Openwork Investment Committee - Investor Update March 2020

In this difficult time, we hope that you and your family are all well and managing through this
extraordinary and tough period. The Openwork Investment Committee met yesterday (Tuesday 24
March) and we would like to reassure you that while your investment values are likely to have fallen
in the short-term, we are confident that all processes are being followed correctly.

We discussed all the following investments, some of which you may hold:

 Omnis Funds
 Openwork Graphene Model Portfolios
 Omnis Managed Portfolio Service
 Openwork Portfolio of Funds
 Openwork Recommended Funds
 Prudential PruFund
 VCT and EIS Products

There are a number of points that we wanted to highlight to you.

 

Stay Invested

As you have seen, global equity markets fall and the value of your own investments fall as well. It is
natural that some of you will be thinking whether you should sell your investments and move to
cash or some other “safe haven”. Our strong message to you is stay invested. Focus on the
investment objective that you set with your Financial Adviser at the outset and trust the process.

History shows that as night follows day, global equity market recoveries follow global equity market
falls and it is damaging to miss out on the recovery days. The following chart shows the performance
of the FTSE All Share between 30 September 1998 and 28 February 2020 and the impact if you
missed the 10 best days. The cost of missing these 10 best days would have been nearly 3% a year
(Source: Omnis Investments).

 

We even saw this yesterday when the FTSE 100 Index had its second best day ever rising by 9.1%. It
was similar in the United States where the Dow Jones 30 rose by 11.4%. If you had moved to cash
24 hours earlier, you would have missed out on these gains.

 

Understand Your Attitude to Risk

We know that you will have discussed your Attitude to Risk and your capacity for loss
comprehensively with your Financial Adviser. We are delighted that this process appears to have
really worked during this extremely short-term volatile period.

If you are a Cautious investor, you have been protected from the extreme falls of global equity
markets. In fact, if you are invested in the Openwork Graphene C1 Cautious Model Portfolio, your
investment will have fallen by less than 1% over the last 12 months, compared to the FTSE 100 which
has fallen by over 20% (Source: FE Analytics)

Prudential PruFunds

We are aware that the Prudential PruFunds have seen downward unit price adjustments in the last
week to 10 days. Again, there is nothing untoward here and this is simply the consequence of how
the product/funds work. We note that the Expected Growth Rates have remained unchanged and
fully expect upwards unit price adjustments when global equity markets recover.

Property Funds

A number of property funds have suspended dealing as a result of the consequences of us all being
based and, for many, working from home. We have always been very specific about the issues with
liquidity with property funds and this is why they are not included in our portfolios. Furthermore,
we have only ever recommended that you have a maximum of 15% of your investment in property
funds to protect you in times like this.

VCT and EIS Products

Although high risk and not suitable for everybody, we know this is traditionally a very busy time for
VCT and EIS products, giving you the chance to get tax relief on your investment in exchange for
investing in smaller, high risk companies. We have a panel of products still available for you and your
Financial Adviser and expect some of these to remain open into the new tax year.

We understand it is an unprecedented time for all of us. Some of you may be home-working for the
first time as well as having to home-school your children. For others, you have had to cancel your
Easter holidays and are not able to leave your home.

In such times, it is important to know that your hard-earned pension savings and other investments
are being looked after. We cannot stop short-term market falls but we can reassure you that your
money is being monitored closely. We fully expect global equity markets to recover. We cannot
predict timescales but if you do not need your money now, we believe you will be rewarded for
staying invested.

We will update you again after our next meeting and in the meantime, please look after yourselves
and stay safe.

Thank you.
Mike Morrow, Paul Mitchener and Jon Baillie
Openwork Investment Committee

The value of investments and any income from them can fall as well as rise and you may not get
back the original amount invested. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future
performance and should not be relied upon