Matthew Morton & Co. - Our Services

ABOUT US

Matthew Morton & Co, 4th Floor, Berkshire House, Kings Road, Reading, RG1 4HP

Tel: 0118 9566660 Web: www.matthewmorton.co.uk

1. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is the independent watchdog that regulates financial services. We are required by the FSA to provide you with details about our firm, services and the cost of these services. Please read this document carefully and if you do not understand any point please ask for further explanation.

2. We are an appointed representative of IN Partnership the trading name of The On-Line Partnership Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). IN Partnership’s FSA registration number is 192638. We are authorised to advise, arrange and bring about transactions in investments, pensions, home finance products (mortgages), and non-investment insurance contracts. We are also authorised to provide advice within member states of the European Union. A list of member states where we can provide advice is available upon request.

The FSA contact details are 25 The North Colonnade, CanaryWharf, London, E14 5HS, United Kingdom.

3. We will communicate with you in English. We will act upon your written instruction in a timely manner. We are required to confirm back to you, in writing, our understanding of any verbal instruction before we are able to act upon them.

4. We and IN Partnership will hold any of your personal data in line with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998. You or your agents are able to request copies of all personal data we hold relating to you at any time.

5. We will make you aware of any conflict of interest that arises between the work we are doing for you and any of our other clients or ourselves. Where a conflict of interest exists we will discuss with you the options that are available to mitigate the conflict before we proceed with any work we do for you. A copy of our conflict of interest policy is available upon request.

6. Your agreement to appoint us as your agent will only apply from the date that you sign Our Client Agreement. Unless otherwise agreed in writing we will treat you as a retail client. This means that you are afforded the full protection of the FSA and other financial services consumer protection bodies.

7. Our client agreement will remain in force unless you or we end it. If the agreement is ended and we are involved in an incomplete transaction, we can decide not to complete the transaction and return to you all documents relating to the incomplete transaction.

10. We will identify and select suitable products and institutions from the whole of market. Whole of market means; all products and institutions that are accessible to us from our base within the UK and that we are able to research. You have the right to give us specific instructions to restrict our selection of any particular product or provider for these solutions. You need to let us know about any specific restrictions that you want to place on us.

11. We use both UK and Non-UK Institutions for our clients. You should be aware that different legal and regulatory regimes may apply between UK and Non-UK Institutions. Your ability to enforce your legal rights or to seek compensation may also vary. If you do not wish to use a Non-UK Institution, please advise us immediately.

12. We cannot guarantee the solvency of any Institution (this includes any third party used by them). If any Institution with whom you have a policy or loan becomes insolvent, you may be limited in the amount of compensation against loss that you can receive. You may ask us for details of the compensation schemes relevant within other jurisdictions.

14. We will discuss and agree with you the most suitable option given your personal circumstances before we undertake any chargeable work.

· Paying by commission (through product charges) – The amount of any commission generated will be dependent upon the amount of your premium, the term of your plan, your age, the product selected and the company used. For mortgages it will depend upon the amount you borrow, the terms of the loan and the lender used. Paying by commission through product charges does not mean that our services are free. The affect of paying by commission (through product charges) can be to reduce the actual amount being invested or the premium you are paying.

· Fee Only – The fee will reflect the amount of work we undertake for you, the status of your adviser plus the complexity and technical knowledge required in analysing and designing a personal recommendation for you and the size of any transaction. Full written details of our fee structure will be provided to you for consideration before we undertake any chargeable work for you. Where the work we do generates an automatic payment of commission, we will either refund this to you or rebate the commission back into the product to reduce charges.

· Combination of fee and commission (through product charges) – Where the amount of commission that we will receive is not sufficient to cover the full cost of our services, we will agree with you the additional fee amount to fund the difference. The combined amount of commission and fee will not exceed the amount that would be payable under the fee only option.

16. From time to time we may receive other benefits from institutions that we introduce a customer to. These other benefits can be in the form of monetary or non-monetary benefits and are intended to enhance the service we can provide to our clients. We will provide you with details of any monetary or non-monetary benefit received in relation to any transaction completed for you upon request.

17. If you want to register a complaint, this can be done by writing to us at the address given at the beginning of this document or by telephoning us or if you wish you can contact:

18. If we are unable to settle your complaint to your satisfaction, you may be entitled to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service at: SouthQuayPlaza, 183 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9SR

19. We contribute to the funds of the FSCS. You may be entitled to compensation from this scheme if this firm ceases to trade and, as a result of our advice, you have suffered a financial loss. This depends on the type of business and the circumstances of the claim.

21. Insurance advising and arranging is covered for 90% of the claim, without any upper limit. For compulsory classes of insurance, insurance advising and arranging is covered for 100% of the claim, without any upper limit.

Example
OUR CLIENT AGREEMENT

Matthew Morton & Co, 4th Floor, Berkshire House, KIngs Road, Reading, RG1 4HP

Tel: 0118 9566660 Web: www.matthewmorton.co.uk

1. Following our initial discussions with you, we must now provide you with the details of the service we are to provide and the costs of this service. We need to obtain your agreement to proceed before we undertake any work that will attract any cost. This document sets out the agreement between us and the costs of our services in monetary terms or where a monetary value cannot be given, the basis of its calculation.

Level of service	Investments	Home Finance Products	Non-Investment Protection	General Insurance
We will advise and make a recommendation for you after we have assessed your needs
You will not receive advice or a recommendation from us. We may ask some questions to narrow down the selection of products that we will provide details on. You will then need to make your own choice about how to proceed.
We will provide basic advice on a limited range of stakeholder products and in order to do this we will ask some questions about your income, savings and other circumstances but will not conduct a full assessment of your needs or offer advice on whether a non-stakeholder product maybe more suitable

Range of Products	Investments	Home Finance Products	Non-Investment Protection	General Insurance
Products from the whole market
We only offer products from a limited number of companies. You can ask us for a list of the companies whose products we offer.
We only offer product[s] from Legal & General Insurance Limited in relation to Home Insurance, Mortgage Payment Protection Insurance and Buy to Let Insurance products

5. If you make the decision to pay for our services by way of a fee or combination of commission and fee, the amounts of the fee that we would ask you to pay are set out below.

	Hourly Rate	Amount not to be exceeded	Fixed Fee Amount	Fund Based Fee Amounts
Principal/Specialist Adviser
Adviser
Administrator
Set Rate

6. Example of Fund Based fee: If you invest £ we will receive £ as an initial payment then, ignoring any investment growth, £ in year two and £ in year three and so on.

7. Where the fee is to be paid directly by you and not through the product, we will issue you with an invoice at the completion of the work, detailing the breakdown of the costs incurred.

8. If you make the decision to pay any part of our costs by commission (through product charges) or procuration fee (from a lender) we will inform you in writing of the amount of commission we will receive before you complete any application form.

9. The following table gives details of our normal commission levels in relation to some of the product areas we are able to advise upon. The actual amount of commission received may be higher or lower than these figures.

Product	Example term or age	Normal Commission Levels	Normal Amount of Commission
This shows the normal amount of commission in relation to a monthly investment or premium of £100
Collective Investments	Any	3% of all premiums	£3 per month
Whole of Life assurance	Age 40	155% of the first 12 months premiums	£1,800 initially
Pensions	20 years	40% of first 12 months premiums	£480 initially
This shows the normal amount of commission in relation to lump sum investments of £10,000
Collective Investments	Any	3% of the amount invested	£300
Investment Bonds	Any	5% of the amount invested	£500
Pensions	Any	4.5% of the amount invested	£450
This shows the normal procuration fee in relation to a mortgage of £100,000
Standard Mortgage	25 years	0.35%	£350
Adverse Credit Mortgage	25 years	1%	£1,000

10. Should you decide not to proceed with the transaction that would otherwise have generated the commission intended to cover agreed costs, we reserve the right to charge you a fee at our standard hourly rate for the chargeable work we have completed.

11. If you agree to pay our costs by using commission only and we are required to pay all or part of this amount back because you have cancelled or otherwise ended the policy, we reserve the right to require you to reimburse any money we have to repay. Examples of the amounts we can ask you to pay are set out below.

Liability Period	1 month	3 months	5 months	12 months	20 months	30 months	40 months
24 months	96%	87%	80%	50%	17%	N/A	N/A
36 months	97%	91%	86%	66%	44%	16%	N/A
48 months	98%	93%	90%	75%	58%	38%	17%

12. As an example if a policy has a 48 month liability and is cancelled after 30 months and the initial commission was £500 the approximate amount that will be payable will be £190.

13. Unless otherwise agreed with you in writing, all fees become payable at the point that a transaction is completed or where no transaction is made, at the point that we provide you with details of our recommendation. Commissions are payable on completion of the transaction.

14. You have agreed to engage us to provide you with the following level of ongoing service under our client service proposition:

Description of Service Level	Initial Registration Cost	Ongoing Cost	Frequency of Billing	Payment Method

16. We may become aware of an opportunity arising from a new product being launched that we may consider would interest you. If this happens, we would like to write to you or phone you with some details. We may also give you a written recommendation about that opportunity. If you want to receive this type of contact, you should let us know by inserting a ‘tick’ in this box.

18. This document is our standard client agreement upon which we intend to rely. For your own benefit and protection you should read these terms carefully before signing them. If you do not understand any point please ask for further information.

19. I confirm that I have issued the above named client with a copy of the About Us document and that I have discussed both the About Us document and this Our Client Agreement with the client/s and that I have given the client an opportunity to ask any questions or receive further explanation.