A good starting point to a successful investment strategy is one that focuses on a long-term commitment to lowering costs. Limiting expenses, particularly those associated with high commissions and management fees, is a risk-free route to improving the return on your investments.
It is an unfortunate feature of the investment industry that there exist a myriad of differing and often complex charging structures, which frequently leaves the investor with little idea how much he or she is paying.
But the ‘Aspire’ approach was designed from the start to be open and transparent. Our model simply charges a 1% pa portfolio management fee, with commissions either waived or rebated to the investor.
The virtue of this fee based approach is that not only does it removes the influence commissions can play in the advice given, but because our remuneration is linked to the value of our clients investments, it is made dependent on the quality of advice we provide.
Another benefit of a fee based approach is that transaction costs i.e. the buying, selling and switching that occurs in an actively managed portfolio, can take place upon preferential institutional terms. With mutual funds this can lead to savings of as much as 5% on every deal.
Our commitment to lowering costs goes even further, since we also actively seek to lower the expense of maintaining a portfolio. For example, we will often include exchange traded funds in a portfolio, because their annual management fees can be as much as 2% less than that of a typical mutual fund. While one might assume that the odd 1% here and there might make little difference, this is definitely not the case: on a $250,000 investment that grows by 7% pa for 20 years, a 1% reduction in annual costs would improve the outcome by nearly $166,000!