Retirement income robo-adviser Chancery Lane has launched to service baby boomer clients with pension pots more than £250,000 ($340,000, €292,000).
The service will focus solely on the de-cumulation phase and specialises in “natural income” via investment trusts listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Chancery Lane Income Planners is an appointed representative of IFA firm Master Adviser, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The firm’s management team consists of:
- Doug Brodie, founder and chief executive, has worked in personal investing since 1989, specialising in income investing for the 15 years, firstly with Old Mutual and then running Master Adviser;
- Bridget McIntyre, who was UK chief executive of RSA Insurance, and held senior roles at Aviva, and non-executive director at Saga;
- William Todd, a Cambridge mathematics and anthropology graduate, built his career in software and business, and was the co-founder of Nutmeg;
- Kim Lerche-Thomsen, who started and ran Prudential Annuities, and was chief executive of Scottish Amicable as well as founder and chief executive of Primetime Retirement;
- Ian Manning, an IT consultant who worked at the Swiss CERN large hadron collider experiment set up to search for the Higgs boson ‘God particle’; and
- Steve Sharp, the former marketing executive director of Marks and Spencer.
Investment trusts
The firm wants “to help retirees with pots of over £250,000 achieve the maximum level of retirement income by providing an independent, non-discretionary full-advice online service”.
To achieve this, it will use “dividend champion” investment trusts listed on the LSE, which will produce a consistent dividend stream while protecting the capital sum.
“By using natural income, such as dividends, retirees ensure their money will never run out because the capital never needs to be spent,” the firm said. “For example, the F&C trust has paid its shareholders an annual dividend without fail, every year since 1868.
“Investment trust dividends and share prices are not correlated: whereas shares fell in line with the market in 2020, dividends paid reached a record high of £1.88bn, an increase of 4.2%, despite UK dividends collapsing 38%.
“Chancery lane’s unique marketing approach is to provide free-to-use tools online where visitors can model their own income using real investment data. Risk assessments are not done by a tick box exercise but via a recorded video discussion between the client and the adviser.”
Income despite economy health
Brodie added: “Over the past twenty years, as defined benefit schemes disappeared, we noticed all our clients sought either immediate or future income – isn’t that what a pension is for?
“Securing a regular, inflation-beating retirement income is way too expensive using gilts and fixed interest so we simply research natural come wherever it can be found.
“Being independent we don’t use our own funds, and investment trust reserves enable dividends to be paid whatever the health of the economy – as we saw in 2000, 2008 and 2020.”
