Open to investors from 2 November and designed to take advantage of the IHT exemptions offered to investors by companies that qualify for both business property relief and as ISA investments, the service will offer both a growth and an income option. Investors will qualify for IHT exemptions after an initial two year holding period.
Under the relationship, WM will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the portfolios, while Unicorn will be the investment adviser.
Unicorn Asset Management director, Chris Hutchinson, said the decision to launch the firm’s first new product in a decade came after growing client demand for the service, given its expertise in the AIM market.
Hutchinson added: “We were determined only to launch something if we were sure we could do it effectively and ensure that we could remain focused on performance.”
But, the firm added, the service also helps to solve a growing problem: “ISAs form part of an investor’s estate for IHT purposes and over six million of the UK’s 22.7m ISA investors are over 65, meaning an ever-increasing number of investors are looking for estate planning solutions within an ISA framework, which the service offers.”
“Conducting much of our research in house delivers important synergies with AIM investment, where there are opportunities for under-brokered and under-researched companies. We want to maximise these opportunities within the Unicorn AIM IHT Portfolio Service, to provide investors with effective and efficient mitigation of their IHT liabilities without the time lag or complexities of some of the more traditional solutions,” Hutchinson said.
