How Shard Capital can Help Your Clients on the Next Stage of Life’s Journey…
As an independent investment manager, we at Shard Capital afford ourselves many luxuries that are not available to many of our more well-known competitors. Due to our ownership, structure and size, we are free to focus on achieving the best outcomes for our clients without the competing voices of shareholders and private equity partners. Our pursuit is pure, our focus is clear.
As qualified legal professionals, you are frequently guiding your clients through some of the most disruptive and distressing events they will experience in their personal and professional lives. Events that most will never forget; including the part you played in educating, guiding, and supporting them along the way. So, when the dust settles, and you open the curtains that morning and say to yourself “I’m pleased that’s over. What do I do now?” For many the answer may not be clear. As one challenging life event concludes it must often feel that another has been quietly waiting in the wings ready to take its place. How do I look after myself financially? How do I plan and provide for my future? How much money do I need? Do I have enough?
Financial decisions are often daunting, especially so at times of upheaval. At Shard Capital we have one clear objective; to achieve the very best financial return for our clients that we can, within their given risk tolerance. We are unashamedly not financial planners (IFAs), but we work in partnership with them. Financial Advisors are the GPs, we are the surgeons if you will. And the medical analogies don’t stop there. A financial advisor, much the same as your local GP, has an unenviable task. A vast array of complex requirements, ever changing regulation and an evolving financial landscape to stay on top of. From inheritance tax planning to capital gains, mortgages to life insurance, cash flow forecasting to pension planning; their role is a complex juggling act, where all elements need to work together.
Time for another analogy, and one I am thankfully more familiar with. Competent with a spanner, less so with a scalpel! Let’s consider your money as “the engine”. It generates power and has huge potential performance, but if it sits in isolation on a pallet or hanging from a hoist it offers little more than a giant paperweight. But put it in a car, connect it to a chassis, hook up the fuel lines and various cables; now you have a means of exploiting that potential. The better the engineering, the more you can exploit the performance of the engine. Oh, and one final thing, the road to the destination. It’s not straight, and it’s in slight disrepair. There’s inflation, central bank policy, interest rates, politics, global conflict, energy prices, weather patterns…..You get the picture.
So, whilst a financial advisor can put your engine in a car, they don’t have the time, expertise, and resource to optimise and fine tune it to the road. Think garage mechanic versus pit crew. Discretionary investment managers such as Shard Capital build a good car for your clients and provide a well drilled pit crew. And like any good race team, we like to be judged on our results.
So, when one part of the journey concludes for your clients, and you have achieved a financial settlement in their favour, the next part of the journey might seem very unclear. Shard Capital would like to help by continuing to provide the education, guidance and support that has characterised their experience with you to this point. A reassuring transition from one stage to the next. A transition that allows them to move forward with confidence and most importantly, enjoy the rest of the journey that life has in store.
For more information on how Shard Capital can help you please contact Richard Bacon, Head of Sales & Business Development at Shard Capital at [email protected] or on +44 (0)207 186 9900.
