The Financial Advice Process

Helping you make sense of complex financial matters...

We have busy lives, so our finances often take a low priority because they are complex .There are lots of ways to go wrong without taking financial advice. Finding the right financial adviser for you can feel like taking a big leap of faith, whether you are looking to take financial advice for the first time or whether you’ve taken financial advice in the past. I understand this and give you the opportunity to get to know me before we start the financial advice process by offering you a free initial consultation.

Following your initial free consultation, I give you time to decide if you would like to take your financial advice from me. If you choose to go ahead, I will guide you through my six step process shown below; this ensures that you have a clear path to follow, and I can provide you with consistent, high quality financial advice.

1. Discovery — A meeting where I can get to know you, your views and your financial objectives.
2. Research — I assess your existing financial arrangements and possible new arrangements.
3. Design — I create a detailed Financial Plan to suit your objectives and situation.
4. Proposal — I present and explain your Financial Plan to you, giving you time to consider the options.
5. Action — I implement your Financial Plan.
6. Review — We assess your Financial Plan performance and relevance during an annual meeting.

For Complex Financial Advice, we will hold an additional meeting after my research is complete and before I design your Financial Plan. Complex Financial Advice typically includes large or multiple investments and pensions being considered for transfer.

Discovery

The Discovery meeting is all about you. To ensure I give you the most suitable advice, I really like to get to know you, your goals, your views, your existing financial position, your desired financial position, your career and your family circumstances. To make best use of our time together, I will send you some forms to complete and return in advance of the discovery meeting.

If investments, long term savings and pensions are being considered, we will also discuss the following:

• Areas to consider before investing
• Your Attitude to risk
• Your Need to take risk
• Your Capacity to take risk
• The length of time you are prepared to save for

I will take time to help you understand the following, so you feel comfortable giving me instructions regarding your pensions and investments:

• Risk Profiles
• Asset Classes
• Asset Allocation
• Diversification
• Investment Fund Types
• Stochastic Modelling

If you are new to investing or only have a little knowledge, please don’t be put off by the terms above — our meetings are always jargon free and down-to-earth!

At the end of the meeting I will give you an estimate of the time it will take to complete the advice process.

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Research

I take great care to ensure I fully understand your existing financial arrangements. Often this will involve writing to your existing policy providers so I have enough detail to assess the suitability and benefits within the plan.

For new policies I will research potential policy providers, potential products and all the benefits.

This research helps me to identify potential problems and opportunities in your current financial situation.

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Design

I will design a bespoke Financial Plan tailored to your specific requirements. This will take into account:

• All the details discussed and agreed at the Discovery Meeting
• Research results
• Tax planning efficiencies
• Cost savings

The aim of my bespoke financial plan will be to help you keep more, save more and realise more.

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Proposal

We will meet again so I can present you with my proposed Financial Plan. I will explain the financial strategies I’ve used to help you achieve your goals, needs and priorities. You will have as much time as you need to ask questions and discuss any proposed options.

It’s very important to me that you understand the proposed Financial Plan and are happy with it. If you have any concerns I will take these into account and revise my proposal to suit you. It is entirely your choice if you wish to proceed with it.

If you accept the proposal I will take you through all the relevant literature and we complete any applications required. We will agree on all the actions, responsibilities and timeframes.

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Action

Once you accept the proposal, it’s time to take action and implement your Financial Plan! I will send and verify any applications, monitor their progress and keep you up-to-date.

I’ll follow up my proposal with a detailed letter explaining the outcome of all of our meetings and how my proposal meets your needs.

When all actions have been completed, I will check they have been implemented correctly and contact you to confirm it.

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Review

It is important that we review your Financial Plan at least annually. The review will aim to ensure your plan stays on track and is still relevant following any changes in your personal circumstances.

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Simple or Complex

During your initial free consultation I will confirm whether your advice will follow the simple financial advice process or the complex financial advice process. The complex advice process has an additional meeting between the research and design stages. It is normal for complex advice to require extra hours in the research and design stages.

Simple Financial Advice typically includes new regular payment pension policies, ISA’s and protection policies. The process for Simple Advice is the six step process above.

Complex Financial Advice often includes advice on pension transfers and large or multiple investments. Because of the complexities, a further meeting is built into the above process between the Research and Design steps.

Transferring out of a Final Salary scheme is unlikely to in the best interests of most people.

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