THIS week sees the launch of the 2008 Scotsman IFA of the Year competition in association with Scott-Moncrieff Wealth Management.
This year's competition is bigger than ever before – there are twice as many independent financial advisers (IFAs) co
mpeting for top spot and it is sponsored by a selection of Scotland's main investment houses.
The ten finalist IFAs were chosen from a strong field of entrants and their task over the next 12 months is to give the best possible advice on constructing a suitable investment portfolio for the case study – Angus MacDonald (50) who is married with a family and wants to retire in ten years' time.
The advice should be of interest to any investors, especially in the current market turmoil caused by the ongoing credit crunch. The FTSE 100 has been see-sawing for months and commercial property, for example, which was delivering double-digit returns, is now hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons
In such an unsettled environment, sound financial advice is more important than ever.
We hope you will be able to learn from the guidance of our top ten IFAs over the course of the year.
THE JUDGESBill Jamieson is executive editor of The Scotsman, economics columnist for the Business newspaper (formerly Sunday Business) and director of the Policy Institute, an independent think tank promoting liberal market values and solutions. Prior to joining The Scotsman in 2000, He was for seven years economics editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
Rosemary Gallagher is personal finance editor of The Scotsman and is the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) Scottish investment writer of the yaear. She was previously reporter with Money Marketing and deputy editor of Mortgage Strategy.
Brian Steeples runs his own wealth management business, the Turris Partnership. He became an IFA in 1985 and was previously a director of a stockbroking company and joint managing director of a national IFA firm.
Ian Muirhead is a solicitor who established SIFA, the trade body for solicitor financial advisers. He started his career at Norton Rose in the City of London and then went into industry. He was a founder member of the English Law Society's Financial Services working party and is the author of a number of professional publications.
Andrew Cumming is the managing director of Scott-Moncrieff Wealth Management, a role he has held since 2000. He started his career with Eagle Star in 1984, before becoming an IFA in 1989. He set up his own IFA practice in 1990 and joined Scott-Moncrieff in 1994.
Raymond Ellis is executive director and compliance officer with Scott-Moncrieff Wealth Management. He started in the financial services industry in 1990 with Royal Life, before deciding to become an IFA.
CASE STUDYANGUS MacDonald (50) is a solicitor who runs a small family law firm in Aberfeldy. He is married and has two children, Robert, who is employed as a chartered surveyor in Edinburgh, and Susan, who is a medical student at Aberdeen University. His wife, Margaret, is a full-time housewife but also does some voluntary work for a local charity.
Over the years, Angus has accumulated an ad hoc collection of self-employed annuity contracts and personal pensions, the majority of which have been last-minute purchases before the tax year end. As a consequence, there is no real structure to his investment strategy. He has recently consolidated his various pensions into an investment-only self invested personal pension (Sipp) with Hornbuckle Mitchell – the independent trustee company. To his surprise, the current value of his fund is £300,000. He is seeking advice on how to construct an investment portfolio that will meet his long-term objectives and match his risk profile.
He plans to retire at 60 and would ideally like to have an income in retirement of about £50,000 per annum. He is naturally cautious but realises that he may have to increase his exposure to risk to meet his long-term goals.
He plans to contribute £10,000 each year into his Sipp.
• All the IFAs have had 5 per cent of their portfolio invested in the Schroder Income Maximiser fund as a default for technical reasons. When the competition goes live, they can decide to keep this as one of their "wild card" funds or change it at any time.
The full article contains 736 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
