Westminster offers investment advice to trusts, individuals and companies. This involves the tax efficient management of both cash and non-cash assets. The objective of the Westminster asset management offering is to ensure total client satisfaction.

This is achieved through a clearly defined investment strategy and process, concise and frequent communication together with personal service of the utmost integrity and continuity.

The core beliefs of the Westminster investment philosophy are that:
• To reduce risk and enhance potential investment returns, it is essential to diversify across as many uncorrelated asset classes as possible and;
• The biggest destroyer of wealth creation is investment charges.

In keeping with what you would expect from a professional firm, we sit on the side of the client and are wholly independent.

Westminster is not tied or allied to any one bank or financial institution and is therefore refreshingly unrestricted in the scope and innovation of its solutions.

Surveys have concluded that upwards of 90% of a portfolio’s return is driven by asset allocation, much less by stock picking, fund selection or market timing.

A core investment solution we therefore frequently adopt focuses on investing across all asset classes with the aim of capturing beta – which is the market return for a given asset, rather than alpha – the value derived from a particular fund and manager outperforming their asset benchmark. Westminster advises on the appropriate allocation given a client’s risk profile and objectives and this allocation is reviewed and rebalanced annually.

Returns from each asset class will closely reflect the market return as this core approach is passive rather than active, and consequently significant cost savings can be made over traditional managed bond & equity funds that dominate the market. This approach is ideal for the more cautious private investor and for trustees who have otherwise to justify the use of a particular manager and are wary of the associated risks and costs.

For mandates in excess of seven figures and where an active discretionary trading approach is preferred, we act as intermediary between our clients and any one of a host of private banks and fund management groups. We ensure that the chosen investment house is performing in line with both client expectations and the manager’s peer group. We review this continually and move mandates whenever necessary. In most instances our fully disclosed fees are offset via discretionary manager retrocessions and consequently this invaluable layer of protection for clients and trustees can be provided at little or no extra cost.