Industry

Broker Consultants

Thank you for your interest in Solomons. In order to help you provide us with a mutually worthwhile service I have provided a summary of information that will help you to understand our client proposition.

Fee Based

We are a fee based firm (we have been so since formation in 1999). As a result we are not interested in agreeing improved commission terms or motivated by higher commissions. In fact higher commission terms make no difference to us whatsoever. Any excess (above our agreed charges) commission/fee is rebated to the investment/product in the form of reduced charges to our client.

Investment Process

We increasingly move towards a passive investment approach with our clients. As a result we favour inexpensive index tracking funds. We utilise risk profiling and asset allocation techniques. We review holdings on a quarterly basis and tend to recommend any switches twice a year and rebalance annually. We do not pretend to be stockbrokers and do not use DIFs. We predominantly use collectives. We do not handle client money and all investment advice requires client approval prior to implementation. This is made very clear to clients.

We operate three main types of portfolio, Standard, Good Life and Purity. The Standard portfolios are not ethically/SRI screened. The Good Life portfolios utilise ethical/SRI funds where available (mainly UK equity) whilst using “standard” funds for global asset allocation. Our Purity portfolios are for a minority of clients that are highly focussed on ethical/SRI issues and require only ethical funds but include asset classes where ethical screening is not really necessary or appropriate.

We are open to learning about new opportunities that benefit our clients, but are mindful that long-term track records of a Fund Manager are vital in assessing actively managed funds. We value learning and the update and improvement of our own knowledge and welcome opportunities to do this.

Partnership

We appreciate and value informative and educational resources that can be supplied and included within our website or blog. We are aware that this can sometimes create problems for firms with their own internal compliance processes and we do not seek to cause harm or damage to any company. We will not knowingly publish resources that compromise data protection, copyright or compliance rules. We appreciate and value any input that you are willing to provide that helps our clients to understand aspects of the financial services industry or financial products.

Additional Information

We are directly regulated as a small firm. Our compliance services are provided by Threesixty. We utilise lifetime cashflow planning software within our database (JCS). We are seeking to move towards online services and have worked with JCS and IFA Systems to this end. We are Beta testers for both organisations and seek to utilise technology that enables us to provide even better services and communications with our clients. As we move towards RDR we are making necessary improvements to our knowledge and use CII, IFP, PFS events and training to help ensure that we are fully ready for 2013. We use the IFP online CPD services. We use platforms that work well with our database so that we can deliver services to our clients. We do not arrange mortgages. All protection products are arranged without commission, directly reducing premiums for clients. We expect and plan to remain as a whole of market, independent financial adviser post RDR.