We’re Financially Fit | Tap into Our Wealth of Knowledge
Asset Protection International (API) is a specialist financial advisory services company offering an extensive range of investment management and financial planning services to international and Southern African investors. The firm has an extensive team of professionals and is wholly owned by members of its senior team. Offshore specialization has always been, and remains, one of the company’s core competencies. The advice and investment services thus provided reflect our awareness of the global marketplace.
Registered with the SA Financial Services Board (now the Financial Sector Conduct Authority) in 2000, API has evolved from an advisory firm specializing in offshore investing into a holistic wealth management company that commits to protect and advance all aspects of investors’ financial well-being. We are fully compliant investment managers, and currently serve a broad range of clients, from both South Africa and abroad, who rely on us for independent advice and strategic coaching in the realms of financial planning and investment management. Today, our staff complement comprises 19 advisers, operating from offices around the country, who collectively manage over R3 billion in assets.
A financial review is the first step we take to help you grow and protect your wealth. In a financial review our financial advisors take time to understand your circumstances and objectives, and assess whether we can be of assistance to you.
We’ll work with you to provide solutions to your financial planning needs, structuring and selecting investments from a wide range of independent financial services providers. We’ll also typically discuss your estate planning with a view to gaining an understanding of your succession planning requirements and perhaps being able to add value in the preservation of your wealth through intergenerational planning.
Of course, we’ll discuss risk – a complex subject at the best of times, but one that you will need to get to grips with.
When you book a financial review with us, you’ll typically get:
One of the most important components of wealth management is striving for the consistent delivery of long-term investment performance tailored to each client’s requirements. We therefore construct investment portfolios to meet individual client objectives, avoiding a one-size-fits-all program.
In practice we deliver investment solutions to our clients largely through composite portfolios of funds, or collective investments. Therefore, a large part of our job is about getting portfolio construction and fund selection right, and often it is on this criterion that we are ultimately judged by the client.
Accordingly, we utilise only managers whom we trust and who we firmly believe will outperform on a risk-adjusted basis, seeking top-tier investment opportunities globally in traditional and alternative asset classes.
We endeavour to provide transparency—around risks, rationale for recommendations, processes, fees, etc. We aim to minimize the substantial, often-hidden costs from taxes, inflation, management fees, and transaction fees.
We encourage clients to take only those risks that can be understood and that have commensurate return expectations. We avoid unwarranted complexity.
API recognises the fallibility of relying on personal preferences in the area of fund selection. As a professional financial advisory firm, we use a systematic process based on independent third-party research to enable us to arrive at optimal fund selections.
API uses input from 4 independent rating agencies combining both qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a filtered list of API approved funds which is reviewed every quarter.
The four rating agencies are:
“FundHouse is an independent global fund adviser that provides specialised investment and business advice to independent financial advisers and institutions. Our ambition is to protect and grow the independent wealth management industry and to ensure the best possible investment outcome for end investors.”
API places a lot of emphasis on the FundHouse ratings and reports as they are derived at through qualitative and quantitative analysis. When markets undergo corrections, our clients find comfort in the fact that the overall portfolio is comprised of independently rated funds. FundHouse uses a 3 tier rating system as shown below. Tier 1 and 2 funds are considered to be well run funds that are approved for use in client portfolios.
HIGHEST RATED
Fundhouse are satisfied that this offering is managed according to a well-considered process, applied consistently and supported by the business.
MEDIUM RATED
This is a good fund, however Fundhouse have some minor concerns which may be people, process or business related.
NEGATIVE RATING
There are one or more fundamental concerns about aspects of this fund and Fundhouse believe there are better alternatives.
Whilst our job is often seen to be that of managing clients’ investments, managing risk is probably a more accurate description. Understanding risk is complicated, involving both the humanities (psychology in particular, both at an individual level and a market level) and the sciences.
API generally seeks to limit risk through constructing diversified portfolios, typically using collective investment schemes (unit trusts/mutual funds). Where these give flexibility to a fund manager to hold different asset classes such as equities, bonds, property, cash, etc. within the same fund, this provides a level of active management which regulates the exposure to different asset classes according to the fund manager’s views.
Given the long-term nature of most investments, they are best suited to investors who desire a long term buy and hold strategy for a substantial portion of their funds. Many investments are appropriate only for clients possessing an investment time horizon of a minimum of ten years, and preferably even longer.
Estate planning requires a sound knowledge of the tax and legal environment within which one is operating as well as the attributes of the various tools available to the estate planner. This is a constantly changing environment which requires keeping up to date on a number of fronts and an awareness of their implications for an individual’s specific circumstances.
Estate planning considerations would include:
We are happy to welcome a limited number of the right advisors, who fit in with our values. You should be someone who wants to work within a support environment that will keep you structured, compliant, branded and credible.
As an API advisor, you must possess integrity, have an ethic of entrepreneurship together with a culture of discipline to ensure regulatory and company compliance, and the ability to consistently deliver appropriate advice to clients. All advisors must have a qualification of at least an appropriate NQF 6 (Bachelor degree level) and be willing to attain the Postgraduate Diploma in Financial Planning.
OUR OFFICES
Durban Office
WESTVILLE
Tel: +27 31 266 9959
Suite 7 Heritage Park, 51 Norfolk Terrace, Westville, 3630
Port Shepstone Office
SHELLY BEACH
Tel: +27 39 315 1020
149 Coniston Road, Shelly Beach, 4265
Johannesburg Office
BRYANSTON
Tel: +27 11 706 1008
Block B, The Ambridge, Vrede Avenue, Bryanston, Johannesburg, 2067
Cape Town Office
KENILWORTH
Tel: +27 21 761 3839
22 Bray Road, Kenilworth, Cape Town, 7700
TYGERVALLEY
Tel: +27 82 445 0288
66C Franshoek Road, Durbanville Hills, Cape Town, 7550
We Are A Registered Financial Services provider With Registration FSP768