TERMS OF BUSINESS

Commencement date

These terms of business come into effect on the date you receive them from us.

How we act for you

We can act for you if you live in the UK. There may be restrictions on how we can advise you if any of the following apply:

  • You don’t live in the UK
  • You are currently staying in the UK, but normally live abroad/li>
  • You are currently staying in the UK and plan to move abroad or return to another country/li>

Please ask us for details if you think this may apply to you.

The FCA requires us to classify our clients as either ‘retail’ (personal) or ‘professional’ (business). We classify all our customers as ‘retail’ so that you get the highest level of consumer protection and in some cases, access to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

We will provide our services to you using reasonable care and skill. There may be circumstances where you ask us to provide specialist advice, which we are not allowed to give. We may, however refer you to someone who can advise you in areas we cannot. They may pay us a fee or some other benefit for us introducing you to them as a customer; if this happens, we will tell you in writing.

You should receive a separate agreement from them explaining what services they will provide to you; they may be other financial advisers, solicitors or accountants. Any persons to whom we refer you to will take responsibility for the advice they give to you.

We can’t give you legal advice, but we will point out and explain to you what the payments terms, exit charges, exclusions and other key terms are for any product you buy using our services.

We will communicate with you orally and in writing. We prefer our clients to give us instructions in writing to avoid possible disputes. If we accept oral instructions from you, we will confirm them in writing to you. Any advice we give you will normally be in writing, but if given orally, we will record it on our files.

We may give you advice about policies or mortgage products, which you may (for a short period) be able to cancel. We will advise you if you have a right to cancel any policy or mortgage product on which we have advised you.

Conflicts of interest

Occasionally, we or one of our customers might have some type of interest in business that we are carrying out for you. This is called a ‘conflict of interest’. If and when we become aware of a conflict of interest, we will tell you before we carry out any business for you and get your consent before we continue advising you. On occasion we may have to cease acting for you, but we will help you find advice from elsewhere, if you want us to.

Indirect benefits

We may receive non-monetary benefits from product providers. We will tell you before the transaction if we will receive some form of benefit that is above the level we have set as ‘reasonable’.

How we charge you for our services

Full descriptions of the payments we charge for our services are included in the initial disclosure document and Services and Payment Agreement which we will or have issued to you.

If we charge you fees, we may increase our rates in the future. We will not do so unreasonably. Settlement of our invoices is due within 10 days and we reserve the right to charge reasonable interest on overdue payments. Interest will be chargeable on a daily basis. We reserve the right to discontinue work on all current matters if any bill is not settled promptly.

We may also charge you for any disbursements we have agreed to pay on your behalf. We will notify you of these in writing, if they apply.

Client money

We never hold client money.

  • ‘Client money’ is money that we receive and hold on your behalf. This can be in any currency, cash, a cheque or money in a bank account

You must not:

  • Make a cheque payable to us (unless it is for payment of fees due to us); or
  • Give us a blank cheque; or
  • Give us cash (unless it is for payment of fees due to us).

The following is not client money:

  • Crossed cheques made payable to someone else, which you give to us to forward to them on your behalf;
  • A cheque made payable to us as payment for our services to you. If we have agreed to be paid fees for our services, we may ask for the non-refundable portion of it ahead of delivering the service to you.

If you are uncertain about any of the above, please ask us.

General Data Protection Regulation

We have issued you with a Customer Data Privacy Notice setting out how and why we collect and use data about you. You have legal rights under data protection regulation in relation to your personal data; these are set out in our Customer Data Privacy Notice.

Communications

If we need to contact you, we can either write to you or phone you. Please let us know which you prefer and if you want us to email or fax you. If you verbally ask us to do something for you, we will confirm this to you in writing to ensure we have understood your instructions correctly. If we give you advice we will normally confirm it to you in writing.

Provision of information by you

We seek to ensure that any personal information we hold about you should remain accurate and up to date; as this could affect the advice we give you. Therefore, please let us know if there are any significant changes to your personal details, when they occur.

If we ask you to fill out any forms or documents, you must do this promptly, accurately and honestly. You may be committing a criminal offence by completing a form with information that is not accurate or truthful. We will not be liable to you if you suffer financially because you have not completed a form or document truthfully or accurately. As and when requested you must provide instructions to us in a timely and clear manner during the course of your work.

When we first meet, we will agree the services we will provide to you. If we agree to provide you with ongoing reviews, we will regularly check that the information we hold on you is correct. You must tell us if we have got anything wrong.

Ending this agreement

We may decide to stop acting for you at any time; if we do so we will write to you to confirm this. You can ask us to stop acting for you at any time, but you must do so in writing. We will keep a copy of this agreement on our files so that we have a copy of the terms on which we acted for you. Notices given by you under this agreement must be sent in writing by post. Notices will be treated as having been received by us on the second business day after you posted the notice to us.

We will have no authority to act for you after this agreement has ended. If the agreement is ended while we are providing services to you, we will finish providing the agreed services unless you ask us not to. You will have to pay any outstanding fees for our services even if this agreement has ended. Any fees outstanding at the date of termination will be due within 10 days of the termination date.

Law

These terms of business will be interpreted and construed in accordance with English law and is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts, except if your address is in Scotland, when the courts of Scotland shall have non-exclusive jurisdiction.