"Imagine delegating the investment process to an expert, leaving yourself free to focus on other things that matter to you." This was stated by Giovanni Cachia, Discretionary Portfolio Manager at BOV Wealth Management during the MHRA Quarterly Seminar.

Discretionary Portfolio Management offers a number of benefits to the client. Besides freeing their time, the investment decisions are taken by a professional manager who is attuned to the behaviour of the market, in line with the customer's risk-appetite and goals.

"The portfolio manager seeks to actively increase his client's returns rather than passively holding his assets," continued Mr Cachia. This means that a portfolio manager needs to keep up with market, economic, political and regulatory trends; this is what sets active portfolio management apart."

"It is however important for clients to be able to judge a discretionary portfolio manager's performance and the best way to do this is to gauge it against the wider market." Mr.Cachia added. "We care about a single question: did the portfolio manager "beat the market" after accounting for risk?  This is where relative performance enters the picture and why benchmarking one's portfolio is important."

"At the end of the day, the greatest added benefit of discretionary portfolio management is that the portfolio manager will reflect his client's financial situation, goals and risk attitude and injects his own financial expertise." He concluded: "Furthermore it is not just a single portfolio manager's expertise that is being reflected - it is Bank of Valletta's entire investment process which relies on both top-down and bottom-up approaches to opportunity identification."