Financial Planning Step 1 – The Initial Consultation

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The initial consultation is a chance for you to assess our business and your adviser. In addition, it is an opportunity for your adviser to help assess whether our services will be of benefit to you.


What can be achieved during the first interview?

This is a chance for you and your adviser to get to know each other. Working together, you can establish your personal circumstances, goals and objectives for financial planning as well as priorities for achieving your goals.

Through your planner, you will be able to discuss the specifics and terms of reference for the engagement of our services – if appropriate, as well as assessing the suitability of an ongoing Advice & Service package.


 What cannot be achieved during the first interview?

Most importantly, your adviser cannot provide specific personal advice during this interview. They may be able to make broad general observations of your position or relative impacts for overall scenarios but they will not have had time to digest your overall financial position nor would they be able to complete sufficient research to ensure that any advice would be appropriate to you. This is the reason that the first interview is mostly about clarifying where you are now, what you want to achieve, and where our advisers and services could help.


 If you choose to engage our services

If we both agree that work should continue then the next steps are…

  • Your adviser will clarify the appropriate background information required to complete the agreed advice or administrative task.
  • You will be asked to sign a letter of engagement, setting out the services you are seeking and the associated fees.
  • Your adviser will discuss and ask for you to sign confirmation of privacy , identity and marketing benchmarks.
  • Your adviser will help complete a Personal Financial Profile. This document will contain:
    • A snapshot of your personal and current financial position,
    • A record of your financial goals and desires,
    • A series of questions leading to a discussion to help identify your Investment Risk Profile, if appropriate,
  • A time frame will be set for completion of this work.
  • An invoice will be prepared for the cost of collating your financial information to a level sufficient for the provision of the advice you require.

Next steps

Personal financial advice is provided in the form of a written Statement of Advice. The statement of advice will confirm your position, goals and attitudes to risk and different strategies, as well as setting out the specific advice and recommendations that flow from that position analysis. Your adviser fees and any costs associated with recommendations will be included, along with discussion on other matters that may not have been raised initially but which your adviser may recommend be considered further at a later time. Completing that statement of advice may require more communication and possibly further meetings before it is ready to be presented to you.

Details of how we approach research and investigation for recommendations can be found here.

Details of what is included in a statement of advice can be found here.

 


 

Further Reading:

 

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