Barclays

Investment advice guide

How we advise our clients

Through our Barclays International Investment Adviser service, we have developed a three step process that allows us to offer the best investment advice we can to our clients.

• Step one. Understanding your circumstances and objectives.
• Step two. Assessing your attitude to investment risk.
• Step three. Selecting the right investments.

Understanding your circumstances and objectives

First we need to understand your financial personality - how you react to and handle financial decisions, and what you want to achieve with your investments.

This can take into account what income you want to earn, how much access to the capital you would require, the timescale of your investments and your financial aspirations.

It's also important for us to know the jurisdiction within which your investments are held, as this will help us ensure that you take full advantage of any tax planning opportunities that may apply.

Assessing your attitude to investment risk

We have developed an approach to fully understanding our clients attitude to investment risk. It draws upon the considerable knowledge and in-depth research of behavioural finance and risk psychology experts.

By completing a short, easy to answer questionnaire, we are able to grade your risk tolerance according to one of five categories. Each category will help direct us to the sort of investments that will suit you.

Selecting the right investments

Having gained this insight, our experts would be in a position to recommend a selection of investments to build the right investment portfolio for you.

There are 3 broad categories from which we can choose investments including those listed below.

Global Beta
Global Beta offers a range of globally diversified portfolios that consist of exchange traded funds. These funds provide low-cost, index-tracking returns.

Multi-Manager
Multi-Manager provides a choice of portfolios and currencies to suit your objectives. Our experts take care of asset allocation and select from some of the world's finest investment managers.

Structured products
These are fixed term investments that can offer a degree of certainty. They offer a variety of risk and return profiles. For example, they can return a fixed interest payment annually or at the end of the term and are typically linked to assets, indices, interest rates, equities or commodities.

Placing your funds offshore

We understand the needs of our diverse international client base, that is why we can place client funds offshore. This presents possible tax planning benefits along with the confidence that client funds are held in a highly regulated jurisdiction.

Please note: Please bear in mind these are medium to long term investments, that is five years or more, and that their value and any income from them can go down as well as up. So you might not get back what you originally invested.

More information

Barclays International Investment Adviser service is available to clients with €55,000 (or currency equivalent) to invest.

To find out more contact your Relationship Manager (if you have one), call us on
+44 (0)1624 684 316† or use our call back service.