Our approach to managing clients' money is built around using the best available external investment professionals to manage our funds, and is recognised as being very distinctive. One of its distinct facets is the use of the investment consultancy firm, Stamford Associates Limited (SAL).

Stamford is a leading international investment consultancy, providing superior, quality services to deliver intelligent investment solutions for their clients. It has a dedicated team that has a wealth of experience encompassing asset management, portfolio analysis, performance measurement, behavioural finance and investment consultancy. Its forward–looking philosophy aims to achieve superior investment results, by applying a fundamentally-driven investment discipline, and through identifying exceptional investment professionals.

Every client who invests with St. James's Place Wealth Management, benefits from the highly specialist skills that Stamford Associates provide, which private individuals would not ordinarily be able to access. This has significant strategic benefits for investors and brings peace of mind to our clients, as the individuals responsible for managing their investments are being continuously monitored by full-time professionals.

All of our external investment managers are monitored continuously in this way and should the Investment Committee decide to change a manager, then any replacement is implemented promptly and, importantly, the change is seamless from the point of view of our investors.

It follows from the fact that the fund itself remains unchanged, the responsibility for managing the underlying assets is simply handed over to a new investment manager. This means that, unlike the situation where an investor cashes in units in, say, ABC unit trust and then re-invests the money in XYZ unit trust, there are no charges to be paid by the St. James's Place investor on a change of manager. And for the same reason, there are no capital gains or income tax implications involved for investors in the change. This avoids unwanted taxable events and means that longer-term wealth strategies remain undisturbed.

The final aspect often overlooked is the benefit of diversification, which is widely recognised as an effective way of reducing risk. Experience shows that too many investors are either not diversified or, in contrast, excessively diversified. The former leads to concentration of risk and the latter to the dilution of investment results as the number of holdings increases, causing results to trend towards the benchmark.