Retaining Managers: how Select retains and optimises existing portfolios

Insights

Why moving to Select is rarely an all-or-nothing decision, and how Connect, Monitor and the Investment Consultant retain and optimise externally managed assets alongside a coordinated platform view

4 mins

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The Select Experience Select Monitor Connect

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Author

Tom Wiseman

CEO

Tom is the Chief Executive Officer of Enhance Group overseeing our multi-jurisdictional Monitor and Select solutions from our Jersey headquarters.

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Trustees considering a move to Select sometimes worry about a binary choice: move all investment assets onto the platform, or stay with the existing manager. The reality is more flexible. Select is built to retain external managers alongside the platform-implemented portion of the portfolio, and to optimise both together. Connect monitors the externally managed assets. The Investment Consultant takes them into account when making platform recommendations and flagging issues at the external manager. And the trustee gets a single, coordinated investment view across both.

The false binary trustees are usually offered

Trustees evaluating a new investment governance arrangement often face an implicit choice: stay where they are, or commit fully to the new arrangement. The choice is presented as binary because the parties offering it have commercial reasons to want it that way. The trustee, in the middle, may have legitimate reasons to keep some manager relationships in place. Those reasons often have nothing to do with whether the manager is delivering acceptable performance, and everything to do with the broader circumstances of the trust or family. Select is built to handle this case rather than force it into a binary. The implemented portion of the trustee’s wealth is deployed onto the private banking platform integrated with Connect. The retained portion stays with the trustee’s existing manager. Connect monitors both. And the Investment Consultant advises on both: making platform recommendations that take account of exposures already held externally, and supporting the trustee’s ongoing dialogue with the external manager through Monitor analytics. Coordination, not consolidation, is the operating principle.

Trustees retain external managers for reasons that go beyond investment performance. A long-standing relationship may date back generations. It may hold specialist mandates that cannot easily be replicated through fund-based investing. It may include illiquid or restricted holdings that make a wholesale move impractical. Or it may sit within a structure where transition would be tax-inefficient at present. These reasons are real and, in many cases, persuasive. None is undermined by the advantages Select brings to the platform-implemented portion of the trustee’s wealth. A trustee can move new contributions onto Select while retaining existing positions with the original manager. A trustee can also establish Select for some entities within a family group while leaving others with their existing arrangement.

Connect is the tool that makes coordinated oversight possible. The platform integrates with hundreds of investment counterparties globally. It consolidates investment data from multiple managers, custodians and platforms into a single source of truth. For a Select client with retained external managers, Connect ingests the external manager’s holdings, transactions and valuations alongside the platform-implemented Select investments. The full investment picture then appears together in interactive dashboards. Quarterly Monitor reviews cover both portions of the wealth, using the same independent reporting framework and the same investment policy statement. Action points raised against the external manager are tracked through Connect alongside those from the Select investments. The fact that two manager arrangements sit behind the data is a detail, not an operational complication.

The Investment Consultant’s job is to advise the trustee on the entirety of the trustee’s wealth, not just the portion implemented on the platform. Every fund recommendation made on the platform takes the externally held exposures into account, so recommendations do not duplicate an exposure the trustee already holds elsewhere. The Investment Consultant also supports the trustee’s ongoing dialogue with the external manager. This includes framing review meetings and bringing peer-group context to performance conversations. It also includes flagging emerging issues at the external manager, such as mandate drift, fee outliers, or key-person changes, that the trustee may want to raise directly. What the Investment Consultant does not do is take over the discretionary mandate the external manager continues to operate; the trustee remains the decision-maker for both portions.

Three common configurations in practice

Phased migration: new contributions and liquid positions move to the Select platform, while specific illiquid or sentimentally significant holdings remain with the existing manager pending a longer-term review. Specialist alongside core: the bulk of public-market exposure runs on Select, while a specialist manager with a particular mandate is retained for that specific exposure. Multi-entity family group: some entities within the family group are on Select while others retain their existing relationships. The family-group fee tier still applies across all entities consulting with Enhance, and Connect still provides a consolidated view regardless of implementation.

The bridge between Monitor and Select

This is as much the article that explains how Monitor and Select work together as one about retained managers. Every Select client receives Monitor reviews and Connect access included in the single consultancy fee. Trustees who use Monitor without Select can convert any portion of their wealth to Select when the time is right, while keeping the rest under Monitor oversight. An advice-only consultancy can recommend changes to a manager arrangement, but cannot implement, monitor or evidence them. A purely platform-based manager can implement and monitor, but cannot offer regulated independent advice. Enhance is built to do all three: advise, implement, monitor. The same governance discipline applies whether an asset sits on Select or with a retained external manager.

The bottom line

Trustees moving to Select rarely face an all-or-nothing decision. Existing investment manager relationships can be retained where the trustee values them. Connect provides the data layer that gives the Investment Consultant visibility on the externally held exposures, and gives the trustee a single coordinated investment view across both. For trustees who want the benefits of Select on the portion of their wealth that fits, without the disruption of a wholesale transition, this is the configuration the model is designed for.

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