Independent Financial Advisors - IFA Southampton, UK

Key Objectives

The purpose of the joint venture is to offer a superior level of Financial Services to clients. This provides a comfort factor that you have confidence in the ability of the Financial Adviser you are dealing with. IFA (South) LLP was the first North West business to achieve the highest professional standard – The Chartered Financial Planning Status. Of the 5,400 directly regulated IFA businesses, only 127 hold the chartered status.

The venture will be jointly owned by Independent Financial Advisor Limited (50%) and new accountants (50%) and will be set up as an LLP.

We have legal agreements from our solicitors to formalise the agreement. This agreement will build a guaranteed buy back for the business; this will be based on fund based investments which have been in the joint venture for 5 years prior to the sale as follows:

If the business is sold, then the LLP will receive proportionate payments, this will be discussed in more detail prior to the joint venture being formalised.

I would like to target a minimum of £300,000 turnover within the 1^st year of business. Your time should be charged at the same rate; therefore we need to agree what time and premium is acceptable for both parties. We would then charge administrators time which should also be agreed prior to the joint venture. Each client will sign a fee agreement and all client fees will have a summary of time allocated to each case.

The flow of work must be deemed as seamless for all clients, therefore meetings would ideally be at your offices or Independent Financial Advisor Limited.

Identify Client Profile

The initial stage will be to provide Financial Advice to all referred clients. The ideal client would be of a corporate nature or a high net worth individual.

Due to the value of the business being based on funds under management, clearly investment clients would be the most profitable long term.

The initial proposition is to add value to the core services that the accountants offer and to consolidate the position of the accountants due to the problems that could emerge from the departure of the previous Financial Services business.

Examples of target business:

High net worth

Corporate businesses

Specialist work

- SSAS

- SIPP

Lump sum investments

Needs Analysis

After identifying the ideal type of clients we need to know what they require from Financial Services.

All clients will receive a full financial review and following the review a report will be issued.

Individual fact find will be completed for all clients

Corporate fact find will be completed for all companies

We need to agree an acceptable standard fee for this report; this should be sufficient to cover the costs for preparing the report and not ‘scare’ the client.

I would propose that I conduct a corporate review of your business along with a report to allow you to place a price on the ‘value’ of the report and review.

We then need to decide how we should be introduced to clients along with the ideal venue for the client meeting. We need to agree on the level of introductory information required prior to any client contact. The initial fee will need to be discussed at this stage. The first visit is always free.

The cost for the ongoing service to a client must be agreed with the client, we will be looking to obtain either an ongoing fee agreement to review or 0.5% of funds under management.

Marketing Approach (Protecting our Brand)

To issue a newsletter to all our mutual clients

Monitor and Review

Send an update sheet on all cases passed on a weekly basis – link to the website

Monthly management figures to be discussed between accountants and Independent Financial Advisor Limited at a monthly meeting

Attend your weekly staff meetings once a month to relay examples of success stories for mutual clients

All client reports to be sent to the Client Manager (with Managing Partner copied in) for their perusal.