The Next Evolution of Your Investment Engine

At Chesterton House, our purpose is simple: to help you live the life you want, with confidence about your money and peace of mind about the future. That’s why we regularly review and refine how we look after your investments, making sure your financial engine runs smoothly and reliably.

We often describe your investments as the engine under the bonnet of your financial plan. Just like a well-tuned car powers you towards your destination, your investment engine helps drive you towards your life goals. Our role is to keep that engine running efficiently and in line with your values, so you can focus on enjoying the journey.

So you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve been reviewing your engine to ensure that it is effective, efficient and productive. Our Investment Committee have taken a deep dive into how we structure our portfolios, how they’ve performed, what they cost, and whether they are taking advantage of modern theory and practice.

As a result of this detailed review, we’re introducing the next evolution of our investment engine, and over time we’ll be recommending that you update to the latest version to give you the highest probability of achieving your goals.

These changes have been designed to simplify your portfolio, enhance reliability, reduce risks, lower your costs, and offer solutions that better reflect your needs. Importantly, they allow us to spend more time together focusing on your goals and the bigger picture of your life.

Summary – What You Need to Know

We’ve refined our investment approach to make it simpler, more efficient, cheaper and fully aligned with your goals.

You’ll benefit from:

• Clearer outcomes – enhanced risk controls can serve to reduce the variability of returns, resulting in a more predictable journey.
• Lower cost solutions – helping more of your returns stay invested.
• Strong governance – ensuring your investments are well-managed and secure.
• Tailored options – with three distinct choices: growth, income, or sustainable investing.

Our role remains the same: to help you to get really clear about your goals and create a financial plan to achieve them; to provide expert advice towards getting your entire financial house in perfect order; and to deliver a high level of personal support on every step of the way.

Why We’re Making Changes

The world of investing is constantly evolving. Over the past year, our Investment Committee has undertaken a comprehensive review of our approach to ensure that it continues to deliver the best possible results. This has involved:

• Analysing the performance and structure of our existing portfolios;
• Exploring and considering a wide range of potential alternatives, from building new funds ourselves, to employing an in-house team, to working with leading global investment firms, before recommending any changes;
• Stress-testing these different approaches to ensure they deliver consistent outcomes across a variety of market conditions;
• Reviewing costs, governance structures, and the resilience of potential solutions;
• Ensuring that the recommended solutions offer long-term stability and confidence to our clients for many years into the future.

This rigorous process has confirmed that now is the right time to make changes. Our refinements are about keeping things simple, reducing costs, and introducing options that reflect different client needs. Most importantly, they allow us to spend more of our time with you focusing on what really matters: your goals, your plan, and the individual actions that affect your plan and your life.

What’s Changing

We’re moving from managing a wide range of individual portfolios in-house to working with carefully selected specialist investment managers. This shift allows us to offer three focused solutions—growth, income, and sustainable investing—while keeping everything aligned with our philosophy and your goals.

These new options reduce complexity, improve clarity, and create space for deeper conversations about your future.

The Chesterton House Investment Philosophy

Your investment portfolio is the engine under the bonnet of your financial plan. Our job is to keep it running efficiently and reliably, so it powers you towards your goals.

We continue to apply six guiding principles:

1. Start With You – every plan begins with your goals, values, and circumstances.
2. Let Markets Work for You – human creativity drives growth, and markets reflect this over time.
3. Diversify – spreading investments wisely helps smooth the ride and reduce the risks.
4. Control Costs – lower costs mean more of your money stays invested.
5. Sharpen Strategy with Evidence – decisions should be guided by robust data, not speculation.
6. Trust the Process – sticking to your plan helps you stay focused on your long-term goals.

These principles remain at the heart of everything we do. What’s evolving is how we implement them – through carefully selected investment solutions that give you the greatest likelihood of success.

Why This Matters for You

The changes we’re making are not the result of a quick decision. They are the outcome of many months of careful analysis and a long-term commitment to ensuring our clients receive the very best solutions available.

Our Investment Committee has considered many options, tested them against our philosophy, and selected only those approaches that we expect to deliver the highest standards of consistency, value, and governance. By doing this hard work on your behalf, we’ve built a more robust and resilient framework for the future.

For you, that means:

• Greater confidence that your money is working as hard as it can for you.
• More time in meetings spent discussing your goals and life, rather than the mechanics of investments.
• Peace of mind that your plan is powered by an engine that has been thoroughly researched and designed to last.

Next Steps

At your next Progress Meeting, we’ll talk through which investment option best matches your goals and circumstances. We’ll explain how the transition from your current holdings will work, answer any questions, and show how this fits seamlessly into your wider financial plan.

Our mission hasn’t changed: we’re here to help you plan well, achieve your goals, and have a great life. These refinements are designed to support that journey with greater clarity and confidence.

If you would like to know more before your next meeting, we understand, and as always we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have. However it’s also important that any changes that we suggest are properly explained, carefully considered, and tailored to your own individual circumstances, and that takes time. Whilst we want you to be aware that some change is on the way, we also want to get our recommendations right for you, and the best time to do that is at your Progress Meeting.

We take your future planning very seriously, and we’re eager to deliver the outcomes that you’ve agreed with your Financial Planner. We look forward to continuing to work with you as we help you turn your Plan into reality.