why we are different
We provide private investors with the benefits that are typically only available to institutional investors. This makes us very different from a typical financial planning or wealth management advisor, especially within in a UK retail financial services market that is notoriously resistant to change.
How our clients experience and value the No Monkey Business differences is evident from what they say about us.
The differences are in:
» How we work with our clients
» The way the services are designed
how we work with our clients
Our clients' interests are paramount - our agenda is their agenda, and certainly not the industry's.
The relationship is open and collaborative. We help clients make the best decisions about their financial future, without us having any vested interest in what or how they decide. We want them to be clear about their choices and confident about their investment plans.
We charge flat fees based on service value, not asset value, saving our clients money and avoiding biases and cross subsidies. We will not take on clients unless there is clear value for them at our flat fee.
the way the services are designed
Starting from scratch, we designed services to match real client needs, not to fit into existing industry pigeon holes.
The range of services we offer is built on the same core skills but meets the different ways clients want them applied to their own needs.
These skills combine the financial planning and investment expertise normally only found in separate firms having different core activities — a separation that has served clients badly.
The services combine experienced judgement and financial modelling of the kind used by institutional investment consultants.
Each service focuses on high-level strategic decisions because these most determine outcomes and best facilitate risk management. The industry typically presents this 'upside down' because it can more easily excite customers and generate sales revenue by encouraging the popular misconception that investment is about 'clever' people and 'sexy' products rather than about portfolio construction, risk management and the 'systematic' attributes of public markets.
We work in a collaborative way because that transfers the power over outcomes to our clients. Other financial advisors may also talk about empowering their customers, but in reality their business models tend to reward standardisation and passivity.
We implement clients' plans and portfolios using the best available third-party products and services. We have no vested interest in a particular product or solution.
We leave assets free to be held wherever clients prefer, or wherever is most cost-effective for them. Our sophisticated IT solutions then help them aggregate the data about their overall financial positions. Once again, this is different from most financial services providers, who tend to try to save money for themselves by holding all assets in one place (such as on a 'platform'), invariably at considerable cost to their customers.
how we charge
We charge flat fees for all services, even for discretionary portfolio management.
The fee charged to each client reflects the true cost of the service, depending on its scope and complexity, and is reviewable annually (or as the scope changes)
Flat fees best align our interests with clients':
- Don't be fooled by the ubiquitous label 'fee-based': if portfolio-based fees can only be collected by offsetting commissions received, then commission bias between products is not removed - “it is only by persuading people to part with real money that an adviser can claim to be truly independent”: FT, 30 October 2006
- Fees based on true costs ensure we have no vested interest in which form of service clients select
- We are then indifferent to the extent to which they retain or change their existing industry relationships
- Portfolio-based fees lead to unfair cross subsidies between clients with different levels of wealth — our clients are people who should benefit from their own 'economies of scale'
- Portfolio-based fees interfere with decisions about the mix of risky and risk free assets — decisions vital to risk control
- Transaction-based commissions bias the advice, including against all alternatives that do not involve a commission-earning transaction for the adviser (such as buying property, paying down debt)
Flat fees are better than time-based fees:
- Clients can budget with more certainty and avoid surprises
- We can build future real costs into their planning (eg their drawdown targets)
We are economically independent:
- We only take a fee from our client
- We do not pay for, or take payments for, referrals
- We will negotiate the best terms with third parties
- In the unusual circumstances where unavoidable commissions would otherwise go to waste, we collect them and pay them to our client (or offset them against the regular fee)
We can access products through competitor firms without fee conflicts.
We give clients complete information about our own and third-party costs
