a greater extent than you have with any of the
other wealth managers that I came across in my work for a leading City law firm, where I was responsible for vetting advisers for
individual partners. They are free of the prejudices and conflicts of interest that seem to be prevalent among just about all
financial advisers. They are also ready to challenge what they see as conventional or lazy thinking. It is always worthwhile
batting ideas around with Stuart - he forces you to justify your own thinking and preconceptions. He can be deliberately
provocative, helping you to think out of the box and clear your mind.
There were three things that attracted me to No Monkey Business. In the first place, it was their planning approach. They have
the capacity to think about retirement as a series of periods in one's life, as opposed to a single one-off event. In other words,
they recognise that one's investment requirements for money to be spent in five years time are likely to be very different from money
that will not be needed for 20 years. The conventional dogma of having money tied up in bonds for the whole of one's retirement fails
to take sufficient account of these changing needs. I found nobody else who was able to take this approach.
Second, their approach to asset allocation based on a rigorous mathematical computer model makes eminently good sense. That is not something I have in my armoury.
Third, it is useful to have access to someone, such as Stuart Fowler, who has a very clear point of view backed up by logical
thinking. When he presents an investment opportunity, or when we discuss one that I have from elsewhere, his recommendation always
follows logically from the point of view that underlies the overall asset allocation.
Until I met No Monkey Business two years ago, I had been wanting to organise my financial affairs for the long term.
As a non-financial professional, I had been actively looking for help, attending seminars and talking to financial advisers.
I suddenly realised that everyone I was seeing had a deep down interest in what they were selling and was being remunerated
accordingly. Coming from a professional services business, I am used to being paid for my time, independent of kickbacks or money
from ideas that I bring. I don't have to rely for revenue on the downstream results of something I recommend. So the first thing
that attracted me to No Monkey Business was this fee-based idea which I thought was worth exploring. It was different and relevant
for me. The second thing was the book. The first few chapters described what I had felt and seen in the financial services industry.
We have recently appointed No Monkey Business to handle our pension investments for
our family business SSAS. I know this is a very difficult subject however we have found it very helpful to be able to clearly
target a desired pension for all the members by age 60. They have been able to tell us very specifically how we can achieve that.
They quantified all the possible outcomes at different levels of risk so we could decide which trade-off we were most comfortable
making. We now know how much it will cost our company in annual contributions to achieve what we want. They have taken a lot of
the risk and mist out of it.
I would be very happy to recommend people to you. I shall warn them that they will be challenged to think about their money in terms of what they want in life. And even the after-life!
We invited Stuart Fowler of No Monkey Business to address our Directors at a lunchtime seminar. The purpose was to provide
them with some independent insight into the personal investment choices that they faced. No Monkey Business is one of the few
personal investment advisors who can legitimately lay claim to having no conflicts of interest with their clients. In my view this
makes their recommendations vastly more valuable than commission-earning (and therefore conflicted) advisors.
