Moving out of Turcan Connell’s office in Mayfair, the “final relic of our shared service agreement”, and settling into their own space has brought a pipeline of new work to the wealth manager, says Bathgate.
“Many of our original clients in Scotland, their sons and daughters live in London for work or school.”
Besides that, he’s finding that many people down south are open to the idea of a wealth management firm that has “London quality with an Edinburgh cost”.
At its core, Tcam is an intergenerational discretionary wealth manager and financial planner, using a total return approach to deliver a “significant amount of the upside of stock markets but substantially less than half the downside”.
Achieving this asymmetry between upside and downside is Tcam’s raison d’etre.
“We’re a goal-based manager trying to achieve target levels of return based around what our clients are looking for.
“In many cases our clients are not just looking at the next five to 10 years, they’re looking at the next 25 to 30,” says Bathgate, which is one of the reasons why the firm is “not obsessed with our peer group”.
But if he had to choose a firm with a similar ethos and investment strategy, he says Ruffer or Carmignac would come close.
However, one area where he likes to think Tcam has the upper hand is in its technology offering.
Technology has always been an essential ingredient to the firm’s success, according to Bathgate, who says it is an area where they are “substantially more hands-on than most of their competitors”.
He says: “Where some people are getting it wrong is in thinking you must have an all or nothing approach to tech – either a bespoke or an automated service. But what you should be doing is using automation to supplement the bespoke service.
“Things such as valuations and transactional statements should be facilitated online. And the time you spend with the clients should be advising them or updating them on your investment views and performance.
“What we’re trying to continually do is improve the quality of the communications with our clients and the quality of the face-to-face interactions.”
