THE ADVICE PROCESS

At this meeting we will meet with you and explain how we work and what we charge. We can get a brief understanding of your aims and goals and explain how we can help you. We will also:

• Give you a business card
• Confirm our status as independent wealth consultants
• Discuss how we are paid for our services, the scope of advice you require
• Provide you with our Client Agreement and Service Proposition document
• Ask you to sign our Fee and Client Agreement
• Ask that letters of authority are signed for any existing arrangements you have
• Ask for identification and proof of address
• Assess your attitude to, and understanding of all aspects of investment risk

At this meeting we will explore your finances and goals in greater detail and allow for a full understanding of what you are trying to achieve. We will also:

• Assess your current position, needs and objectives by completing a Fact-find

If appointed to undertake work on your behalf, we will begin our analysis and review work. In most cases there will be significant amount of work to do between the first meeting and the subsequent meeting(s) where we will present our recommendations. We will also:

• Gather information about your existing financial arrangements and full personal circumstances
• Gain an understanding of your investment knowledge and attitude and tolerance towards investment risk
• Review existing investments, pensions and protection plans
• Assess protection needs for your family or business
• Propose an asset allocation model that matches your risk profile and the subsequent assessment and suitability of any existing holdings
• Construct reports which compare variations in performance, volatility and charges of existing plans against any new proposed plans.
• Prepare our proposals for you
• Arrange a subsequent meeting to explain and discuss our proposals in detail

At this meeting, we will:

• Confirm the details we obtained at the earlier meetings remain correct
• Confirm the objectives we discussed at the earlier meetings remain appropriate
• Explain any financial planning reports we have prepared for you
• Reveal the analysis we have carried out
• Advise how we arrived at the proposals we have made
• If appropriate, propose a specific product provider and investment product consistent with your attitude to investment risk and objectives
• Disclose all of the terms and conditions applicable to our proposals, including all costs, benefits and risk
• Help you to complete any applications necessary to implement proposals
• Confirm any cancellation periods

We will follow up our proposals with a suitability report confirming our proposals, why we have made them and how they will meet your objectives.

Following our financial review, analysis and proposals we will establish whether you wish to proceed with our proposals.

Should you instruct us to proceed with any of our proposals we will act for you in the following ways:

• Implement the proposed investment on your behalf
• Handle all fund and policy administration on your behalf
• Provide regular updates to keep you informed of progress
• Ensure all your documents are issued in line with your expectations
• Provide confirmation of all actions taken on your behalf in writing

We will agree the most appropriate level of ongoing service with you and the frequency of future review meetings.