How to write a report recommending a structured investment product as part of a revised investment strategy for an existing plan

Nigel Ogram

It’s the finale of our three-part mini-series of user tip blogs covering structured investment products.

Part 1 covered how to recommend a structured product as a new standalone investment.
Part 2 covered how to recommend a structured product as part of a recommended investment strategy of a new plan recommendation.

This blog covers the natural extension to Part 2 – the recommendation of a structured product as part of a revised investment strategy of an existing plan, which for the purposes of this blog I have assumed is a SIPP. As with Part 2, it could easily have been an ISA, offshore bond or any other permissible tax wrapper.

The process

1. Select or add the client

From the Genovo main dashboard, go to Write report and select or create the private client(s) you wish to write the report to. If your Genovo account is integrated with your back office system, remember that you can import the client, rather than adding them manually, by clicking the add from CRM button.

2. Select the Report Creation Method

The preferred report creation method is to use the Genovo AI Assistant (‘Gena’). All you need to do is type, paste or speak a simple advice prompt stating the advice scenario. For this scenario, I’d suggest something like:

Gena will then:

Determine the most appropriate report type.
Apply a report name.
Create the framework of the report.
Add the required report sections.
Import the plans from your back office system (if you don’t have a CRM integration), or
Create a ‘skeleton’ plan ready for you to flesh out as required.

However, in the interests of completeness, this blog walks you through the steps of building the report using Genovo’s ‘from scratch’ report creation method. There are four other report creation methods available, designed to fast-track you through one or more of the steps below and make the report building process even easier.

3. Create the report

In Report Details, give the report a name and select the Report Type – we’d suggest using the Review Report – Recommendations (2.0).

4. Add the required sections

You’ll now need to add the necessary sections from the ‘Available sections’ drop down, which in this instance will be:

Review of Your Existing Pension Plans, and
Recommended Investment Strategy.

5. Complete all section wizards

Next, you’ll need to step through the section wizards of all sections that require your input, as follows:

5.1. The Introduction section

Progress through the steps of the Introduction section in the usual way. When you reach the Client Objectives step you should select or add the advice option(s) that accurately reflect the client’s objective(s) and add comprehensive Know Your Client (KYC) information to ensure you fulfil the regulator’s expectations of you in terms of documenting a client’s objectives.

You can use and adapt one of the Genovo advice options, such as:

‘Review your existing *investments / pensions* to ensure they continue to reflect your needs and objectives, and investment preferences.’

Alternatively, you can add your own advice option if you prefer, or you can manually enter the client’s objectives by typing, pasting in external content, or even just speaking the objectives, by clicking the Add objectives as freetext button.

5.2. The Client Risk Profile section

It’s in this section that you will confirm the clients’ attitude to risk and capacity for loss, as well as their knowledge and experience and any investment preferences they may have. Given they’re investing in a structured product, this would be an ideal place to highlight their preference for capital protection.

5.3. The Review of Existing Uncrystallised Pensions section

Simply follow the Wizard section steps in sequence:

5.3.1. Plan Summary

You now need to add the SIPP. If you’re working with an integrated client, click the Add plans from CRM button, otherwise add the plan manually by clicking Add plan.

Because you’re going to be recommending a new investment strategy for the plan, it’s really important that you include the plan’s Current Investment Strategy, so the client can easily see ‘before & after’ versions of their plan’s underlying investments, as well as the associated charges. If you’re working with an integrated plan and the plan in the CRM has underlying funds / holdings, these will be imported with the plan to form the Current Investment Strategy.

5.3.2. Benefits & Features

Some of the details of this step may have been populated from the CRM, but if not, you can easily add them yourself.

Given that the advice in this scenario is simply to switch the underling investments, you could choose not to populate this step, in which case nothing will come out in your report. For some other recommendations, (e.g. if you were recommending the plan should be replaced), this step is very important.

5.3.3. Current Plan Charges

Enter the plan’s current charges. You’ll find everything you need to know about the Current Plan Charges step in this article from the Genovo Knowledge Base.

Note that Genovo’s AI assistant (‘Gena’) can be used to retrieve plan charges from previous Genovo reports where the plan has been reviewed. This Knowledge Base article explains how this feature works.

5.3.4. Recommended Action

Select the “switch the underlying investments of” Recommended Action and then select from one or more of the supporting Genovo advice reasons, (or add you can add your own). The example below is a custom advice reason I created for this scenario:

5.3.5. Revised Plan Charges

Add the revised recurring plan charges as appropriate. Seeing as the only recommended action for the SIPP is to switch the underlying investments, it’s probably only the investment management charges that will change.

Top Tip – where the charges haven’t changed very much, it’s easier to copy across the charges from the Current Plan Charges step. This is covered in detail in the last few paragraphs of this Knowledge Base article.

5.3.6. Key Disadvantages and Tax Implications

Remember, you’re only recording any disadvantages with the recommendation to switch the underlying investments of the SIPP. Any disadvantages associated with using a structured product within the revised investment strategy can be covered off in the ‘why investment strategy’ step of the Recommended Investment Strategy section (see below).

5.3.7. Plan Comparison: Performance

If you’re recommending a structured product within a plan’s revised investment strategy, it’s probably safe to say that you’re not doing it for performance reasons (and in any event, how would you represent the past performance of a structured product that doesn’t have a performance history?).

However, you may be making other changes to the underlying investment strategy too, so this optional step is where you can record data to support a recommendation to change the investment strategy, if the change is being driven by performance. If you don’t enter any figures into this step, the Plan Comparison: Performance subsection won’t be included in your report.

5.4. The Recommended Investment Strategy section

5.4.1. Recommended Investment Strategy

An investment strategy in Genovo can include cash, individual equities, funds, portfolios, bonds, ETFs, investment trusts. For SIPPs, it can extend to any permissible investment – commercial property, physical bullion, fine art, etc, plus of course, structured products.

So – rather than add the structured product as a recommendation in the New Investment Recommendation section as shown in May’s blog, when recommending it as part of a wider investment strategy it can be covered as part of the investment strategy.

You have a choice here:

Add the revised investment strategy as an entirely new strategy – most likely when most or all of the Current Investment Strategy is being changed.
Clone the Current Investment Strategy – useful when only a small part of the Current Investment Strategy is being changed.

I’ll cover the second of these options, which is also covered in Part 3 of this Knowledge Base article.

Just click the Clone current investment strategy button and select from the list of investment strategies in the new window:

Next, regardless of whether you’re editing a cloned investment strategy, or creating an entirely new investment strategy, you’ll need to give it a name, for example:

Once you’ve named the strategy, you now need to edit the investments. To do this, click on the Edit investments hyperlink:

This is where you’ll add the structured investment product as part of the investment strategy.

The quickest and easiest way is to re-use the Genovo Example Structured Product from the Investment Library. This example structured product includes a table of the various features and benefits of a typical structured product, so all you have to do is edit the various fields (including the investment name, obviously). This is much easier than creating it from scratch.

If the investment strategy is not the only investment in the plan’s investment strategy, you should now add the other investments too. It might look something like this very simple example:

Finally, don’t forget the Why investment strategy step. It’s here that you should explain how the recommended investment strategy meets the client’s objectives.

5.4.2. Recommended Investment Strategy Supplementary Information

This optional step allows you to select one or more options to include additional content in your report about your firm’s advice proposition, ESG investing, discretionary fund management, etc.

5.5. The Important Information section

This is the last wizard section you’ll need to complete and the steps are self-explanatory.

6. Tailor the structure of the report

Having completed all the section wizards you should then tailor the structure of your report by unchecking any sections you do not wish to include in your report; and then change the sort order of any sections to reflect your personal preferences.

You’ll find more information about how to remove sections from your report here.

You’ll find more information about how to reorder the sections in your report here.

7. Create and edit the report

Having created the framework of the report of the report with 98%+ of the content already included as an initial draft in the Report Builder, both Writer and Reader users can then make any final tweaks to the content of the draft report in the Report Editor. To open and edit the report in the Report Editor click Create / Edit report.

8. Upload the completed report into your back office system

If your Genovo account is integrated with your back office system and you’ve been working with an integrated client, and you’ve been using the Genovo Report Editor to make the final tweaks to your report, don’t forget that you can upload the report back to the client record in the back office app with just a couple of clicks.

Nigel’s knowledge

So, what else can you do to make your structured product reports easier to complete?

The Gena report creation method is a great way to get all of the major elements of the report selected for you, all extracted from the prompt you enter at the start of the process. Give it a try!
An integration with a back-office app makes adding clients and plans much easier. This area of the Genovo Knowledge Base covers our current integration partners.
If the advice scenario of the report you’ve just worked on is likely to be repeated, you may then wish to convert it into a template and save it to your Report Template Library to use as a starting point for creating future reports.
If you created any custom advice options or advice reasons, you could keep them for re-use in future reports. You can do this ‘on the fly’ as you’re working in the relevant step, or you can do it from the Advice Option & Reason Library.
If you want to customise any of the boilerplate report content to reflect your own preferences, you can do this via the Report Content Manager:
What is the Report Content Manager?
Video tutorial – How to customise the boilerplate content of your reports and templates using the Report Content Manager
Genovo’s Report Editor includes all the common text-editing capabilities you’ll need, but adds adviser / paraplanner collaboration tools, version control, report ratings and back office document upload features too. Want to know more? Simply watch the video tutorial.