During truly extraordinary times we are delighted to look back on the Heronsgate journey to date and are excited to look forward.
FCA Regulatory Approval
No April fool, we will, from 1 April 2021, receive our own regulatory permissions and will no longer be an appointed representative of Dart Capital. With direct authorisation comes the opportunity to develop our own discretionary management service and this will be a focus for the coming year. For the regulatory record, our new FCA Firm Reference Number will be 933757.
Business Performance
Since establishing the firm 12 months ago we have been fortunate enough to attract more clients than even our most optimistic business plan forecast. We now advise over 100 clients with c£300m of funds under advice and these numbers continue to grow. This growth has meant that we have been able to invest more quickly in the business both in terms of people and systems, allowing us to deliver the high levels of service and increase client communication that form the bedrock of our offering.
It is exciting and refreshing to be independently owned and to be in a position to run the business with the ethos of maintaining client focus and a strategy to limit growth which we believe is consistent with clients’ best interests.
People
From a standing start 12 months ago, we now have 14 full time employees (half of whom are Chartered) as well as the highly experienced former EY partner, Sarah Evans, as non-executive director. Gareth Parsons arrived earlier this month as a Partner and has joined a financial planning team which includes four of the very best Chartered financial planners – Ashley Pontiggia, Dan Mackenzie, Kate Burton and Jamie Rich. The financial planning team are supported by several client account managers and systems experts who have already successfully completed a number of industry exams and are continuing with their professional development.
Investment
Out investment partner, Chris Sexton has been focused on replicate his well proven investment process and track record at Heronsgate. A focus on protecting clients’ assets, being more nimble and able to access investment trusts and smaller mutual funds has been key to our advice to date.
When building our new model portfolios at the start of 2020, we could not have envisaged the extent to which the UK stock market would lag other major markets over the course of the year. However, we were sure that a heavy allocation to an economy mired in negotiations to leave the EU, where the most positive outcome would still be negative, was not what we wanted. Hence, we constructed models around a core of global funds, which brought with them larger allocations to the US, which now accounts for around 55% of global stock market capitalisation.
Through calendar year 2020, these funds captured the outperformance of the US and, we are happy to say, more. A simple average of the 2020 return of our original six global funds was 31.9%, compared to the S&P500 at 14.7%, MSCI World 12.9% and the UK’s large cap index of -11.6%.
The new year has seen a rotation in market leadership as optimism about a strong global rebound has boosted the prospects for more cyclical companies, but we retain our conviction that our positioning for the long term remains correct.
We would be delighted to hear from you. If you have any questions please do get in touch and we look forward to some face-to-face interactions when conditions permit.
