Not all firms charge for their services in the same way. The payment options we offer are detailed below.

We will not charge you for any services we provide until we have discussed your options and obligations and you have agreed how we will be paid.

Option 1

Paying by fee: You may pay us a fee for our services, whether or not you buy a financial product. If you purchase a financial product we may receive a payment from the product provider, commonly called ‘commission’. You can ask us to use commission to offset our fees, if this is available, or we will refund this commission to you.

If we do offset and you subsequently cease to pay the premiums or cancel the investment, we may be obliged to refund some or all of any commission that has been paid to us. This is known as a ‘clawback’ and it can apply for up to four years, known as ‘the clawback period’. Where commission is recovered by clawback, we may charge you the amount we have lost. If we exercise this right, you agree to pay us the lost amount on demand.  The maximum amount you have to repay will not exceed the total fee agreed within our separate ‘Service and payment agreement’.

Option 2

Paying by commission with contingent fee: If you purchase a financial product we may receive a payment from the product provider, commonly called ‘commission’. Although you pay nothing up front, that does not mean our service is free. The commission we receive is your money, as it is paid to us by a product provider from product charges it makes to you. These charges reduce the amount left for investment. If you buy direct from the product provider, the product charges could be the same as when buying through an adviser, or they could be higher or lower.

However, we reserve the right to charge you a contingent fee to cover our costs up to the amount agreed within our separate ‘Service and payment agreement’, in the following circumstances:

• Where we make a recommendation, but you do not proceed with our recommendation;
• You cancel the product within the cancellation period;
• You cease to pay the premiums or cancel the investment within ‘the clawback period’ (see the section above ‘paying by fee’).

Option 3

Paying by a combination of commission and fee: We may charge a fee in addition to any commission we receive from a product provider.