He started the Yorkshire Investment Club in December 2007 and, in its fourth year, he said its members are as strong an advocate of it now as ever.
By clubbing together to petition fund managers to make the journey north to either Harrogate or Leeds, Smith said the group of IFAs and wealth managers have considerably more clout.
Their latest speaker was Crispin Odey of Odey Asset Management, who drew the largest crowd yet.
The group meet once every two months, which Smith said keeps attendance from waning and use a fairly democratic process to decide who they would like to hear from next.
"We have some larger firms involved like wealth manager Border Asset Management, IFA Pearson Jones and stockbrokers Charles Stanley and Brewin Dolphin. This is balanced with smaller discretionary firms such as ourselves.
"People’s views are slightly different and they’ve got different questions they want answered, so we try to keep a broad spectrum of guest speakers," said Smith.
Sometimes the club host dinners and sometimes the fund managers’ presentation is given over lunch.
The greatest benefit is getting to hear from fund managers in an informal setting who might not make the effort if an individual firm had asked to see them.
Douglas Croft, Smith’s boss, said he had been sick of going to fund houses’ marketing roadshows and hearing the same old story year after year.
"You would get told what had happened in the last year, which given you’re an IFA you already knew. Then they [fund groups] would try and explain away their mistakes and finally they would introduce the new product they had created to combat those mistakes."
By inviting the fund managers to your own turf Smith and Croft said you get to hear from them on your terms and you can allow the questions afterwards to get as heated as you like.
David Cowell, director of Myddleton Croft is one member of YIC that espouses its value.
He said presentations from well-known names like Odey were always worth their weight and provided stimulation and information to ruminate over.
Another benefit of a club like YIC is the arena it provides to share concerns and discuss industry issues.
Smith said one example where this worked well was a few years ago when one member who had done a lot of research into Arch Cru funds shared his doubts about their viability.
The topic was discussed among members and subsequently nobody had their clients’ money invested in the funds, which proved to be a prudent move.
Smith sees no reason that other regions cannot follow the example set by Yorkshire in setting up a similar outfit: "It’s relatively easy to organise and you certainly reap the rewards," he concluded.
