Skip to main content

Helping you achieve your financial goals with greater confidence and clarity.

We blend the precision of evidence-based investing with the expertise of top-tier Discretionary Investment Managers (DIMs).

Our approach is rooted in a firm belief in data-driven decisions, aiming to optimise your investment outcomes through a blend of empirical research and strategic asset management.

View our investment principles
Evidence-based Investing

Empowering your wealth with evidence-based strategies

Betterment Wealth offers centralised investment propositions managed by external Discretionary Investment Managers (DIM) whose services have been carefully selected to match Betterment’s investment principles.

One of Betterment’s main investment principles is to have an evidence-based approach. Evidence-based investing is an approach to investing that relies on rigorous empirical research and analysis rather than intuition, opinions, or emotions. Evidence-based investing aims to identify the factors that drive long-term returns, such as asset allocation, diversification, risk management, and cost efficiency.

Evidence-based investing also seeks to avoid the common behavioural biases that can lead to suboptimal decisions, such as overconfidence, confirmation bias, loss aversion, and recency bias. By following a systematic and disciplined process, investors can achieve their financial goals with greater confidence and clarity.
Investment Factors

The power of factor-based investment decisions

A factor-based investment strategy will tilt a portfolio towards or away from specific factors, seeking to harness favourable characteristics to generate additional return or reduce risk compared with the broader market.

Factors are a set of properties common to a broad set of securities, and a factor-based strategy will typically approach these systematically and in a rules-based manner.

For a factor to be considered, it must be:
  • Persistent – it works across long periods and different economic regions.
  • Pervasive – it works across countries, regions, sectors and asset classes.
  • Robust – it works for various factor definitions and survives rigorous testing.
  • Investable – it works on paper and after considering implementation issues like trading costs.
  • Intuitive – logical risk-based or behavioural-based explanations exist for its premium and why it should continue to exist.
  • Although the case can be made for a broader range of different factors, academics and practitioners have broadly coalesced around the following set of five widely accepted factors:
    • Value – securities with lower prices relative to their fundamental value;

    • Size – securities with lower market capitalisation;

    • Momentum – securities that have outperformed in recent periods;
    • Minimum Volatility – securities that demonstrate lower volatility;
    • Quality – securities that demonstrate higher profitability and resilience.
    When observed over the long term, academic research indicates that each factor delivers a premium to the broader market.
Sustainable Investing

Embracing ESG Principles

ESG investing means considering Environmental, Social and Governance factors when making investment decisions. This approach has seen rapid popularity growth in recent years as regulators focus on sustainability and consumers demand responsible behaviour from corporations.

The CFA Institute lays out the considerations widely accepted by financial services as:

  • Environmental

    Conservation of the world
    • Climate change and carbon emissions
    • Air and water pollution
    • Biodiversity
    • Deforestation
    • Energy efficiency
    • Waste management
    • Water scarcity

  • Social

    Consideration of people and relationships
    • Customer satisfaction
    • Data protection and privacy
    • Gender and diversity
    • Employee engagement
    • Community relations
    • Human rights
    • Labour standards

  • Governance

    Standards for running a company
    • Board composition
    • Audit committee structure
    • Bribery and corruption
    • Executive compensation
    • Lobbying
    • Political contributions
    • Whistleblower schemes

Betterment Wealth offers specific portfolios that consider ESG factors. Please speak to us if you want to learn more about ESG investing.

Speak to an adviser

A better life starts one step at a time. Take the first step today.

Call us on 0800 840 840 or get started below.

Get started

Sign up for our newsletter

Join the Betterment Wealth community by signing up for our newsletter. Receive insights and updates right to your inbox.


    We care about your data in our privacy policy.