Neil Smith Consultancy Inc

Business Continuity- First steps

Business disruptions occur for a variety of reasons - some foreseeable and some unforeseen.

While the likelihood of any individual event may be small, the business impact of disruptions can be immense. To survive, you must protect your business against crises - not simply by taking out property and casualty insurance on capital items and human resources, but by preparing comprehensive Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) that ensure business operations are resilient, the impact on customer service is minimized, financial losses are reduced and regulatory compliance is maintained.

The biggest risks cannot be covered by insurance policies alone.

Customer loyalty, business reputation and public trust must be protected by an effective and actionable BCP that prepares for possible events and mitigates the unlikely.

Changing business circumstances and processes as well as new threat scenarios means that BCPs must also be frequently revisited and updated.

Business continuity planning is about maintaining, resuming and recovering business operations - not just the recovery of the information system.

The planning process should include:

• risk and business impact analyses;
• risk management and crisis response action plans;
• monitoring and testing of operations, regulatory compliance and recovery plans;
• awareness planning; and,
• periodic reviews and revisions.

Operations Risk and Manager Selection

When selecting a portfolio manager for your structured product or hedge fund investment it is critical that you conduct an appropriate due diligence of the manager, the systems used and the sustainability of their investment approach. It is also key once you do invest, to continue to review the manager's performance and the way they manage the risks and controls.

This can be considerably time and resource consuming. It may distract you from your real business.

Neil R Smith Consultancy can help you undertake this task.

We can provide the following services:

• Manager selection and third party / operations due diligence
• Financial Product Structure reviews
• Performance reporting verification
• Analysis of Strategic or investment style drift
• Evaluation of large asset inflow / outflow trends
• Investigations of management and staff turnover
• Reporting on Compliance and Regulatory compliance
• Evaluation of Business continuity and disaster recovery plans
• Review of technology and information resources issues
• Analysis of senior executive succession and employee back-up plans
• Reporting on Audit and taxation issues
• Recommendation on independent Directors, particularly sourced in:
  • Cayman islands
  • Bermuda
  • Channel Islands - Jersey, Guernsey.

Neil R Smith Consultancy can help you address these key risks.

Specialized Alternative Financing

Sometimes your project or business requires financing that standard sources and financial market products will not be sufficient or cannot provide.

Neil R Smith Consultancy can help you.

We have a detailed working knowledge of the alternative investments market. We understand complex sophisticated financial products. We can tailor these financing mechanisms to meet your need. We can introduce you to new and advanced financing techniques. We can introduce you to the providers of these services and products.

Some of the  Specialized Alernative Financing Products we can introduce you to include:

• Real estate Investment Trusts or REITs
• Structured Derivative Products
• Private equity funds
• Specialized Hedge Funds

We understand the design structuring and legal issues relating to these products. We can help you navigate these sometimes rocky waters. We also have the rolodex and experience in this sector of the industry to connect you with the right organzations and individuals to finalize your alternative financing.

Ethical Investing How can we help

You are interested in maximizing your investment returns AND helping society.

You realize that your returns will not be diminsihed by investing ethically.

So.

What comes next?

Neil R Smith Consulting can help. We can provide a confidential and comprehensive set of services to help you introduce SRI into your investing practices.

Our coordinated service incorporates:

• developing a screening process tailored just to your needs and social concerns to prevent unethical investments entering your portfolio;
• undertake a detailed portfolio review to identify any unethical investments you may currently have, we will not recommend divestment, all investment decisions are ultimately yours to make,
• producing a comprehensive survey highlighting potential investment opportunities that meet your social investment requirements, again we will not recommend divestment, all investment decisions are ultimately yours to make;
• and, bespoke reviews of corporate practices, social issues and geographic areas or countries riven by corruption or bad business practices, where investment would not meet your ethical standards.

Ethical Investing

Ethical Investing, Socially Responsible Investing, or Sustainable Responsible Investing (SRI)

It's all about the integration of your personal values with your investment decisions.

SRI is an approach to investing that considers both the profit potential as well as the investment’s impact on society and the environment.

Most investors are looking for the following from their Investments:

• Investments with adequate financial returns
• Investments which are secure.
• and finally Investments which are ethical.

SRI may avoid investments in industries such as gaming, tobacco, armaments or uranium mining and companies with little regard for the environment, governance, and labour and human rights. On the other hand, SRI may also actively seek out profitable 'industries of the future' that are positive for society and the environment such as renewable energy, biotechnology, water management, waste management and health care.

SRI Investors use four basic strategies to maximize financial return and attempt to maximize social good:

• Screen out Unethical Investments

• Divesting Negative Investments

• Choose Positive Investments.

• Shareholder activism

Screening excludes certain securities from investment consideration based on social and/or environmental criteria. For example, many socially responsible investors screen out all potential investments in tobacco related companies.

Divesting is the act of removing stocks from an existing portfolio based on mainly ethical, non- financial reasons.

Positive investing involves making investments in activities and companies believed to have a high and positive social impact. Positive investing activities can also target under served communities. like supporting activities designed to provide mortgage and small business credit to minority and low-income communities or AIDS vaccines to Africa.

Shareholder activism efforts attempt to positively influence corporate behavior. These efforts include initiating conversations with corporate management on issues of concern, and submitting and voting proxy resolutions. These activities are undertaken with the belief that social investors, working cooperatively, can steer management on a course that will improve financial performance over time and enhance the well being of the stockholders, customers, employees, vendors, and communities.

On line Investor Relations and Administration

We can partner with you to build shareholder value.

The Internet allows companies to reach stakeholders such as investors, the media and current and prospective employees in a timely and engaging way. It has many advantages over the standard way companies communicate with their stakeholders - through hard copy publications.

Many companies, especially small corportaes, have little time or knowledge to develop up a comprehensive and professional internet presence. Neil R Smith Consultancy can help you.

From our experiences in investor relations in major corporations and through our partners we can offer a wide range of online corporate communications services and solutions to help you take advantage of this opportunity.

Our services include corporate websites, investor websites and intranets, share price feeds and website tools, as well as document conversion, webcasting, professional and accessibility services. The websites we and our partners design and build, and the services we offer, are of the highest quality, with many of our clients winning awards and industry recognition for their online corporate communications.

Services we Can Provide

Neil R Smith Consultancy can provide:

Risk assessment
We will review your portfolio highlighting risks such as: leverage, liquidity & credit

Ethical investing strategies
We will analyze your portfolio and propose strategies to realize your ethical & social investing requirements.

Investor relations
We can recommend and help you to implement detailed investor communication strategies.

Specialized alternative financing
We will research & recommend sophisticated alternative financing products to best fit your financing requirements

Business continuity
We will analyze business continuity needs & help you to implement and test a suitable crisis recovery processes.

Manager due diligence
We will help you identify appropriate portfolio mangers and provide ongoing performance reviews.