“Sometimes you will never know the value of something, until it becomes a memory.” - Dr Seuss

Our focus in a busy Q3 2021 has been twofold; establishing a ‘new normal’ for Enhance as the world continues to emerge from the grip of Covid19, and getting out to see our professional connections and clients in Jersey and further afield for the first time in 18 months. Therefore, the title ‘Take off’ for this business update seems apt from both a literal and metaphorical perspective, particularly as many of our team have also finally been able to enjoy restorative family holidays off island.

The pandemic has taught us many things but perhaps, above all else, we now truly appreciate the importance of in-person interactions. Human beings are sociable creatures and the isolation we have all felt to varying extents over the last year or so has negatively impacted many of us in lots of different ways. At Enhance, remote working and ‘Zoom fatigue’ has been palpable for some time and so we have grasped the returning opportunity for responsible business networking and travel with both hands.

While domestically focused, multiple members of the team have enjoyed meetings and events in Jersey, Guernsey and London in Q3 with plans to repeat and extend to the Isle of Man before the end of the year. Reconnecting with people has been a genuine joy and we are grateful for being so warmly received by professional connections and clients alike and to organisations such as Jersey Finance and Private Client Dining Club for taking a leap of faith and organising industry events again.

A particular highlight of the quarter was an opportunity afforded to us by the Association of Jersey Charities to present to their members on investment governance. As a CSR initiative, we have offered free investment monitoring to Jersey registered charities for a 12 month period to allow trustees to experience the benefit of independent oversight at a time when such a service may otherwise be unaffordable. The response we have received to this initiative has been very positive.

Another highlight has been adding a number of talented people to our team and being able to welcome them all to the business face-to-face. Enhance has been fortunate enough to be able to hire multiple people since the advent of the pandemic but many have had to join our ranks during a period of lockdown. Our newest crop however, which includes a recent business management graduate and a research analyst with investment banking experience, were pleased to join their new teammates in the office.

The rollout of our Client Portal to our fiduciary clients continues at pace with permissioned users increasing every week. More upgrades are slated for the portal in October to further ‘enhance’ the digital experience we now offer as standard and without additional cost to all of the intermediaries we work with. A publication will follow in the weeks ahead showcasing new portal features and the team will be very happy to demonstrate the platform to you should you be interested to learn more.

Next quarter we intend to focus our attentions on building more data integrations with the investment management community. In this area we have appointed a new Automation Manager to head up a specialist unit within our Operations team and spearhead our efforts here. Enhance makes it very easy for investment providers to deliver valuation and transaction data into our Mosaic platform and will be openly grading the structure, quality and timeliness of data we receive in future.

Good data is fundamental to all of the services that Enhance provides and we rely on the investment providers that we and/or our clients employ to work with us for our mutual clients’ benefit. Our firm belief is that fiduciaries will follow Enhance’s lead and begin to select investment providers based on their ability to integrate with relevant third party software given the operational and management information benefits this delivers. We hope the investment management community takes note.

As we head into winter we are hopeful that any ‘third wave’ that may materialise will be quelled by the vaccination programme and not result in another raft of restrictions. We have so enjoyed the freedom to meet people again in person and have gained a renewed sense of the importance of client relationships. International travel will follow our domestic itinerary as soon as practicable, so I hope to see many of you reading this update on my travels in the weeks and months ahead.