Our approach to advice
We believe in giving a clear professional opinion to our customers setting out exactly how and why they should act.
While we respect customers may not always wish to follow our advice, we believe it important they be placed in position to evaluate the risks and consequences of not doing so.
Fairness to our customers means ensuring they get good value from our services and are fully aware of costs before committing to proceed.
Our charging tariffs are in intended to provide a quality service at a highly competitive rate.
We believe that basic financial products, i.e. those with the least complexity and greatest transparency, usually provide best value and control over risk.
We are therefore cautious in considering anything offering unusual guarantees, low costs, high returns, or tax advantages.
We believe that clients should only invest in products, or follow strategies, that they understand.
We do not believe financial advisers should decide for their clients, but place the client in a position to decide themselves.
To start.
We start with an informal discussion in which we get to know you and establish whether we are able to help you. This is without charge or obligation to proceed.
We offer a number of services, referred to as ‘customer propositions’, details of which are set out in our General Disclosure Document, with the fee structure being dependent upon the service you require. If more than one of our propositions is appropriate for you, we will advise you of this.
If you decide you want us to act on your behalf, we ask you to complete a formal agreement. This sets out what we will deliver and provides you with our estimate of the cost. We will collect the details needed to prepare our advice.
Once we have received all necessary information, we will prepare our advice, and provide you a formal written report setting out the following:
Our understanding of your objectives.
The information used to prepare our advice. Where we are advising on investments, we will ask you to complete a ‘risk tolerance’ questionnaire so we can establish how comfortable you are with such risks. Our report will set out the results of our assessment and explain how this has affected our recommendations.
Clear recommendations covering each decision you will need to make, together with an explanation of why this is the most appropriate course of action.
Where we are giving advice on investments, we will set out details of the strategy you should follow as well as the asset types and geographical sectors in which you should invest.
We will set out, not just the potential for future returns on your investments, but the potential for you to incur losses if the value of investments fall.
The steps you will need to take in the future to ensure our advice remains consistent with your requirements.
The providers with whom we recommend you purchase investments or other financial products. This will include an assessment of the financial strength of the organisation; cost of the product in relation to others available in the market; and the servicing history of the organisation.
The risks of either following, or not following, our advice.
The costs and charges you will be required to meet.
A list of supplementary documents to help you understand the background to our advice and place you in the best position to make an informed decision.
In preparing our advice reports, we apply an extensive ‘peer review’ procedure and other internal checks to ensure accuracy, consistency and to ensure the language used is clear and understandable. Once a report has passed these checks, we then issue it to you by post, giving you the opportunity to review and consider at your own pace.
After issuing the client advice report we will then contact you to hold another meeting to answer any queries and establish how you wish to proceed. After taking your instructions, we will then arrange for the transactions you specify to be processed.
Depending on which ‘service proposition’ you choose from us, we will then periodically review and meet with you to determine any changes in your circumstances which might impact on our previous advice. We will also review the position of you investments and forward to you any critical communications from providers with whom they have been arranged.