Whilst this quarter has been another very busy period at Enhance, staff and client holidays provide a natural opportunity to take stock before hurtling into Q4 at full tilt. I am a big fan of Ray Dalio and keep a copy of Principles on the desk in my study for short-form inspiration and guidance – it has been well read this summer. What I generally take away from this book is the importance of learning, particularly from mistakes made and challenges faced, in the pursuit of constant progress. Principle 1.7, which is a ‘Life Principle’ and quoted at the header of this Business Update, encapsulates this sentiment succinctly and is an evolutionary mantra that we try to follow at Enhance. We are determined to be the very best investment oversight partner to fiduciaries, whether through investment monitoring or advice or both, and we can only achieve this if we constantly scrutinise our services and iterate based on client feedback. Running towards challenges (Pain) and developing solutions to overcome them (Reflection) will exponentially increase the likelihood of successful outcomes for our clients and business (Progress).

Notwithstanding the disruption of school holidays, in Q3 we have made progress in a number of important areas. I have spoken before about our Project Management Office (PMO) and how this has revolutionised the onboarding of global fiduciary businesses onto our Mosaic platform. I’m pleased to report that, through a process of client feedback and investment, we now offer an onboarding project plan for our Monitoring service that can be delivered at scale within a 12-week timeframe. We are fortunate to be onboarding some of the largest, multi-jurisdictional fiduciary businesses at present and have curated a managed project plan that considerably reduces the operational burden of provider change for new clients. Relationships are often made or broken by first impressions and so we have invested heavily in making sure the first interactions that our clients have with Enhance are well structured and productive.  

I have also previously highlighted our progress in the area of data analytics and automation, but not waxed lyrical about our Report Delivery Team led by Natasha Gates. Natasha manages a team of qualified Investment Analysts who review the analytics generated by our Mosaic platform for every portfolio we monitor (now c5,000), ensuring the accuracy of system-generated output and providing relevant commentary and action points for our fiduciary clients to take forward with their investment managers. We purposefully include this layer of human expertise into our investment monitoring process as we consider ourselves to be providing investment reviews and not simply quantitative investment reports. Having an Investment Analyst work on every client account each quarter means that our ability to quickly process investment reviews is constrained, but we acknowledge the importance of timely information and so have made three changes to drive progress in this area:

• Organisation: The Report Delivery Team has been transitioned into an operational function, working as part of the same broader Operations Team that delivers investment data and software development for our Mosaic platform. This will ensure seamless interactions between all key Enhance personnel involved in the production of our EMAPs under our COO Justin Simpson, who will have ultimate end-to-end accountability for report delivery to our global client base.
  
  
• People: Following the hire of senior investment professional Colin Guillard in H1, Jamie Simpson joined us as an Investment Analyst in September. Jamie is a Victoria College alumni and qualified as a Chartered Accountant at a ‘Big 4’ firm before deciding to pivot into an investment career. Colin and Jamie join other high quality investment professionals on Natasha’s team who each have a minimum of 10 years' industry experience.
  
  
• Technology: The first wave of development of our Mandate Compliance functionality is now live, which increases the personalisation and complexity of Mosaic’s system-generated output. In turn, this provides our Investment Analysts with additional review writing capacity whilst also (and more importantly) giving them more time to scrutinise what they are reviewing to ensure all bases are covered in commentaries and action points.

Moving onto our Advisory Team, which is responsible for delivering our Portfolio and Consultancy services, we have also made great strides by partnering with specialist due diligence software provider Dasseti. Dasseti’s software enables us to exponentially increase our manager research coverage and provides a much less administratively onerous mechanism for investment managers to complete our initial due diligence requirements. All manager research undertaken by Enhance is funded by the fee revenue we generate from our independent advice to clients rather than being subsidised in any way by the investment management community. To be truly whole of market and open architecture in our research approach, we need to operate efficiently to achieve optimum utility for our efforts. The Dasseti platform will play a key role in Enhance’s ability to cover a broader universe of investment options and therefore ensure we offer best-of-breed advice to our clients. A good outcome for clients, investment managers and Enhance.

As ever, we have travelled far and wide this quarter to service our global client base. Members of the team have been on the ground in the UK, Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Switzerland and Spain, off the back of trips earlier in the year to Hong Kong, Singapore, Grand Cayman, Bermuda and Bahamas. I always feel incredibly proud and humbled by Enhance's geographical reach and the willingness of our Relationship Managers and Investment Consultants to travel far and wide to service our clients. The offshore community is a surprisingly small one, despite the different jurisdictions being located all over the globe, which is testament to the international mobility of the professionals that populate it. There are nuances in each jurisdiction, but fundamentally good investment oversight looks similar wherever clients and their fiduciaries are located and so we deliver the same message and services everywhere we go.

In the quarter ahead, we look forward to sponsoring the TrustQuay Future Focus Forum in London where we will be formally unveiled as their Eco-System Partner for investment monitoring. This integration has been several years in the making and will considerably improve the data and workflow exchange between NavOne and Mosaic, driving operational efficiency and increased transparency for the fiduciary businesses that adopt the service. This is the first stage of a broader integration plan that includes accounting and client portal aspects that we expect to deliver in 2024 and 2025. If this is something that interests you, please contact your Enhance Relationship Manager or TrustQuay Account Manager for a demonstration. We are also open to integrating with other relevant third party platforms that deliver services to the fiduciary community as we firmly believe in delivering our services in the most flexible, efficient and easy way possible to our clients. This might be via another platform, or by including output from another platform in Mosaic to provide a consolidated view and functionality.

Q4 is always a busy quarter and we expect this to be the case again in 2023. Our team will be travelling far and wide again to see clients and prospects, with a particular focus on existing client service in the Crown Dependencies. We will also be very active on Jersey as our GIVES volunteering initiatives are rolled out at Jersey Zoo and other locations, along with showing our support to the local athletes we sponsor: Nathan Rogers (JFRC) and Laura Devine (Island Games). We are a small firm but aim to be one with a large reach and big heart and seem to be trending in the right direction on both fronts.

Progress indeed.

Onwards,
Tom