My client has reached the strategic decision that he wishes to personally concentrate most of his efforts on servicing his existing business owner clients who have substantial investment portfolios as a result of the sale of their businesses or who have built up £1M pension funds. In addition he will be looking to these existing clients through high touch marketing /networking on my part to introduce similar clients. He also wishes to spend a significant portion of his time on actually planning and overseeing the development of the business.

Consequently, he needs to hire somebody to take over the day to day investment management function and formal reporting to client function. He estimates that these combined functions take up approximately half of his working days. At the same time he will continue to act as chief investment officer setting overall strategy, asset allocation and investment philosophy for the firm.

His firm also needs to switch from being a purely investment management firm which is judged by clients on the basis of their outperforming specific market benchmarks to a financial planning firm which carefully sets an agreed target rate of return for clients as a result of a thorough financial planning process. This should result in far greater client loyalty and perception of added value. The firm therefore needs to hire a first class financial planner who is capable of creating such plans for our existing clients who will need to be re- educated to buy into this change of emphasis and for new clients. This financial planning service will only be offered to their ?A? list clients and any new ?A? list clients they take on from hereon. In his view, there is not enough work to warrant full time work currently for such a financial planner. He sees this role as taking up one half of each working day at the very maximum.

He therefore propose sto hire an individual who can perform both the above functions. This person must be a very highly qualified financial planner with some financial planning experience in catering for high net worth individuals. They must be bright, numerate and highly personable. As far as their becoming competent investment managers, he proposes to finance their professional training and qualification in the necessary exams as soon as possible. If they are bright and numerate, this should be a relatively easy task. He will also be there to help train them and supervise them in his role as chief investment officer.

In the fullness of time, as the firm expands, he sees this individual moving back to full time financial planning but with a heightened awareness and experience of investment markets. The next hire will then be a full time investment manager to step into their shoes.

In addition to the above, he would give the individual responsibility for setting up our in-house unit trusts or mutual funds. They would also have responsibility for selecting a suitable financial software package to integrate into their financial planning process.