What is financial advice?

When you’re making important decisions about your finances, you don’t need to do it alone.

With the help of an Independent Financial Adviser, you can make informed choices to reach your financial goals.

What Is Financial Advice?

Financial Advisers can help you decide what to do with your money. Sounds simple? If you’re wondering if your investments could work harder, or whether your pension is going to provide enough for you in retirement, an Independent Financial Adviser could make all the difference to your future finances.

We can also make sure your investments are in line with your ethical views and that you’re able to withstand any financial shocks to your plans, such as illness or loss of income.

All this comes together in a bespoke plan for you, giving you direction with your finances for years to come.

When Should You See A Financial Adviser?

Many people choose to manage their own finances. However, some areas of financial planning are complex – such as pensions or inheritance tax planning. It could pay to have an expert on your side to help you get the most out of your finances and avoid any pitfalls, such as taxation.

You might be looking for a financial MOT to make sure you’re on the right track – or have a specific topic you’d like to talk to our advisers about. Our Financial Advisers take a holistic ‘big picture’ view of our clients’ finances and help you make the most of your assets. You might want to talk to an Adviser if:

Get in touch

The Process

Tell us about yourself and your financial goals

During our first meeting we will get to know you, to understand your current financial circumstances, your life stage, your hopes and financial aspirations. We’ll talk about any concerns you have and assess your attitude to risk. This forms our ‘fact find’ which allows us to identify your priorities and objectives leading to our eventual recommendations.

We research the options available to you

We will then look at the options available to meet your objectives – and we’re independent so that means a wide variety of options. Independence means we can recommend products from right across the market, including some of the UK’s best-known providers. This sets us aside from many other financial advisers who are ‘tied’ and can only recommend services from one or two providers.

We recommend a plan

We’ll make a recommendation and talk you through each step. You will be able to see how our recommendations come together to deliver your financial objectives. Should you decide to adopt our recommendations, we will make all the necessary arrangements for the plans and policies to be put in place.

Become an ongoing client and make confident informed financial decisions

Life will always present opportunities and challenges. As the financial and legislative landscape changes – our ongoing clients can benefit from review meetings where we can discuss and adjust your plan to keep you on track to achieve your financial goals.

Financial advice FAQ

If you’re looking for financial planning advice, there are a number of financial advisers who can help. Some are labelled as ‘independent’ or ‘whole of market’. Independence means that the advisers are not tied to one provider or set of products. Independent Financial Advisers are able to search the whole of the financial market in an unbiased way to find the most suitable options for you.

Tied, or restricted advisers are affiliated to one particular provider. While they will still go through similar fact-finding processes, their product recommendations will be limited to a single, or small number of, providers.

Financial advice is specific to you. Financial Guidance is not – but can be a good starting point if you’re looking to understand your situation. However, this guidance will not tell you about specific products or which option might suit you best. Financial guidance is offered by some organisations for free, but we would always recommend reputable sources, such as the Money Advice Service.