Impartiality

• We are 100% Fee Based.

• Our fees are almost always significantly lower than the normal retail commission payments.

• All commission payments legally belong to you, the client.

• You may use your commissions to reduce or extinguish our fees.  Any excess commission belongs to you.

• Did you know – some investment products pay 7% of your money as a commission payment to advisers whilst some investment products pay little or no commission to advisers.  This creates the potential for commission bias – i.e. a commission based adviser recommending a product because it has a large (e.g. 7%) commission payment attaching to it. 

• As we are 100% fee based, we completely avoid any potential commission bias.  This we believe is in our client’s best interests.

• We are 100% independently owned (which avoids any conflicts of interest). Everything we do and every decision we make is geared towards achieving the best result for our client – and not for anyone else. 

• Did you know that some firms of advisers are partly owned – and some are wholly owned – by insurance companies? 

• We have Independent Financial Advisory Status from the Financial Services Authority (the UK’s financial services watchdog).

• Did you know – in the UK, there are two main types of Financial Adviser:-

  • (1)    An Independent Financial Adviser; and

  • (2)    A Tied Financial Adviser

• An Independent Financial Adviser in law is the agent of the client and independent status means we can, and do look after all of our clients’ affairs irrespective of with whom existing investments are held.

• By contrast, a Tied Adviser is, in law, the agent of the Product Provider(s) to whom they are “tied”.

• Being tied also means the adviser cannot effectively look after all of your existing affairs.  The Tied Adviser can only recommend investments which are with his/her host Product Provider.

• From 1^st December 2004, an adviser is able to be tied to more than one Product Provider.  This is commonly called a “Multi-Tied” Adviser.  The Multi-Tied adviser is not however an independent adviser.