Ulsterbank Wealth appoints Beechwood Asset Mgmt to provide investor relations service

As a client of Ulsterbank Wealth I am gob-smacked to receive a letter from them today, telling me that they have appointed Beechwood Asset Management to provide investor relations service.

They further say in the letter;

We are conscious that within this change, your property syndicate investment requires a specialist service, on that we can no longer provide through our client services team. Therefore we have selected Beechwood Asset Management to provide you with an investor relations service, following a tendering process........

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Beechwood Asset Management is well established in the real estate management business.....

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Ulsterbank introduced clients to Property Syndicate investments over a number of years. These syndicates were promoted by a variety of real estate companies and are managed by a number of differ asset management firms. Some Ulsterbank clients deal directly with the product provider and other clients prefer to deal with us.

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This new arrangement does not affect your investment and there is no change to who provides your product or who manages your investment.

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I'm stunned that Ulster Bank are trying to walk away, I've googled "Beechwood Asset Management" and come up with a firm of accountants, not asset managers so who are they?
I bought my investment from Ulsterbank, I wasn't "introduced" and my only dealings was with Ulsterbank. They were even so helpful as to lend me the money for the investment (interest only, so far.)

Would the Central Bank/Regulator have approved this change or are Ulsterbank winging it?

Any thoughts? (I'm furious and suspicious)

Well in fairness to UB and as they have closed their wealth division down, they are handing the running of their Investments to other third parties. This might be good or equally bad. In the case of matters going pear shaped it leaves the new consultants in the firing line to answer questions etc especially as most of the team that were in the Wealth division have been deployed to other areas of the Bank or left the Bank altogether. At least this new outfit appears to have experience but on reading the profile of the main men, they have been unlucky in some of the past places they worked in previously.

I'd love to know what size Management fees these new bods are going to earn, as in the case of some of the investments the Investors might be asked for a cash call.

Mind you saying all this, the approach of UB seems somewhat better than BoI Private or AIB Private where in these two outfits, the same people that sold the products and received commissions are left dealing with the Investments and may not be so inclined to offer a true story on the Investments to the Investors in question.

OK thanks for that, good point that the new consultants may be less afraid of upsetting investors with bad news on the performance.

Does it mean the UB are no longer responsible for the investment?
What if I have a dispute, does the buck stop with UB at all times?

Thanks again.

8till8 said:

Does it mean the UB are no longer responsible for the investment?
What if I have a dispute, does the buck stop with UB at all times?

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Whilst I'm unaware of the particular investment, I would say that the UB were never responsble for the investment, regardless of its type or its sector that it is invested in.

If a dispute occurs, my own view would be to go back to the UB. They just simply can't turn their backs away from it. Regardless read the small print that came from the UB when the investment was launched.

The Bank (UB) or in fact any other Bank cannot be held responsible for market movements concerning Investments, but there has been many cases where the Buck fell directly with the Banks. This is cases has been tried and tested previously.

I just came across your post re Bedfont Lakes, we have since been told the investment is unlikely to so any return and is essentially worthless, I was wondering did you have the same response.