Questions
Straight answers
Including the ones where the answer is no. If something here is unclear or does not match what you have been told, say so.
- Who can become a client?
- Individuals, families, business owners and companies. There is no hard minimum to start a conversation, though the fee schedule has a minimum annual fee of USD 1,000 on held-away arrangements, and the service is built for portfolios somewhere between a few hundred thousand and a few million dollars.
- Can I see my portfolio in real time?
- No, and it is worth being precise about this. The client portal shows your holdings, your current allocation against its target, your net worth over time, your risk score, documents and tasks. It is updated when positions and valuations are updated — it is not a live trading screen and it does not show order status. For live balances you log in to your own account at Interactive Brokers directly, which you can do at any time because the account is in your name.
- Can you connect my Tanzanian bank account?
- No. The portal’s account-linking uses an aggregation provider that supports no Tanzanian bank — CRDB, NMB, Standard Chartered, Stanbic, Absa, Exim and Equity were all checked and none is available. Tanzanian accounts and assets are entered and maintained by hand, which means they are as current as the last time they were updated rather than live.
- What currency will I see?
- US dollars, for everything, including Tanzanian assets. The planning system has no currency field at all, so a shilling figure is a conversion at a dated rate maintained outside it. A shilling return and a dollar return over the same period will differ by whatever the exchange rate did.
- How are your fees structured?
- By service model and portfolio size, and the whole schedule is published. Execution runs 1.90% to 2.20% a year, Advisory 2.30% to 2.80%, and Discretionary 2.50% to 3.20%, with a 25% performance fee over a hurdle on discretionary mandates only. Third-party costs — brokerage, custody, FX spreads, taxes and platform fees — are separate and paid directly to whoever charges them.
- Who holds my money?
- Interactive Brokers, in an account opened in your name. Hament Advisory never holds client assets or client money and cannot move cash to any account that is not yours. If you stopped working with the firm tomorrow, the account would still be yours and you would still be able to log in to it.
- Are there case studies I can read?
- Yes. Anonymised case studies are published on this site and describe what the situation was and what was done about it. They deliberately carry no performance figures, because a percentage without a full track record beside it is not evidence of anything.
- Does planning cover Tanzanian tax?
- Not inside the planning software. The available systems model United States tax rules, and running a Tanzanian household through one means switching the US assumptions off rather than substituting local ones. Every figure in a plan is therefore pre-tax, and tax work is handled separately.
- How do I book an introduction?
- Through the contact form on this site, or by email or telephone. An introduction is a conversation about your situation and whether the firm is a sensible fit. There is nothing to sign and no cost.
Nothing on this page is personal advice. Portfolios are reported in US dollars and the value of investments can fall as well as rise — see the risk disclosure at the foot of every page, and the regulatory disclosures.