Advise Your First Client

Do it yourself

• Formalise the engagement: the client agreement, confirmation of your services and charges, your initial disclosures, and the ID and AML checks.
• Run a full fact-find: objectives, circumstances, existing arrangements, and what achieving each goal actually means to them.
• Complete risk profiling, both capacity for loss and attitude to risk, and record it.
• Capture everything in your back office and portal, not on paper scraps.

Do it yourself

• Use your research tools to identify solutions consistent with the client’s objectives, their risk profile, and your independent or restricted status.
• Build a cashflow model to test whether the plan meets the client’s goals, and to show them the picture.
• Document why each element is suitable as you go, the evidence that will sit in your suitability report.
• Sense-check against Consumer Duty’s four outcomes before you write anything up.

Do it yourself

• Write it so it clearly evidences why the recommendation suits this specific client’s needs and objectives, not just what the product is.
• Include the costs and charges, initial and ongoing, the risks, and the alternatives you considered.
• Deliver it clearly and check the client understands it, the consumer-understanding outcome in practice.
• Get sign-off through your file-check or compliance route before you implement.

Do it yourself

• Implement by applying to the platform or provider using the agency setup from your software stack, and process the recommendation.
• Confirm everything is in force, and record it.
• Set up the ongoing service the client is paying for: schedule the first annual suitability review, and confirm what the ongoing fee delivers.
• Ask for a review at this natural high point, compliantly.
• Mark the milestone: your first client advised and a recommendation implemented.