What do we offer?

Sorting out and planning your finances can be difficult – especially as there are so many different options to choose from. Independent financial advice helps you identify your priorities and make the financial decisions that best provide for the current and future needs of you and your family.

Many people distrust financial advisers because they are worried that the adviser’s main aim is to sell them something.

Our service is different and aims to:

• Help you take stock of your and your family’s current circumstances
• Help you understand your financial needs and plan your finances
• Provide high quality independent financial advice at no charge
• Agree with you the type of products that will satisfy your needs and priorities.

This is called generic financial advice. It means your adviser is not allowed to sell you any financial products.

Our new service is called the Moneyplan project. It is designed for people on low to middle incomes and is ideal for people who have questions about finance and are not getting advice elsewhere. We don’t want you to lose out by not having access to information to help you make good financial decisions.

How it works

You contact the bureau in any of the normal ways - in person, by telephone or by email. See contact us.

Your adviser will work with you to help clarify what you hope to achieve an appointment with a financial adviser and will take details of your current financial situation.

S/he will book you a half-hour appointment with an independent financial adviser (IFA) and advise you of any documents you need to bring in. Currently appointments with the IFA are offered on Monday afternoons at our Wokingham Office.

At the appointment the IFA will provide advice without any obligation to you – the adviser is not allowed to sell you any financial products.

After the appointment the Bureau will write to you confirming the advice given.

What can I discuss?

The adviser (IFA) will help you identify and understand your financial needs in the areas where you want help. These could include life insurance, mortgages, savings, pensions, planning for care home fees or using equity release to unlock money tied up in your home.

Click here for a full list.

You can of course use the interview to ask your adviser any questions you have about your finances. Remember the adviser is not allowed to sell you any products.

Which independent financial advisers are taking part?

Your adviser will be an experience member of the Personal Finance Society. He or she is highly qualified to provide financial advice and is donating time to the project without charge.

What happens if the adviser thinks you need to buy a financial product?

If the adviser identifies that you need a financial product or could benefit from replacing an existing product s/he will explain to you the reasons for this.

He will give you a leaflet explaining how to access independent financial advice generally. We will also send you the names of some local qualified members of the Personal Finance Society who would be able to offer you further help.

Feedback

We hope that our new Moneyplan service will encourage you to seek free independent financial advice. By coming in and taking part you will be helping us test out a new way of delivering Financial Advice. We want to know if this is helpful.

In particular we want to hear about:

• How helpful you found the advice you received
• What difference (if any) it made that you were not going to be sold anything by the financial adviser.

About a month after the interview we will send you a questionnaire asking for feedback on your experience of receiving free financial advice. It will greatly help us to improve and develop this service both locally and nationally if you fill out and return this questionnaire.

We will also ask if you would be willing for a researcher, working for Citizens Advice to contact you later. We promise that all information you provide will be confidential to Citizens Advice and will not be disclosed to any other organisation or company.

Services

Here is a list of the main areas where our IFAs can help:

• Financial Planning
• Mortgages
• Consolidation Loan
• Re-mortgages
• Investing a lump sum
• Mis-selling of product(s) in the past
• Life/Health Insurance
• Equity Release
• Pensions
• Care-home fees
• Understanding financial products/correspondence

If you are concerned about any other financial matter please contact us to see if we can help.

Click here to see list of useful leaflets produced by Financial Services Association .

Support

The Moneyplan project is supported by: