Why MAP use investment funds?

Some people over the years have asked us why we don’t use shares when we invest money for clients, and only stick to funds.

Basically, we think funds represent a safer way of doing things. If you were to invest in a company’s shares, you need to do a lot of homework on that one company, whereas if you invest in funds it is very different. Now each fund manager has their own ideas of course of how many companies they wish to invest in but, I would estimate an average of about 60 per fund; this is just to give you an overall idea.

When MAP places your investments, we usually use about 10 funds, so it doesn’t take too much to work out that you will be invested in about 600 companies, although there may be the odd duplication. This gives you a far better spread of investments than just one or two.

Working on the law of averages, you should anticipate some of those companies will do very well, some average, and some not so well; everyone cannot perform brilliantly (unfortunately). The simple fact that you have a good spread to start with will reduce your overall risk, unless of course you have started off with high risk funds only. It’s very much a case of not putting all your eggs into the one basket.

What MAP attempts to do for all clients is what we call in financial services as a good allocation. What this means is that we don’t put all your funds into the UK, America, Japan, etc. A good allocation will reflect the risk category that you have chosen. For example:

Low Risk will be interest-based investments and then low volatile equities that tends to be UK based, although it can be some other countries or indeed global.
Middle Risk will be mainly equities and could be from UK or Europe, or some global funds as well. In this category you can get financial investments and also UK Smaller Companies, to give a specific example.
High Risk tends to be areas deemed to be high risk and this could be Asia, Japan, or indeed America. It would also include high-risk investment types like Global new companies (what they call Alpha) or specialised investment areas like Healthcare.

In summary therefore, when MAP allocates your money to 10 funds, it is actually to hundreds of different areas. What we are hoping to achieve is a good spread of investments in countries, in investment types and in risk such that we can reduce your individual exposure as best we can.

Bear in mind of course that we only ever use funds that have been researched and are in our Recommended Fund List (RFL). There are of course no guarantees that these will always work the way we think they should, but regular research and analysis will help to reduce risks over time.

If you would like to find out more information or would like to start investing today, please contact Money Advice & Planning Ltd on 0345 241 1808 or e-mail us at enquiries@mapfinances.co.uk.

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Why MAP use investment funds?