Investment Advice Ireland

Independent, evidence-based investment advice for individuals and families

Investing a Lump Sum: Getting It Right

If you have accumulated a significant sum, from a property sale, an inheritance, a redundancy payment, or years of careful saving, you face a decision that most people find genuinely difficult. You know the money needs to work harder than it does sitting in a deposit account, but you’re uncertain about where to invest, who to trust, and whether now is the right time.

These are entirely rational concerns. And they deserve a better answer than a brochure and a product recommendation.

At Highfield Financial Planning we work with clients who have €100,000 or more to invest. We provide independent, evidence-based investment advice, not product sales, and we will always show you our reasoning before you make any decision.

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Why Most Investors Underperform

Research consistently shows that most investors do not achieve even the long-term market return. The reason is rarely a bad product, it is behaviour. When markets fall, investors panic and sell. When markets rise, they pile back in too late. This pattern, known as the behaviour gap, silently erodes returns year after year.

Vanguard, one of the world’s largest investment managers, has quantified the value a good adviser adds specifically through behavioural coaching at approximately 1.5% per annum. Over a ten or fifteen year investment horizon, that single factor compounds into a very significant difference in outcome.

Part of our job, arguably the most important part, is to help you stay the course when your instincts are telling you to do something. That is not a soft benefit. It has a measurable value.

Our Investment Approach

We use evidence-based investing as the foundation of every investment recommendation we make. Rather than attempting to predict which stocks or sectors will outperform, a strategy the evidence shows consistently fails over time, we build portfolios around the long-term return of global markets, using low-cost, well-diversified funds.

This approach has three advantages for you as a client. First, it removes the guesswork that makes investing unnecessarily stressful. Second, it removes the conflict of interest that exists when an adviser is incentivised to recommend one product over another, our recommendations are driven by evidence, not by what generates the highest commission. Third, it is transparent, you will always understand exactly what you own and why you own it.

We do not recommend products we cannot explain clearly. If an investment cannot be justified by evidence, we will not recommend it.

What Does the Process Look Like?

Before we make any recommendation we need to understand your full financial picture, not just the lump sum itself. We will discuss your other assets and income, your investment time horizon, your attitude to risk and equally your capacity for risk (these are not the same thing), and what you ultimately want this money to achieve.

From that we build an investment strategy specific to you. This is not a generic risk profile questionnaire with a model portfolio attached. It is a genuine plan that connects your investment to your life objectives and that we can both refer back to when markets are doing something uncomfortable.

Three Things to Consider Before You Invest

1. Time horizon is everything The single biggest determinant of the right investment strategy is how long you can leave the money invested. A lump sum you might need in five years time requires a completely different approach to one you won’t touch for fifteen. We will never recommend an investment without first establishing this clearly.
2. Diversification is not just owning different funds Many people believe they are diversified because they hold several funds. But if those funds all move in the same direction at the same time the diversification is illusory. Genuine diversification means exposure across different asset classes, geographies and company sizes in proportions that reflect your specific objectives.
3. The cost of waiting is real Trying to time the market, waiting for the right moment to invest, has a cost that is easy to underestimate. History shows that missing even a small number of the best trading days in any given year dramatically reduces long-term returns. We can show you the data on this. For most clients with a long time horizon, a well-structured investment made today will outperform the same investment made after six months of waiting for certainty that never arrives.

Why Choose Highfield Financial Planning?

The principal of the firm Eoghan Gavigan is a Certified Financial Planner with over 29 years’ experience in banking and financial services. The CFP designation is the world’s most respected financial planning qualification and is held by fewer than 1,000 advisers in Ireland. It requires demonstrated competence across investment planning, tax, retirement, and estate planning, not just product knowledge.

Highfield holds agencies with all major Irish life companies and the Davy and Conexim investment platforms, which means our recommendations are genuinely independent. We are not tied to any product provider and we have no incentive to recommend one investment over another except that it is the right choice for you.

We focus on clients across Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow but we can work with clients anywhere in Ireland.

Read our post about choosing an adviser here.

We work with clients who have investable assets of €100,000 or more. If you would like to discuss your investment options call us on 01 546 1100 or book a no-obligation Zoom call here.