Fostering long-term relationships

"I felt as if I knew a lot more about the whole process afterwards"
Mr & Mrs A. Cooper, Wiltshire

We believe that the key to a successful long-term relationship is for communication to be both educational and informative. In this section, you can navigate to a few websites that will give a bird’s eye view of how this industry works.

It can be daunting to think that you could actually begin to understand the financial services industry but it is possible. It’s not rocket science! From our point of view, the more you understand, the less cause for complaint or confusion you may have and you will see the value we add to your financial transaction.

Part of the Financial Services Authority’s Treat Customer’s Fairly initiative aims to increase consumer understanding of the advice process and products they end up with. This is also combined with the principle of ‘Caveat Emptor’ – Buyer Aware. There is a responsibility on you, the client, to take steps to ensure that, for example, you read the documentation provided to you and that you are taking reasonable care to ensure the information provided to us is correct.

http://www.moneymadeclear.fsa.gov.uk/home.html
The UK’s financial watchdog was set up by the government to regulate financial services and protect your rights. They set the standards financial services firms have to meet and this new website aims to make money matters clearer for you.

http://www.cml.org.uk/cml/consumers
The CML is the trade association for the mortgage lending industry, and this site contains some excellent calculators and consumer guides.

http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/index.htm
The Citizens Advice service helps people resolve their legal, money and other problems by providing free information and advice.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

Independent James are authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority – ref: 459851. This covers residential mortgages, general insurance and pure protection. We typically charge a fee for our advice, payable upon completion dependent on complexity of advice but on average £300.