Terms & conditions

Investment Services

Apex CB Financial Planning Ltd is permitted to advise on and arrange (bring about) deals in investments. With regard to investments which we have arranged for you, these will not be kept under review unless a specific agreement to review investments is in place.

Apex CB Financial Planning Ltd does not handle clients’ money. We never accept a cheque made payable to us or handle cash (unless it is payment in settlement of charges or disbursements for which we have sent you an invoice).

Regulatory Status

Apex CB Financial Planning Ltd, Lupins Business Centre, 1-3 Greenhill, Weymouth, Dorset DT4 7SS is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Our FSA Register number is 507964. The Financial Services Authority can be contacted at the following address:

25 The North Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HS.

Client Categorisation

In providing investment services to you, we will categorise you as a ‘retail client’. The type of client category will determine the level of protections afforded to you under the regulatory system. As a retail client the regulatory protections available to you are determined by this category and will be “the highest available”. Where we have categorised you other than as a ‘retail client’, you may request re-categorisation under a client category which benefits from a higher degree of protection. However, we reserve the right to agree to such a re-categorisation on a case-by-case basis, and where we agree to do so it does not necessarily mean that you will have a right of access to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Conflict of Interest

Occasions may arise where we or one of our other clients have some form of interest in business being transacted for you. If this happens or we become aware that our interests or those of one of our other clients conflict with your interests, we will write to you and obtain your consent before we carry out your instructions, and detail the steps we will take to ensure fair treatment.

Termination of Authority

You or we may terminate our authority to act on your behalf at any time, without penalty. Notice of this termination must be given in writing and will take effect from the date of receipt. Termination is without prejudice to any transactions already initiated, which will be completed according to the Client Agreement unless otherwise agreed in writing. You will be liable to pay for any transactions made or carried out prior to termination and any fees which may be outstanding.

Right to Withdraw

In the case of a non-packaged product a direct equity ISA for instance, we will inform you in writing of any right to withdraw or cancel you may have or, if it is the case, we will inform you in writing that no such rights will apply.

Clients Risk

You are advised that because investments can fall as well as rise, you may not get back the full amount invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

How We Charge You for Our Services

Our income normally comes from either a percentage of commission from the product providers (e.g. life assurance companies) we write business with, or fees paid to us by our clients. Whenever commission is available to us, you can choose whether to pay us by allowing us to keep the commission, or by paying us a fee instead. This is in line with standard industry practice. We will tell you how much the commission is before the transaction, the percentage will be variable depending on funds under management. If you choose to pay us by commission, we will keep the commission and not charge you a fee.

Commission can be taken either as initial commission, trail/recurring commission or combination of both. Our business model includes reduced or zero initial commission and includes trail commission. Sometimes you may pay nothing to us initially, but that does not mean our service is free. The trail commission or recurring fee that we receive pays for the ongoing administration we carry out, provides your client website, covers servicing and review meetings. You agree that we retain this money as long as we are the servicing agent for the plan. If you cancel the trail commission we will invoice you for work carried out to date.

If you choose to pay us on a fee basis, we will agree its basis, frequency and method with you in writing before we carry out any work that we charge you for. We may also receive some form of benefit if we introduce business to a product provider or another firm. We will tell you before the transaction if we are likely to receive some form of benefit from recommending any product to you, or from working with any product provider or firm. We will provide further details on the cost of our services in a separate document.

Commission Clawback

Where you opt for our services to be remunerated by the commission option this remuneration structure will often be linked to a third party firm’s commission clawback policy for 2-5 years or more, known as the clawback period. This allows this third party firm to demand our original fee for services or a proportion of it to be returned to them in the event that for whatever reason the pension/investment/insurance policy is encashed/ surrendered/ switched away or ceases for whatever reason within this clawback period.

Where we agree to be remunerated by commission from a third party and we in the future receive a clawback request for all or a proportion of our originally agreed remuneration for services previously supplied to you then we reserve the right to invoice you directly for our services rendered and would expect payment within our normal invoice payment terms of 30 days.

Accounting to You

Unless in exceptional circumstances, we will confirm to you in writing the basis or our reason for recommending the transaction executed on your behalf. We will also make arrangements for all your investments to be registered in your name unless you first instruct us otherwise in writing. We will forward to you all documents showing ownership of your investments as soon as practicable after we receive them; where a number of documents relating to a series of transactions is involved, we will normally hold each document until the series is complete and then forward them to you.

Investment Objectives and Restrictions

Following the issue of this document, any subsequent advice or recommendation offered to you will be based on your stated investment objectives, acceptable level of risk and any restrictions you wish to place on the type of investments or policies you are willing to consider. Details of your stated investment objectives will be identified during our discussions with you and confirmed in the suitability report that we will issue to you to confirm our recommendation. Unless confirmed in writing, to the contrary, we will assume that you do not wish to place any restrictions on the advice we give you.

Best Execution Policy

It is in the interests of our clients and Apex CB Financial Planning Ltd that we obtain the best possible result when placing orders with other firms (e.g. third party brokers) for the execution of client orders or when transmitting orders on behalf of clients for particular investments – e.g. shares. We are required under the Rules of the Financial Services Authority to take all reasonable steps to provide ‘best execution’ when carrying out such transactions. Where we place or transmit orders for such investments on behalf of our clients, we may utilise the services of a third party broker and base our decision to place or transmit an order on the price and cost of execution of the order. For orders in collective investment schemes (e.g. unit trust), however, the price of units or shares in the scheme is normally set by the scheme operator or manager and as such we have little influence over the price available. Full details of our best execution arrangements are provided in our Best Execution Policy, a copy of which can be provided on request.

Data Protection Statement

The information you have provided is subject to the Data Protection Act 1998 (the “Act”). By accepting our terms you consent to us or any company associated with us processing, both manually and by electronic means, your personal data for the purposes of providing advice, administration and management.

“Processing” includes obtaining, recording or holding information or data, transferring it to other companies associated with us, product providers, the FSA or any other statutory, governmental or regulatory body for legitimate purposes including, where relevant, to solicitors and/or other debt collection agencies for debt collection purposes and carrying out operations on the information or data.

We may also contact you with details of any other similar products, promotions, or for related marketing purposes in which we think you may be interested The information provided may also contain sensitive personal data for the purposes of the Act, being information as to your physical or mental health or condition; your sexual life; the commission or alleged commission of any offence by you; any proceedings for an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by you, including the outcome or sentence in such proceedings.

If at any time you wish us or any company associated with us to cease processing your personal data or sensitive personal data, or contacting you for marketing purposes, please contact The Data Protection Officer on 01305 775850 or in writing at Lupins Business Centre, 1-3 Greenhill, Weymouth, Dorset, DT4 7SS.

You may be assured that we and any company associated with us will treat all personal data and sensitive personal data as confidential and will not process it other than for a legitimate purposes. Steps will be taken to ensure that the information is accurate, kept up to date and not kept for longer than is necessary. Measures will also be taken to safeguard against unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss or destruction or damage to the data.

Subject to certain exceptions, you are entitled to have access to your personal and sensitive personal data held by us. You may be charged a fee (subject to the statutory maximum) for supplying you with such data.

This is our standard client agreement upon which we intend to rely. We recommend you read these terms carefully before agreeing to them. If you do not understand any point please ask for clarification.