Most of us have experienced the advantages to working from home this year, but it’s not always what its cracked up to be as I saw with this pub club. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The washing machine was completing its final loud and violent spin moments before our zoom chat was due to take place, the doorbell went off a grand total of three times during our chat and a pot of water started burning in the kitchen shortly before we concluded our call to which I had to dash off camera to sort out. Luckily, Sam Dovey, group head of research for Ravenscroft was a breath of fresh Guernsey air to chat with writes Katie Gilfillan.

Dovey was promoted to her current role earlier this year. The Guernsey-based selector offered me a colourful analogy for her approach to fund buying. ‘Selecting a fund to go in our multi-manager range is a bit like dating. The dating part is the due diligence we do on the fund; if we’re engaged it means we will put your fund in at 2.5% in our portfolio to test out the waters. If we like it, that is the marriage stage and we will put our full weight into it.

‘Thankfully divorces are rare,’ she says. ‘In the whole time I’ve been here we’ve only had to sell two funds and that was only because they had a change in process.’

Ravenscroft was founded in 2005 and Dovey has been a part of the group since 2013. I am interested in how the company invests, as it caters to a large range of clients, varying from children to institutional mandates. ‘We invest globally and thematically. We won’t invest in hedge funds, don’t invest in anything funky like strategic bonds and we don’t like geopolitical risk – the reason being that humans can’t predict macro events. Occasionally, however, you can get lucky.’

Funky investments aside, we are certainly living through one macro event that nobody saw coming. She continues: ‘We invest thematically with irrefutable themes. One irrefutable theme is consumption. The human race has to consume to survive.’

It’s a very apt point she makes after all the aforementioned deliveries that came to my house during the call.

The island of Guernsey is only nine miles long, so it is safe to say the majority of people on the island know each other and the firms that operate within. ‘Everyone in the local area knows us, but in the UK they’ll say “Ravens…who?’’ We want to make our presence better known in the UK.’

Over the past five years, Ravenscroft broken into the UK market via a number of purchases and promotional tie-ups. You may have noticed its Spartan-style logo on the jersey of the Bristol Bears, a Premiership Rugby team. Its first acquisition in the UK was Peterborough stockbroking firm Vartan. This year, on Valentine’s day, it bought Tees Investment Management adding 900 clients to the book and most recently in August it acquired the Isle of Man branch of WH Ireland.

Despite Guernsey being a British Crown dependency, Dovey thinks ‘it’s quite handy’ being physically separated from the UK. As long-term investors, she says the team don’t listen to the ‘chatter’ from the market.

Another added benefit of island life, Dovey says, is the opportunity for sea swimming. ‘I try to get out there and swim most days. It is so good for your mental health and wellbeing. I do it all year round.’

The thought of swimming in the sea during winter chills me to my very core and Dovey jokes that no wetsuits are allowed. ‘In summer you can be out in the water for an hour, but in the winter, it’s ten minutes max or you’ll most likely get hypothermia!’

As we conclude our conversation, the born-and-bred Guern happily tells me: ‘Island life is the best life, without a shadow of a doubt.’

sam dovey

Glass Half Full

I have always been a glass half full girl and am the most bullish in the team. My belief is that even despite Covid-19 the world will keep on growing.

Glass Half Empty

Bob (Tannahill) is the glass half empty man on our team – but for me I think there is so much debt in the world now, something has to happen!

‍