Outsourcing Investment: Why Cockburn Lucas uses Cazenove

Parry Leggett (pictured), senior investment consultant at Cockburn Lucas has chosen Cazenove because of its disciplined approach to asset allocation and like-minded thinking on absolute returns.

Number of adviser clients using the service

20

Average portfolio size of adviser clients

£321,000

Minimum investment limit for clients using the service

£200,000

Nottingham-based Cockburn Lucas outsourced investment to Cazenove Capital Management in 2008.

Parry Leggett, senior investment consultant at Cockburn Lucas, said: ‘We took the decision to outsource some of our bigger client portfolios to access institutional products and also to access the research and reach of Cazenove in the hedge fund arena, where we do not have the level of expertise available.

‘The performance of some of the multi-manager products we were using after the Lehmans [bankruptcy] drove us towards a more sophisticated solution.’

Seeking better results

Before deciding to use a discretionary fund manager (DFM), Cockburn Lucas had used a different form of outsourcing: a multi-manager fund, where the managers select the funds.

‘Previously, we had outsourced within the multi-manager arena but we felt that when markets sold off heavily we didn’t get the results we thought we would get in that sector of the market. So we knew we had to up our game in relation to a discretionary service,’ said Leggett.

The firm already had a strong relationship with Cazenove on the retail multi-manager side, especially with Marcus Brookes, head of multi-manager, and Rob Thorpe, head of UK retail.