Investment Process

Investment professionals and teams are passionate about what they do and the way they do it.  They have conviction about their approach to analysing investment markets, identifying and acting upon market opportunities, and building products. The accumulation of such conviction can take place over some time.  It can also become deeply ingrained in a team in a way that eventually rejects criticism and discourages self-analysis.

We are experienced in working with investment teams to help them review and refine the descriptions of their investment processes, their team structures and the culture that supports the investment process.

Our approach is simple. We act from a client perspective to understand the goal of the process or product and test for clarity and consistency. If there are inconsistencies, we can use our experience to explore where these come from and how to address them.

We do not set out to re-engineer a client’s investment process but rather we invite them to examine their articulation of their process to clients and to confirm that what they do is what they say they do. We help them explain their investment processes and products in straightforward and compelling language while checking the consistency between this aspiration and day-to-day reality. Ensuring that link sometimes just involves addressing the words that are used to describe a process to clients, but it may result in a team making changes to ensure greater consistency or robustness in the process itself.

Elements of team coaching and operational consultancy are used in this process to understand how the efforts and skills of different members of the team fit together to the benefit of the team’s clients and to ensure that there is a common goal and approach that results in the achievement of optimal performance.

Our Investment Process Consulting practice is led by Martin Hall, formerly an economist at the Bank of England, Fund Manager at Morgan Grenfell, Head of Fixed Income at Fidelity International and business leader at AXA IM.