'I hosted a virtual tea party for 35 clients': Communicating during the crisis

Spalding, of Oxfordshire IFA Expert Wealth Management, has more than 30 years experience in the sector and hosted a virtual afternoon tea for 35 client families around the UK on Tuesday (7 April).

The firm's assets under management decreased from £100m to £85m since the coronavirus outbreak, but Spalding said it was important for clients to realise such market dips were factored into their financial plans.

"We try and concentrate on educational things for our clients, because we just feel that that's of value, to help them understand a bit more about the investment piece. I like to think we are able to walk them back from the ledge - in portfolio terms stand between them and a big mistake that their portfolio will unlikely ever recover from," he said.

Spalding added: "What we say to clients is… we stress test all the plans to make sure we've expected this to happen at some point, both in terms of the financial planning aspect of the cash flow, forecasting and in terms of the portfolio construction."

Many clients asked Expert Wealth whether they should be doing anything differently with their money during this market crash, for example moving it into more typical safe haven asset classes, such as gold and bonds.

Spalding said it was important to differentiate the performance of portfolios as opposed to local markets during this crisis and deter clients from focusing too heavily on mass media headlines.

He explained: "Clients are scared, they see the stuff on the news and people anchor to that mentally - the BBC is always quoting the FTSE100 - it's up 34% or it's down 5% in a day and people anchor to that and that isn't reality. For them in terms of how their diversified portfolios have behaved."

Spalding said while he has never experienced a global pandemic before, the impacts on the market were similar to the global financial crisis.

"I've experienced the 1987 crash and everything since then. So, you know, I suppose I've seen it all before. The causes are always different - terrorist attacks, financial crisis of one sort or another - but the outcome is the same.

"Our role is very much to help clients cope with the uncertainty that results from these events. Is this better or worse than the financial crisis of 0-09? No, it's just the same stuff - terrifying when you're doing it but you get through it. We've been ringing our clients talking to them throughout this."

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