Our 9 Step Process When Giving Financial Advice

Financial services and the process of delivering financial advice is a regulated activity in the UK.  Financial firms are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with both the individual financial adviser and the firm required to be registered and authorised by the FCA.

Financial advice is not subject to the laws of Consumer Limitations meaning any advice offered has an open-ended liability for life unlike most other services that have their liability to around 6 years.  Because advisers are liable for life with ongoing FCA regulatory fees, financial ombudsman services (FOS) fees, financial services compensation scheme (FSCS) fees and most expensively, professional indemnity insurances to protect clients with any time restriction i.e., open ended.  This means the costs to run a financial adviser are not cheap and therefore, your adviser will charge you a fee.

With effect from January 2013, commissions on pensions and investment advice were banned meaning that you must be quoted a fee before you decide to use an adviser’s services.  In addition, financial advisers must be qualified to at least 1 year degree standard and working towards the equivalent of a 1^st Class Honours Degree.

Financial advice can therefore be very thorough and whilst  appearing complex, we make it easier for clients with a simple 9 Step approach.

Our 9 Stages of Financial Advice

1. Initial Consultation:  Book a free consultation using our online diary or contact us.  We will then contact you to discuss your needs and offer initial guidance at no charge.
2. Fee Quotation:  We will already have given you a verbal indication of our fees in Stage 1.  We will now send you by email our financial advice fee quote which will have 4 X pricing options: Standard Fee (face to face, paid on completion),  10% Discount (face to face, paid upfront), 15%  Discount (one face to face, paid on completion) and finally a 25% Discount for non-face to face, paid upfront.  There are two emails, Email 1 – Online Version with a 6-digit PIN code to access your fee quote and Email 2 – All documentation in PDF, so that you have a permanent record of what works were proposed, so that you can print, ready and return via our Freepost service.  If we do not hear from you, a reminder is issued after 30 days, and a final cancellation notice issued.
3. Fee Quote Accepted – (online or by post)
1. Records are updated to confirm your acceptance and receipts issued for any fees paid.
2. Identity verification documents requested.
3. Fact Find financial questionnaire issued for completion and return providing your general background and financial details.
4. ESG/Green/Socially Responsible investing questionnaire issued for completion and return.
5. Information authority letters are issued for completion and return to enable your pensions and investment companies to talk to us and release information to us.
4. Onboarding/Fact Find Follow Up Call – we will arrange another call or meeting with you to discuss your financial questionnaires, your attitude towards risk your tolerance to investment losses in additional to any additional information or special items you want to get from our financial advice.  There is little point in us giving and you paying for financial advice if we do not deliver what it is you seek and in your best interests.
5. Research Stage – we will complete our full data gathering on your existing arrangements, conduct whole of market research and compare the best solutions and actions for you to enable us to offer our advice.
1. Pension scheme trustees have up to 3 months to reply to our request and usually they do not supply/reply to all the information that we request so it may take longer.
2. In addition, many offer a 20-30 working day turnaround.
3. Our staff may also be ‘on hold’ for hours trying to get through to administration teams to get the answers to unanswered questions.
4. Many provider’s staff do not do what they say they are going to do, meaning that we are constantly chasing them to provide the information they promised.
5. We will keep you informed regularly of our progress.
6. Written Report – will prepare you’re a full written report of our findings and our advice.  Reports are extremely detailed so that you have a permanent written record of what/why/where etc on our advice to protect you.
7. Advice Report Call – we will arrange a further appointment with you to discuss your advice report and recommendations, to make sure you fully understand the advice offered, how it works and how it will be implemented and if there are any points you do not fully understand, we will explain these to you until you are clear on what our recommendations.  No action will be taken until you are happy.
8. Implement Agreed Actions – we will make applications, fund switches, tax changes, tax returns, draft Wills or any other action required to implement the advice offered.  Once actioned, we will then check to make sure pensions, investment and insurance companies have done what we have instructed them to do correctly.
9. Ongoing Advice Service Decision – we will discuss any ongoing or servicing requirements such as our Money MOT Services for you to make a decision on what sort of ongoing service (if any) you require from us.

Book a call back, contact us or get a fee quotation:

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