A Simple Definition...
"Someone who is managing the assets of another person and stands in a special relationship of trust, confidence or legal responsibility"
Investment fiduciaries can generally be categorised into one of three types:
Investment fiduciaries can generally be categorised into one of three types:
- Investment Stewards - have overall responsibility to manage an investment process, e.g. Board members, Trustees, and Investment Committee members.
- Investment Advisors - provide comprehensive and continuous advice, e.g. financial advisors and asset consultants.
- Investment Managers - have discretion to make investments, whether internally in an organisation or externally through a fund or other investment structure.
Stewards
Board members, Trustees, and investment committees want to know what matters most, how to ask providers great questions and how to be effective when time allocated to addressing fiduciary obligations can be so limited.
There is a propensity to trust Advisors, Managers and other providers, but without the required due diligence in their selection and subsequent monitoring.
Our Training and Assessment services support Stewards in their fiduciary role. Outcomes typically include savings on overall costs, improved returns and better risk management.
Advisors
Advisors wanting strong referrals, reliable client retention and reduced advice risk need to differentiate from those who are happy with minimum, rules based standards.
Our Training and Assessment services will assist you review your current practices against the detail of a defined fiduciary standard. This provides a unique opportunity to evidence genuine professionalism to clients and prospects alike. An Advisor who can ask pertinent questions, demonstrate an appreciation of fiduciary governance issues facing Stewards, and who can articulate that their processes meet an independent, defined fiduciary standard, will be seen as more trustworthy.
Ultimately, independent verification of this advice standard by CEFEX is the perfect way to "prove" your approach is robust and trustworthy.