An advice firm which specialises in self-employed and entertainment industry clients doesn't presently offer financial advice to professional footballers as its boss regards them as "fickle".
Tim Whiting launched Timothy James and Partners almost 20 years ago and remains chief executive and a substantial shareholder in the business, which is now majority-owned by Sodberg.
He told FT Adviser the business only accepts new clients on a referral basis, and although it has represented professional footballers in the past, right now it won’t.
He said: "The thing we find with footballers is they can be quite fickle, every time they move to a different club they change agent and accountant and lawyer and financial adviser.
"And of course that means the time horizon of their investment portfolio is often shorter than we think is appropriate, so they are not appropriate clients for us right now."
Working with clients in the entertainment industry, on the other hand, poses particular challenges.
Many clients are either American nationals, or UK nationals with an income from the US where they may have a US tax liability, meaning Whiting and his colleagues have had to learn about this area of tax planning, he said.
The second challenge, he added, is that many of those clients aren’t from traditionally affluent backgrounds, and may need help interacting with the fee paying schools and particular professional services such as estate agents in desirable locations, something he is able to help with as part of his financial planning service.
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Of the £1.6bn of assets run by Timothy James and Partners, around £900mn is run on an advisory basis - with advisers at the company choosing funds for the client.
The rest of the capital is deployed either into externally or internally managed model portfolios, or direct equities.
Many of the client portfolios are invested in a combination of the above.
Whiting said: “Whether a client is in the model portfolios or the advisory piece depends on the client.
"But we also have a policy that the fund picking is done by more experienced employees within Timothy James, and as an adviser becomes more experienced they move on to selecting funds.”
The firm invests in both active and passive funds. Whiting said for a client with assets of up to £150,000 for instance, tracker funds were an appropriate option.
In terms of the actively managed funds, among those to which he presently allocates client capital to is Rathbone Global Opportunities, managed by James Thomson, the Crux UK Special Situations fund, run by Richard Penny and the Troy Global Income fund run by James Harries.
When it comes to choosing a model portfolio service, Whiting said: “The thing we don’t like, I guess, is that it's an extra layer of fees, but they are the right option for a lot of clients, and of course if you pick the right one, what they add in extra investment performance is greater than the extra costs.
