Seabrook Clark has enjoyed another busy and successful year in 2024. We are delighted that we have continued to make great progress with the business for the benefit of our clients.
With regard to our team, we continued to expand filling The Greenkeepers Cottage, now a team of fifteen professionals. We welcomed Daniel as a paraplanner and Peter as an administrator during the year. Daniel brings significant management and customer services experience as well as strong credentials with financial services qualifications. Peter has extensive experience of administration from positions with other wealth managers in the Southwest.
In respect of our investment desk, we have strengthened our proposition by welcoming Chris as an investment consultant. Chris brings extensive experience from his work with another well-respected discretionary investment business.
I am passionate about the importance of upgrading and integrating more technology into our business, both to enhance the client experience and to optimise our internal systems and processes in the interests of efficiency and best practice. To this end, Ella has worked with us as a project consultant alongside Rupert to develop and enhance our back-office systems. We plan to invest more in technology in 2025 and I will communicate more about this in a future newsletter.
The year witnessed Paul’s retirement as a Client Relationship Manager. I am personally very grateful to Paul and his wife Sarah for their hard work, dedication to looking after clients and wider support of the business over many years. We all wish Paul a happy retirement.
Paul’s retirement has created an excellent opportunity for Hayden, who has worked very hard on his Chartered Financial Planner qualifications over the last couple of years. Accordingly, I am delighted that Hayden has taken on a financial planner role this year supporting me in delivering advice to clients and ensuring Paul’s former clients experience business as usual as clients of Seabrook Clark.
Recently we have welcomed our Milford & Dormor Financial Planning clients into Seabrook Clark itself so as to streamline our business and ensure all our clients benefit to the same extent from our advice and services.
In 2024 we have invested significant effort further to strengthen our investment process with the aim of optimising investment performance whilst mitigating risk as far as possible, as well as reducing costs by seeking access to the lowest cost share classes. This has worked very well, and I am delighted that all our portfolios have performed strongly in both absolute terms and relative to market benchmarks over the year.
We have also focused on our financial planning proposition. In this area we have upgraded our cash flow modelling software to help clients’ planning decisions. The planning tools make best use of both linear projections, as well as sophisticated probability-based models to show the potential variability in returns from investment markets and ultimately provide a client with the probability of their financial goals being met over time.
Looking ahead to 2025, I am excited by the opportunities for our business and the services we can continue to provide to our clients. In particular, the future for genuinely independent financial advisers which are owner managed and are Chartered Financial Planners and Later Life Accredited Advisers is bright. I know that our clients value our independent advice, professionalism, strong investment process, as well as our personal level of service and flexibility to work in a traditional manner with paper correspondence or digitally making best use of modern technology, underpinned with integrity and family values.
Finally, on behalf of the Seabrook Clark team, I thank all our clients for your support during the year. I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a healthy, enjoyable and prosperous 2025.
Matthew Clark, Managing Director, Seabrook Clark
Please note that the content on this page is based on our understanding and the available information; we cannot be held responsible for any errors, and you should not act on the basis of the information in these articles, nor do they constitute investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily an indication of future returns; the value of investments and any income from them is not guaranteed and can fall as well as rise. Overseas investments are affected by currency movements and exchange rates. If you would like investment advice on your individual circumstances, please do not hesitate to get in touch via telephone at 01392 875500 or email at info@SeabrookClark.co.uk.