The allocation of the assets within the investment portfolios are managed in a systematic manner and always reflects our clients’ attitude to risk. IAP provides investment strategies that span the full spectrum of asset classes such as:
- Cash Equivalents
- Equities
- Precious Metals & Commodities
- Alternative Investments
- Bonds
- Real Estate
If deemed appropriate, IAP may also include digital currencies. In that case the digital currencies will be stored offline which is more appropriate to keep larger amounts in cryptocurrencies.
Advisory Portfolio or Discretionary Portfolio Management
In the case of an advisory agreement, the investment manager refers to the client before the initial investments are made and thereafter before portfolio adjustments are executed. The client is free to accept or decline any recommendation presented to them by the person in charge of their account and thus can make their own informed investment decisions.
In the case of a discretionary portfolio management, the investment manager initiates and monitors each portfolio on an ongoing basis. It takes decisions at its own discretion based on best judgement but within the agreed investment parameters. IAP will address the following questions:
- Is the planned investment suitable?
- Does the client have an adequate level of knowledge?
- Can the client bear the financial risk?
- Do the risks of the investment proposal match the client’s risk capacity and tolerance?
Clients who have discretionary portfolio managements do not wish to get involved in the day-to-day investment decision process and believe in the long-term risk-adjusted returns IAP will be able to achieve. In important and extreme situations, IAP will convene an investment committee meeting outside of the normal regular cycle of meetings to define a response and action plan to the situation. IAP has a limited power of attorney on the account, with the authority to place orders in the system but not wire cash or securities out of the account.
Risk Approach
We tailor the portfolios to the specific risk profiles of our clients. Irrespective of the risk approach however, as our primary goal we seek to preserve capital and prevent losses in our client portfolios. We thus have to spread the investments across several asset classes while maintaining liquidity. Hence, we usually prefer to select investments that can easily be converted to cash in a short period of time, giving us and the client greater financial freedom. As a result, we do normally not invest into structured products for our clients as these products often can be replicated directly by purchasing the underlying constituent.
We do not try to time a market. By staggering our investments over a period of time, we reduce the risk of investing at an unfavorable time.
A large proportion of our portfolios are either directly invested into predominantly investment grade rated bonds or blue-chip stocks, meaning well established and financially sound companies which are market leaders in their sectors.
Independency
We try to mitigate any conflict of interest as follows:
- Unlike many banks and asset managers, we do not invest in any in-house products, thus IAP is free from any conflict of interest and pressure to promote products of vested interests, and thus can always focus on the interest of clients
- Totally independent from any private banks or financial institutions we take an unconstrained approach to select and pick investments for our portfolios.
- In order to ensure full transparency of all costs, our company usually refrains from investing into hedge funds, mutual funds and structured products.
- IAP installs an asset-based fee and thus is not encouraged for unnecessary risk-taking through performance fees.
- Our fiduciary and investment management fee structures do not result in any double layering of fees (e.g. no asset-based fees for any of our fiduciary services)