Who Are Cyberifa?

Cyberifa ltd has two directors-Graham Worrall and Chris Forde.

The firm's combined financial experience is 146 years. Most of us began our careers working for the providers of financial products-that is we began by working WITH financial advisers before becoming financial advisers ourselves as you will see from the following biographies. This is a good technical foundation for the cyberifa team, in terms of how financial products work and how they are used in financial planning. When the more experienced of us began our careers, so called technical knowledge of pensions legislation, investment matters, taxation and trusts was something which helped us deal with financial advisers, then the same sort of technical knowledge helped us to advise clients ourselves. In the 21st century however, legislation and taxation and product (wrapper) knowledge is not always what is meant by technical knowledge-and running client's financial affairs efficiently requires technical expertise of an additional sort... Information Technology promised a lot and delivered haltingly little to financial advisers and their clients for the past couple of decades. In the last 5 years or so however, the development of Platforms has radically improved the service we can provide. We believe that, as a team we offer clients both sorts of technical competence and that our combination of fresh clear thinking and reliable experience provides a secure basis for client care. As Platforms have developed, the price at which we are able to purchase financial products for clients has come down. The cost of the product itself or 'wrapper' -that is the cost of a Pension Plan, an ISA or an Insurance Bond 'wrapper', has now been reduced to little or nothing when we use a Platform to provide the wrapper.

Choosing the assets to buy within the ISA, or Pension Plan or Insurance Bond for clients, and monitoring and changing the asset mix with the client is a skill developed in the cyberifa team through a process assisted by internal discussion based on current perceptions and past experience, AND through use of IT research resources such as Morningstar.

Cyberifa offers a reasoned, themed, consistent approach to investing-an approach set out in our quarterly reviews. Our approach makes good use of our team's experience AND of our fresh thinking and technical knowledge to identify how we feel about markets, then to identify the type of asset which, when bought and held for clients, should allow profit to be made from the unfolding of the theme we are adopting. Our chosen means of carrying this process through is to run a stable of about 10 collective funds. The initial mix and weighting of these funds in a client portfolio will depend on the individual client's requirements and their attitude to risk. We keep the membership of the 10 fund stable under review and will suggest from time to time that clients drop a fund or funds and switch to others. These changes in our recommendations can take place as a result of a change in the theme, or, even if the theme has not changed, we may drop one fund and include an alternative one because a better fund of the same or similar type emerges. Bear in mind though please that we are not discretionary managers and any changes to a client portfolio are first of all agreed with the client.

Bear in mind too that we are selecting the 10 stable funds from an available universe of thousands of funds on the Platform. On the Nucleus Platform switches from fund to fund can be carried out cost free. Now that really is something.

As a cyberifa client you will wish to be assured that we know our stuff-that we are technically sound in all of the senses identified. But you should also be aware that ethically, we start from the right place. Though technology and legislation change, the basis of good business does not-we are good to our clients and we find that our clients tend to stay with us. There is nothing at all complicated about that.

In the following biographies you will be able to spot who offers which sorts of technical and other contributions to the cyberifa team.