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Investment Spotlight
ADVISERS: THE LIFEBLOOD OF EIS
TIME Investments Partner Simon Housden explains to Neil Martin
why advisers are so important to the business
TIME Investments doesn’t accept direct investments into
its funds, meaning that advisers are key to the success of
the business.
Simon Housden, Partner at TIME Investments and also
Sales and Marketing Director, said the fund manager is
never in competition with advisers.
“Advisers are our lifeblood; one thing that’s perhaps unique
about TIME is we only take advised business, we don’t take
business direct from clients, we’re never in competition like
that,” he said.
A team of 20 people at the company spend their time
talking to advisers, meeting them face-to-face, presenting
to them and their clients, all with the aim of up-skilling them
in terms of EIS.
For Housden, the key is rather than trying to constantly
enlarge their market share, is to help grow the overall size
of the market.
“The way to do that, is to provide education for advisers, to
make sure that they are really well informed about how EIS
works and what goes in the space,” he said. “So we spend
all our time presenting at events, conferences, seeing
advisory businesses face-to-face, just to make sure that
everyone is up to speed and do our bit to help them have
the confidence in the product.”
TIME is a part of the Alpha Real Capital group, a global
co-investing fund manager with over £1 billion of assets
under management.
TIME has a simple mission, to try and create transparent
investment opportunities that bring long-lasting peace of
mind to investors and their financial advisers by seeking
stable performance and consistent liquidity.
“Our teams regularly go above and beyond to create an
experience that we’re proud of. We don’t take any
unnecessary risks including the use of gearing and
are recognised for our exceptional customer service,”
said Housden.
Housden said that EIS is still a stable environment
post-Brexit.
“The only negatives are things like legislation risk. Also,
the problem we have is that you wait for every Budget and
see what’s announced, and you never quite know what
you’ve got to work with. There’s been a bit of a habit over
the years of tinkering with the rules which makes our life
more complicated.”
EIS Yearbook 2016/17
47