Wealth & Finance Finance Awards 2015

www.wealthandfinance-intl.com 5 Invescap Best for Investment Products - Invescap Invescap is a private investment firm specialising in providing tailored product which specifically meet the needs of their clients. We speak to Marc Pepin, Chief Executive Officer at the firm, who outlines how his company has used its dedi- cated client focus and expertise in investments to become a leader in the industry. Please give us some background on your firm’s work. Invescap was founded in 2012, however the idea was created in 1998, when a group of finance specialists were striving to improve various investment strategies with the aim of improving the risk return profile of each of them. As a result investment returns on entire portfolios were greatly enhanced. This long-term development process led to the es- tablishment of Invescap, whose mission is to provide the best possible investment products to a clientele of qualified investors worldwide. In order to achieve this, Invescap specialists identify specific client’s needs in detail and develop high value-added investment products accordingly. We currently have significant demand for capital preserva- tion products offering a high level of participations on equities as well as high yielding fixed income products that display a very defensive char- acter by having low credit and interest rates risks. Our clients include pension funds, large financial institutions, private banks, family offices, independent asset managers, foundations and endowments worldwide. Give us an overview of your product range. How do you tailor this to your clients’ needs? As we serve a wide range of clients, we have a vast array of products for them to choose from which ensures they can always find something to suit their needs. However, there is one main theme which is common to all of them; risk exposure. Many investment products will increase the level of risk in order to increase investment returns. Very often, investors needs to add a disproportionate amount of risk in order to marginally increase returns. As a consequence, the risk-return profile of the product or of a strategy deteriorates when the objective is to increase investment returns. This is generally true for equities, for fixed income and for the vast majority of financial assets as well. At Invescap, we do the opposite. We strive at increasing investment returns whilst decreasing the marginal amount of additional risks taken to reach the objective. This is the guiding principal developed and is used at Invescap in order to increase investment returns conservatively. This has proven very robust in the past and has helped investors remaining rational in chal- lenging market conditions. Of course, all the risk and returns factors are entirely communicated to investors upfront so that everybody is aware of each risks resulting in the investment proposal. How do you remain at the top of you industry, despite its highly competi- tive nature? There are many aspects to our work which help us to ensure Invescap remains at the top of our industry. In our view a successful company in the financial industry must add value to its investors in a way which can clearly be proven beforehand. Investors often request to be informed in detail of the risk return profile of the investments in normal markets and importantly in distressed mar- kets. We meet fewer and fewer investors that are willing to trust blindly an investment strategy. With the major financial crisis that occurred in the recent years, clients become quickly nervous and immediately sell investments which they do not fully understand, for which they do not feel in control or for which they question the robustness. The key, therefore, is for companies in the financial industry, to create robust strategies which add value to investors and that can be fully demonstrated beforehand in normal markets and during extreme market events. We experienced that investors feel much more confidant when they fully understand the investments product entirely and react more rationally when market jitters. Invescap de- velops significant partnerships with a selected number of top univer- sities, research centres and the best financial institutions worldwide in order to achieve this core objective. Additionally, we invest a high amount of time, energy and efforts, first, to understand the real needs of the client before developing a solution in order to ensure we have the full trust of our clients. We often come to situations where the client expresses a demand which, despite making sense on the onset, can be optimized subsequently. We therefore es- tablish return objectives through the life of the investment product, risk tolerance both in terms of capacity and willingness. We also consider the time horizon and liquidity requirements of the investors considering the other investments of their portfolio as well as other constraints related to tax, legal and investor’s preference. We consider all these inputs in the context of the entire portfolio and challenge the investor if needed. Once the objectives and constraints are clearly established, we develop a detailed investment solution rep- resenting several options that are presented to the investor, highlight- ing our preferred course of action. Once these steps are completed, we proceed to implementation.