www.wealthandfinance-news.com 28 Wealth & Finance International - December 2017 CCAM follows a bottom-up, fundamentally driven research process which helps it to focus its time on detailed company visits and proprietary analysis. The team believe that over time, this approach will achieve superior results. Typically, the firm deals with Pension, asset and wealth managers, and in order to further enhance the returns for its investors, CCAM operates with the belief that all funds should be capacity constrained, concentrated and freed from any benchmark constraints, leading to the company being able to express its best ideas. With a vision of delivering quality, Richard outlines the firm’s mission and what methods staff use in order to reach their targets. “Put simply, our mission is basically to achieve excellence in three key areas: investment performance, operations and client service. We achieve this by hiring the highest calibre individuals we can, in their respective fields and then refrain from getting them to focus on anything other than that, whilst giving them the support internally to achieve success.” Richard explains how he ensures that CCAM stays ahead of emerging developments in the industry and what techniques they employ. He refers to the firm’s excellent use of technology and relative experience which enables the team to predict and adapt to any advances. “At CCAM, we utilise technology when it comes to trading to reduce cost to our clients, however when it comes to research, we rely on the collective 138 years of experience of our investment team to identify the best ideas we can.” Essentially, the boutique nature of the firm coupled with the thriving and happy working environment means that staff are able to exceed client expectations on a regular basis. Richard refers to the unrivalled talent within the firm’s employee base, and emphasises that staff turnover is very low, which is a key aspect of staff happiness. “Crucial to our success, our staff are everything to CCAM and the quality of our staff is, we believe, second to none. All play a significant role in the success of the firm from front to back office. CCAM is wholly owned by members of the team and as such, it is not distracted by external factors or required to make compromises to our main objectives around client outcomes. Testament to this is the fact that staff turnover has been very low.” Commenting on the bright future ahead for CCAM, Richard is keen to mention that the specific trends that are being noticed within the financial industry suit the firm perfectly thanks to its specialist nature. Looking for new areas to expand and pioneer new solutions, there are new opportunities to explore, particularly in Japan, where CCAM has made some ground-breaking strides. “Opportunity-wise, we are seeing more investors moving away from the crowded and unproductive centre-ground offered by more generalist funds, into both the ETF and the highly active fund specialist market. As a specialist, we are perfectly placed to benefit from this trend and are already seeing strong inflows across our range of funds. Also, we are constantly assessing our fund range, to identify Coupland Cardiff (CCAM) is a specialist Asian and Japanese fund management group, focused on managing capacity constrained, performance focused funds within a risk controlled framework. We invited Richard Cardiff to give us an overview of this exciting asset management. Built on Experience 1712WF18 Company: Coupland Cardiff Asset Management Contact Name: Richard Cardiff Email:
[email protected] Address: 31-32 St. James’s Street, London, SW1A 1HD Telephone: +44 207 321 3470 Web Address: www.couplandcardiff.com in conjunction with clients, areas that we may be innovative, such as was the case when we launched the CC Japan income & Growth fund in 2013 and the CC Japan Income & Growth Trust in 2015, the first Japanese investment trust launch for 20 years.” Lastly, Richard is keen to add how the stability of CCAM has greatly benefitted the firm in various ways. He is particularly enthusiastic about the wealth of experience within the company, and this experience alongside expertise exemplifies the high-quality nature of CCAM. “Integral to the achievements of CCAM is the stability of the firm over the last 12 years. The quality of portfolio managers and analysts we have in place, enables us to continue to deliver exceptional returns for investors over the coming years, and in the fastest growing markets in the world. These are markets that have not only grown rapidly over this time, but also have excellent prospects for the longer term. We are confident that we will continue to deliver superior returns and service our clients around the world to the highest quality. “Ultimately, our fund management team have spent their careers investing across Asia and Japan and have strong track records. All seven portfolio managers are specialists in their investment field and between them they undertake around 2000 company visits a year. CCAM believe that the combination of scrutinising data, as well as analysing companies at a face-to-face level allows us to truly understand a stock, interpret markets with greater clarity and deliver superior performance.”