Welcome to Cassidy Coutts Donald & Partners

Our Background

As holistic financial planners we are acutely conscious that the success or otherwise of so many financial plans – including investment and pensions planning for retirement, inheritance tax mitigation, trust arrangements, long term care and school fees – is crucially dependent on the quality of investment advice: based on the same objectives, risk tolerance and timescale, the compounding of returns from well and poorly performing investment funds can turn out to be truly enormous!

Our business over the years has grown mainly by client and professional introductions with many clients from those early days still with us today!

Our Investment Philosophy

It is for this reason alone that we have kept the research and selection of investment funds in house.

We have built a team of individuals that that has the knowledge and experience to research the investments markets using the wide variety of tools at our disposal to provide competitive solutions to meet your needs.

We firmly believe that markets are inefficient and consequently that identifying the investment manager who does have the ability to out-perform in different and changing market conditions is a thoroughly worthwhile exercise. Our pensions, our investment income in retirement, our mortgage repayment plans and the performance of funds we place in trust for our loved ones – all ultimately depend upon our investment success.

In the belief that the value of portfolios and financial products generally depend more on investment performance than any other factor, our principle focus is on advisory portfolio management and the unfettered, whole-of market selection of investment funds that being an Independent Financial Adviser requires

Of course, the design of portfolios for investors whose attitudes to risk vary must involve a logical and disciplined process. But more than that, ours is not just a mechanical, sequential, process of step by step definition of asset and sector allocations and fund selection but also one benefiting from the wisdom of long experience of the dangers of following fads. There are many competitors for the next investment bubble: green energy, corporate bonds, gold, China, bricks & mortar property and emerging markets to name but a few! “Downside” protection is so often overlooked in the selection of funds from the currently “best performing” funds lists.

While investment performance lies at the heart of financial planning we are also aware that the correct, holistic, approach involves advising on comprehensive tax-planning, retirement planning, family and business protection needs and trustee investment.

Our Chartered Advisory status bears witness to the standards we set ourselves.

Life after 31st December 2012

We are also forward thinking and are positioning ourselves for life after the Retail Distribution Review (“RDR”) that is intended for implementation on 1 January 2013 and which will require significantly higher levels of adviser qualifications and capital adequacy for firms who choose to remain operational. Various studies have concluded that there will be an exodus of many experienced but inadequately-qualified advisers from the industry.

Our Location

Operating from our offices, The Old School, Southwick, Hampshire, we are today well knit friendly and efficient team of six advisers and five support staff - all headed by David Butler, our Managing Director.