As we head into the new financial year, I wanted to share with you an update on our business and what you can look forward to in the year ahead.
It’s a busy time, and I expect many of you will be catching up with your advisers for your end of year review. This process should allow you to see the benefits of having a diversified portfolio in an ongoing uncertain environment.
As you know, our focus has consistently been to offer our clients top-tier investment opportunities from across the globe. We recently passed $30 billion in assets under advice in Australia, bolstered by our fastest period of growth in new clients since we started this business. This growth gives us the scale to access more of these types of investment opportunities and at lower prices that will benefit you.
But while we have grown a lot, we still remain, and will always remain, intensely focused on maintaining deep personal relationships with our clients and ensuring we understand the nuances of you and your family circumstances so we can serve you best. This has always been a guiding principle of our business.
One of the global investment themes we have been watching closely in recent years is the transition of capital from public to private markets. Fewer companies are choosing to list on public exchanges, and more are also looking for sources of borrowing other than from banks. Private capital continues to represent an attractive alternative for these companies, and also terrific investment opportunities for our clients. Our company is seeing increasingly more private market opportunities in infrastructure and private credit along with other less well-known asset classes. For these reasons, we are even more passionate about finding the best investment managers and the best opportunities in this space for you.
I hope you would have seen some of our recent announcements in this area, like the PG3 Longreach Alternatives Strategy, which invests in unique and uncorrelated strategies such as music or healthcare royalties, litigation finance and insurance finance. This, like many of our investments, is available exclusively to clients of LGT Crestone.
Or the KKR Global Private Credit Fund which provides diversification within your private markets allocation through truly global exposure to credit opportunities with one of the largest credit platforms in the world. As a cornerstone investor in this fund, LGT Crestone clients will benefit from preferential pricing.
Importantly, for both of these new opportunities, our Chief Investment Office has spent time localising these global investments specifically for an Australian HNW audience, taking into account local currency hedging for example.
Another global theme we are closely watching is sustainable investing.
We continue to bring new thoughts and insights around sustainable investing, leveraging LGT’s recognised expertise and relationships in this area, covering topics including the energy transition, climate legislated policies, renewables, carbon credits and critical minerals.
And we have access to better ESG reporting for clients where that is of particular interest to provide improved visibility of how ESG risks and opportunities impact your investments. If you are interested, please reach out to your adviser – we are looking at how we can roll this out to all clients in the future through our normal reporting processes.
We will continue to prioritise this area – which represents compelling investment opportunities for our clients and considers environmental risks like climate change and how they affect portfolios. It is also a key focus for the LGT Group and its owners the Princely Family and we are considering innovative ways for clients to reduce the carbon footprint of their investment portfolios while still delivering great returns.
This year we have been able to demonstrate to our clients some of the important benefits of being part of LGT. After launching Lombard Lending in 2022, we have now expanded our credit offering to include mortgages. This gives our clients the ability to leverage the equity in their properties to provide liquidity when needed and to further diversify their investment portfolios.
With so much volatility in currency markets we also launched FX forwards, helping you manage your currency risk.
As a firm that is intensely focused on putting our clients first, I’m pleased to share that we have received outstanding results from our recent client surveys. Client satisfaction is an impressive 83%, which is up 6% from last year, and a full 10% above the industry average.
A big thank you to all of you who have provided your feedback. Please know that we appreciate the time it takes to complete these surveys. Our executive team closely review this research, and we use it to prioritise enhancements to our service and offering, reflecting our commitment to being the leading private wealth firm in Australia.
Finally, I’d like to take the opportunity to, once again, thank you for your business. We feel privileged for the role we play in helping you grow and protect your wealth for generations to come and thank you for your continued trust and support in our business.
