News & updates
News & Updates
Cost comparisons in wealth management
Cost comparisons for 25 UK wealth management firms submitting data to FT Money in June 2021 imply that, at all portfolio sizes above Fowler Drew's minimum amount, our annual management fee, plus platform or custody costs, is significantly below the average. These cost...
Flat fees versus asset-based fees
How you pay for private-client investment services matters, but not as much as what you pay for and how much you pay. How you pay is typically now between flat fees, independent of the value of a transaction or portfolio, and asset-based fees, where a percentage rate...
Are equities overvalued?
Let's briefly go behind the scenes of the Fowler Drew portfolio-management model to see why we think equities are not generally overvalued. The key numbers are shown in the chart. This is familiar territory for investment professionals but private investors may...
Performance benchmarks in goal-based wealth
In a previous article, Whose performance is it anyway?, we addressed the significance of performance, for both clients and the firm, in goal-based wealth management. Our key observation was that when assets are managed to meet client-specified outcomes (or...
Whose performance is it, anyway?
Private clients buy performance, it is said. This is not what they buy from Fowler Drew. Once they see what we’re doing it becomes obvious they are buying something to do with the satisfaction their money can provide, not performance. Test drive The Planner yourself...
The Active/Passive debate
In our paper An explanation of Active/Passive we address the active versus passive investment question: pick stocks or buy the market? We put forward an agnostic case for opting out of active management, or security selection, in favour of a passive approach of...
Are robo advisers the future for the UK?
'Chemistry' is widely seen as the most important criterion when selecting a financial adviser. This is so even when the personal point of contact is part of a large organisation with a trusted brand. How, then, can financial technology that substitutes humans with...
Assessing FCA policy for the advice market
The FCA asked for input to its policy setting for the market in consumer investments. We welcome the initiative but it is pointless unless the regulator is serious about entertaining radical changes, even if it involves new (or a new interpretation of) primary...
Fowler Drew differs from typical investment firms who seek ‘alpha’ for alpha’s sake, instead harvesting low-cost ‘beta’, building towards target outcomes that clients get to define. Their assumptions about how markets behave seem sensible and plausible to this non-expert client. The focus on outcomes helps us to understand what we are doing and why. It’s self-contained, neat and tidy and very suitable for busy lives.