After nearly twenty years in financial services, I’d seen too often how planning was reduced to blasé sales pitches: “here’s a pension, here’s an ISA, see you later.”
So when Emma and I established Barnaby Cecil, we knew exactly the type of service we wanted to offer.
We believed real breakthroughs come when you step back and look at life in its entirety—its stages, transitions, and uncertainties—and then design a financial plan to match.
This was the philosophy behind WealthMap, and while great planning would be at the heart of what we wanted to do, we felt that a plan needs strong investment returns to stand on.
At that point, I had a choice. I hold the requisite qualifications to manage money directly. And I have done so in the past. That would mean time spent building and running portfolios.
While I find markets interesting, that’s not what gets me excited. What I was more interested in doing was helping clients make good returns to support them to reach their life goals, turning their dreams into reality.
So we made a decision: instead of managing portfolios in-house, we would partner with a specialist investment team who would do nothing but focus on portfolios—constructing, monitoring, rebalancing, and testing them relentlessly.
At not-inconsiderable cost, we asked Timeline to take this role, and together we built the Navigate portfolios.
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All through my career as a financial planner, I’d often hear others in the industry dress up investment ideas as clever insights—“why not tilt towards emerging markets?” or “let’s seek undervalued companies.”
But over time, the evidence convinced me that the “perfect” portfolio already exists and to be effective it doesn’t outsmart the market, it trusts the market.
This idea can be demonstrated through the work of Sir Francis Galton, a mathematician from Birmingham. Over a century ago, he observed that when hundreds of people at a country fair guessed the weight of an ox, the average of their estimates was uncannily accurate—closer than nearly every individual guess. Galton called this the “wisdom of crowds.”
Investing works in a similar way. Rather than trying to beat the market by trying to pick the winners, the market relies on the collective wisdom of the crowd to produce profitable outcomes. In essence, we buy capitalism at the lowest fee possible. And capitalism, in this sense, works.
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This week, we had independent confirmation that the approach that relies on the collective wisdom of the crowd still works.
Morningstar, the US-based firm known for its rigorous analysis of investment portfolios, ranked Navigate as the number one model portfolio strategy in the UK over five years.
To reach the #1 ranking, the Navigate 100 portfolio has delivered 12.76% annualised returns before costs over the past five years—well above the long-term expected return of 7% we use in WealthMap.
This result is not just good fortune, it’s the power of disciplined, evidence-based investing compounding quietly in the background while we focus on your lives in the foreground.
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Does this achievement mean we put our feet up? Absolutely not. I continue to read, to test new ideas, and to challenge our principles “out on the veranda” every so often.
The world changes, and we must stay open-minded, but the foundation—an evidence-driven approach, powered by global markets and managed with rigour—remains sound.
Most of all, I want to thank you for trusting Emma and me to support your WealthMap plan with Navigate.
At least for now, they are the number one investment portfolio in the UK, and importantly, they continue to do what they were designed for: underpin lives well-lived.
Copy here introducing the client stories section and examples of testimonials
