Kleinwort Hambros
Who we are
Kleinwort Hambros is the private banking and wealth management division of Societe Generale in the UK, Channel Islands and Gibraltar. Combining two award-winning private banks, Kleinwort Hambros has over 200 years' experience of helping individuals, families, entrepreneurs, trusts and charities to manage their wealth.
We know how to simplify life's financial challenges and understand the importance of creating strong relationships with clients based on trust, service and expert knowledge. Providing a personal and holistic approach to wealth management from specialist teams and experienced private bankers, we offer a wide range of services, including investment management, domestic and international wealth planning, lending, fiduciary and banking services.
Our multi-lingual teams include the French, Middle East, and Russian desks who provide solutions for both domestic and non-domestic clients.
What we do
Our investment philosophy centres on three guiding principles:
- We believe asset allocation is the most important decision we make, and it should be actively managed. Essentially, we strive to get the big decisions right.
- When assets are expensive, risk is not well rewarded; when assets are cheap, it is. Indeed, valuation is a near obsessive focus for us.
- Finally, we are nothing if not prudent, and believe the pain of losing money - the ultimate definition of risk - is much worse than the fleeting joy of spurious gains.
Our VaMoS™ framework puts investment philosophy into practice. Organised around four core pillars, it provides structure to our investment decision making, through objective analysis of what can be shown to drive future investment returns:
- Valuation: invest when assets are cheap and avoid them when they are expensive.
- Momentum: participate in positive trends and avoid negative trends.
- Sentiment: buy when markets are oversold and sell when they are overbought.
- Economic climate: Adjust the level of portfolio risk, taking into consideration expectations for individual asset classes according to the different stages of the macro-economic cycle.