Strategy development for investment was what Envestors was created to teach. Founding Director Oliver Woolley discusses the importance of preparing for investment in this TV show.

Investment strategy development

One of the reasons we set up Envestors is that we thought there was a bit of education needed on both the investor and entrepreneur side. So we provide training for investors. We produce a guide to how to invest as a business angel and we do a seminars for investors. So our idea is to educate both the investor and the entrepreneur and try and get them close enough so that we can get good deals done. So we find that a lot of companies aren't particularly well prepared so we run an investment readiness briefing on a Tuesday morning every two weeks, which is free. It is essentially a two hour seminar about the practicalities and realities and the obligations of raising external equity finance. We find that at the end of that, that the company has though a lot about their business plan but they haven't though enough about it from an investment perspective. So we will then work with a company to make sure that there is a full and detailed investment proposal.

If you are interested in strategy development for investment then take a look at the full briefing Cashed Up - How to attract business funding.

Exit-planning can never be given too much emphasis according to Oliver Woolley, who discuses investor attitudes to exits in this TV show.

 Investors and exit-planning

Most of our investors, we say they walk into the room backwards. In other words the moment they go in they’re looking for how they’re going to get their money out. And one of the biggest challenges for our investors is the fact they’ve got a lot of money tied up in illiquid stock, ie private, unquoted companies. And so what we focus on is exit-planning for companies, almost from you know, within the first six months of putting the investment in. And under EIS the investment has to be in there for a minimum of three years, so we’re typically looking for businesses to exit within the three to five year period.

Inside Finance will continue to follow ideas around exit-planning and related subjects.

Financial objectives need to be met for success as an entrepreneur. Those with a good idea will still need to prove it works in order to secure further funding, as David Spencer-Percival explains in this video.

Financial Objectives: Funding

You need to have a track record of what you have been doing, I think to get investment. I think it is awfully hard to get investment for something that is a completely new idea. The thing about investment is getting the money is only half the trick. The other bit is actually using that money to create value. So I think you can go and get investment for something, but you have to deliver on it. It's two halves to one piece, so there's no magic trick, but if you are good at something I am sure you can convince somebody to give you money to do it again. It's just what you do with that money.

Continue browsing Inside Finance to find out more about how businesses are achieving their financial objectives.

Wealthy families may have business discussions that involve two or more generations. In this TV show Frank Akers Douglas  discusses how families approach this.

Wealthy families talk business

It really does depend on the families you’re talking to. The simple answer is to try and educate younger people to understand more about money so that the older generation feels more confident in involving them in their family's financial issues and financial decisions, particularly where there is a family business involved. So I think it’s an educational process, it’s also trying to make people feel comfortable both in handing on information and money as well as receiving it.

If you are interested in money management in wealthy families then browse our video player for similar TV shows.

 

Person centred planning means understanding the needs of the client and working from there. In this TV show Charles Gowlland of Smith & Williamson discusses the survey they did to find out about their family office clients.

Research for person centred planning

We wanted to understand what our family office contacts and clients were thinking about all manner of subjects, not just about investments or tax or education but a whole number of topics, so we interviewed over the course of 2013 nearly 40 families with whom we had contact and some of whom we acted for already, most of whom we acted for already and in total their wealth we estimated over a billion pounds. We wanted to get the broadest possible idea of what people were thinking and so we were conscious to try to ask some entrepreneurs, newer money, perhaps the two generations, the generation that had made it, who might have had young children, as well as much more established money that might have been in existence for five or six generations. Because we act for such a wide range of clients we were able to sort of capture what they all thought.

If you enjoyed this video about person centred planning, please browse more videos on Inside Finance TV.

 

High net worth families want a good relationship with their advisors as Frank Akers-Douglas explains in this TV show.

High net worth families' survey

One was that most of the interviewees that we surveyed and spoke to felt that their professional advisors needed to work closely together and in particularly they would have a lead advisor who would coordinate the various professional advisors that they used in their team and I find that interesting because that’s something that we’ve tried to concentrate on here at Smith & Williamson and it shows the importance of that relationship creation. The second point I would think was to do with the handing on of money and the really quite diverse answers we got from the families that we interviewed as to when was the right time, how to involve children, whether to involve them at all, and that is probably one of the most thorny issues facing a family with money is when to involve future generations. I think it tends to be the older, the older the older generation is the less comfortable they feel about involving the younger generation.

Inside Finance will continue to produce more great videos about high net worth families and related subjects.

Informed financial planning within wealthy families involves having good advisors and passing on knowledge early. In this TV show Charles Gowlland gives his advice for managing familial wealth.

Informed financial planning around the kitchen table

One of the most important things we feel for families, that not only came out of the results of this survey but is a continuing view of ours is that they need first and foremost to surround themselves with good advisors. Second to recognise the combination of education within the family is both a mixture of the formal, so with family meetings, and the informal, which is if you like the sort of gatherings around the breakfast table or the lunch meal or whenever, when the family are sort of mixing together. And in the latter informal category you might discuss things like the sort of family history and what the wealth means to the family and what the sort of characteristics are that are associated with that money. And once that kind of dynamic around the money is understood by the younger members of the family, they will be better equipped to understand how they in turn should use that money during their own lifetime and what is expected of them and to what degree, if you like the money is theirs to do with as they will and to what extent it if you like belongs to the wider family and they are merely tenants in their own lifetime. There are no rights or wrongs about any of this. Its really up to the family to decide, but equally advisors can help guide families and particularly we find with newer generation wealth, many of them like Warren Buffet and some other famous people in the news like that, they want to leave a lot of money to charities when they die, they don’t want to leave huge amounts of money to their children, others feel completely differently and they would rather leave, they feel that it’s family money and they should leave it to their children and who should enjoy it. So it’s entirely horses for courses. Inside Finance will continue to follow issues around informed financial planning. Look out for more great videos from our Smith & Williamson experts.

The attitude to risk will change depending on how much there is to lose. As Charles Gowlland explains in this TV show a Smith and Williamson survey found that threats to wealth are a common concern.

Fearful attitude to risk

There were a number of things, I think when we looked at the results of the survey we weren’t completely shocked or surprised by anything that came in and to a certain extent that gave us a lot of reassurance that we already had a good sense of what they were thinking and what they were worried about. So from that point of view there were no radical shocks. But I still think there were a couple of aspects that came out of it that were interesting to us. One of the areas was the concept of threats to wealth, I mean this is obviously one of the big long term issues for families. They’ve made their money or they’ve inherited it, how do they ensure that that money, that wealth persists through the generation and there were four main categories of threats to wealth as far as we could see it, and what was interesting I think about the response was that they were broadly similar in that people were equally worried about each of those and there wasn’t any particular split by, if I can put it like this, by how old the money was. So in other words these fears were common to all types of clients and those categories were legislative change that might be adverse league or tax, the financial mismanagement, the children squandering the money or volatility in financial markets. And included in those was inflation, and I think certainly for some families with a long and bitter history, inflation for them was a big worry.

Keep an eye on Inside Finance for more great TV shows on attitude to risk and other related subjects.

   

Business assets that are allocated correctly can potentially contribute 90% return to a portfolio, as Michael Pagliari discusses in this TV show.

Spending time allocating business assets

One of my pet hates is seeing, you know, proposals sent out to clients that are very deterministic in nature, in other words coming up with a particular solution to a client’s investment problems. I think, you know, it’s much more complex than that and really the whole question about risk and asset allocation is absolutely key, and I think there have been plenty of studies which have been done which show that asset allocation, good asset allocation, contributes about 90% of the total return to a portfolio.  So it’s really, really important that a lot of time is spent at the beginning and during the course of a relationship focusing on getting that asset allocation as good as you possibly can.

Keep browsing Inside Finance for more expert insight into investment processes, business risk, and dealing with business assets.

High net worth families may have high profile lives. Research by Smith & Williamson shows that wherever possible they will try resolve conflict within the family, as Frank Akers-Douglas explains in this TV show.

Conflict in high net worth families

I was very surprised that virtually all of the respondents have said ‘We don’t have family disputes’. You only have to read the press to read about some pretty high profile family disputes and if those are in the press imagine all the ones that aren’t. So I think there is more conflict than people probably care to admit to and it can start from something simple or it can be quite a complex and diverse issue. Again it’s trying to get involved, or perhaps I should go just back a step in that again in the survey most families said that where there was a dispute they would want to deal with it internally, i.e. within the family. Again I found that quite a strange answer because by definition if there is a dispute there is a dispute within the family and are they really best equipped to deal with it. So I think the answer is to get somebody, an external trusted advisor involved at an early stage just to try and talk to the party, if it’s a relatively straightforward dispute that should be simple to resolve. The more complex and the more sort of aggravational disputes are much more difficult and there I do think professional, whatever the right word is, counselling, is needed. For more insight in to advice and issues for high net worth families take a look at our briefing on family business.