MidWestOne Trust Services

Our Investment Philosophy

Process drives investment success

As the investment manager of your assets, we performmultiple roles. We manage individual security strategies to save cost and improve efficiencies. We select and monitor outside managers when used in your portfolio and ensure broad diversification and good due-diligence. We bring a comprehensive investment solution to the many moving parts that make up your overall port- folio so we are acting in coordination with your goals, objectives, tax planning, income and cash flow needs.

Investment management is risk management

Diversification is the cornerstone of our portfolio management process, and it drives the decisions we make. Portfolios are built with exposure to multiple asset classes, many of which have low correlations with each other, thereby reducing the overall volatility of your portfolio. We believe in comparing our returns to the appropriate benchmarks which help us manage risk and make sure we are providing good value to our clients.

Investing is a long-term endeavor

Markets go up and down and investment fads come and go. We believe that portfolio management should be built on sound investment principles using a disciplined approach and independent research. That’s why we don’t use proprietary funds, we do in-depth data analysis, and we use dynamic benchmarks to evaluate both the risk and the performance within our portfolio management strategies.

Active management can enhance returns and control risk

We believe that active management can be beneficial to reduce risk and potentially enhance return versus a passive approach. As appropriate, we emphasize active managers for asset classes where efficient management is possible.

Our investment principles stand the test of time.

Costs matter

Though we emphasize active management, we do so with an eye on expenses. Over time, the cost of delivering an investment strategy matters. These include management costs, trading costs, and even the indirect cost of taxes paid on investment transactions. We utilize institutional funds and individual securities strategies to help control investment costs. We evaluate expense ratios as part of our investment management, we don’t accept 12b1 fees, we utilize no-load institutional funds, and we build a portfolio focused on growing and protecting your assets while being cost efficient.