At Fidelis we believe that the commitment we should have to our clients is to assist them in building and preserving the wealth necessary to accomplish their life goals. We do this with client-specific financial analysis followed by goal specific portfolio construction. Our services are designed to assist the client in securing their financial well being for the long-term. We are dedicated to delivering advice in a manner that is both confidential and consistent with the client’s individual needs.
We believe that service and personal attention should be the hallmark of Fidelis. We strive to make it the defining quality that sets us apart from our competition. We start the personal relationship with each of our clients with an initial meeting that identifies the client’s objectives, and risk tolerances. Thereafter, we develop a plan and illustrate our investment process, philosophy, and portfolio design. Once we have agreed upon an appropriate portfolio, we implement our portfolio recommendations. Every three months the client receives a written portfolio performance report, which gives a clear picture of the account performance. Then we meet with the client regularly to review the portfolio performance in relation to the Investment Policy Statement (IPS).
In short, Fidelis is service oriented - not sales oriented.
In short, Fidelis is service oriented - not sales oriented. Our frequent communication with each client helps us detect life events which might necessitate adjustments in the financial plan or portfolio allocation. Fidelis is a truly client focused firm.
We believe in the following financial planning process: identify goals, gather and review personal and financial data, then design and implement a plan to help the client reach those goals. It is a lifelong process. Once the plan is in place, it needs to be monitored, reviewed, and updated to meet the dynamic circumstances of life’s journey. Although not everyone may see the need for a written integrated financial plan, everyone should benefit from the financial planning process.
We believe that there is not one particular investment portfolio that is appropriate for all individual investors. The optimal portfolio will depend on the amount and timing of cash flow needs, tax considerations, investment experience, and risk tolerance. Therefore investment decisions should be based on these factors. Through this objective-driven process, the portfolio construction can be back tested and optimized to give increased probability of achieving those objectives.
We believe that investing is only one component of financial planning though certainly an important one. We believe that an investment policy and asset allocation can be designed only after the initial financial planning process is complete and a target return is established. We allocate assets among the major classes of cash, stocks, bonds, and real estate. Stocks are divided between domestic and foreign and large and small capitalization. We further divide domestic stocks into growth and value styles. Bonds typically have durations of less than five years to maximize their stabilizing ability in the portfolio. When appropriate we use real estate investment trusts (REITs) for the real estate component of a plan.
We believe in developing goal-specific investment strategies that are in accordance with our clients’ life plans. Therefore, each client has a personalized Investment Policy Statement (IPS), which outlines the portfolio allocation and investment strategies necessary to maximize the possibility of the portfolio being able to provide the wealth necessary to fulfill those plans.
We believe that taxes represent a significant consideration for every long-term investor. By minimizing income taxes, investors retain more of the wealth necessary to meet their goals. We exercise care in the appropriate placement of investments within taxable and tax-deferred accounts dependent on the long-term goals of the client. For example, tax-deferred portfolios are typically used for retirement income goals while taxable portfolios are generally more appropriate for funding specific bequests for heirs. However, tax considerations do not dominate our portfolio management process.
We believe that successful investing means not only capturing risks that generate expected return but reducing risks that do not. Avoidable risks include holding too few securities, betting on countries or industries, following market predictions, and speculating on “information” from rating services. We further believe that diversification is the antidote to all of these popular investment approaches. It washes away the random fortunes of individual stocks and positions our clients’ portfolios to capture the returns of broad economic forces.
successful investing means not only capturing risks that generate expected return but reducing risks that do not
Traditional managers do one of two things; they actively manage by picking individual stocks (the antithesis of diversification) or they passively manage by holding many securities in an attempt to mimic arbitrary benchmarks called indexes.
Our strategy follows a different path. It structures investment strategies based on scientific evidence rather than on commercial indexes. This strategy diversifies not only in the amount of securities (our portfolios hold thousands), but it also in the range of capital market strategies that have been explored and developed by empirical testing. For example, small cap strategies target smaller stocks more consistently and value strategies target value returns with greater focus. As a result, clients enjoy a more consistent portfolio structure.