Terms of business

How we act for you
Pension Zone is a trading name of Abacus Advice Limited who is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). We are based in the UK. We can act for you if you live in the UK. There may be restrictions on how we can advise you if any of the following apply:

You don’t live in the UK
You are currently staying in the UK, but normally live abroad
You are currently staying in the UK and plan to move abroad or return to another country

Please ask us for details if you think this may apply to you.

We will provide our services to you using reasonable care and skill. There may be circumstances where you ask us to provide specialist advice, which we are not allowed to give. We are not able to advise you on the following types of investments:

Long term care
Equity release

We will let you know if this list changes. Please ask us if you need any information about what we are able to advise you about.

We can, however refer you to someone who can advise you in areas we cannot. They may pay us a fee or some other benefit for us introducing you to them as a customer; if this happens, we will tell you in writing.
You should receive a separate agreement from them explaining what services they will provide to you; they may be other financial advisers, solicitors or accountants. Any persons to whom we refer you to will take responsibility for the advice they give to you.

We can’t give you legal advice, but we will point out and explain to you what the payments terms, exit charges, exclusions and other key terms are for any product you buy using our services.

We will communicate with you orally and in writing. We prefer our clients to give us instructions in writing to avoid possible disputes. If we accept oral instructions from you, we will confirm them in writing to you. Any advice we give you will normally be in writing, but if given orally, we will record it on our files.

We may give you advice about policies or investments, which you may (for a short period) be able to cancel. We will advise you if you have a right to cancel any policy or investment on which we have advised you.

When we advise on or arrange certain types of investment products for you, we have to make sure that we get the best possible result for you, as a personal client. We call this ‘best execution’. We will give you a copy of our best execution policy if you ask for it.

When we arrange investments for you we will register these in your name unless otherwise agreed in writing. Additionally, we will ensure you receive either a contract note, documents of title or certificates evidencing title. All such paperwork will be forwarded to you by post as soon as possible after we receive them. Where a number of documents relating to a series of transactions are involved, the documents will normally be retained until the series is complete.

Conflicts of interest
Occasionally, we or one of our customers might have some type of interest in business that we are carrying out for you. This is called a ‘conflict of interest’. If and when we become aware of a conflict of interest, we will tell you before we carry out any business for you and get your consent before we continue advising you. On occasion we may have to cease acting for you, but we will help you find advice from elsewhere, if you want us to.

We are not allowed to be your trustees or to put your assets in any trust, nominee account, fund or pension scheme in which we have a material interest. You may not appoint us as an executor of your will.

Indirect benefits
We may receive non-monetary benefits from product providers. We will tell you before the transaction if we will receive some form of benefit that is above the level we have set as ‘reasonable’.
Investment risk

All investments carry a degree of financial risk that will tend to increase in proportion to the potential rate of return on the investments. The value of some may fall as well as rise. Before entering into any investment agreement we will explain the risk, but you must tell us if you do not understand our explanation of the risk, or if you do not wish to accept that level of risk.

How we charge you for our services
We offer the option of paying for our services by fee or commission or a combination of both. Full descriptions of the payment options we will be provided before we do business.

If we charge you fees, we may increase our rates in the future. We will not do so unreasonably. We will tell you, in writing, one month in advance of any changes to our fees. If you do not agree to the increase, you or we may end this agreement.

Settlement of our invoices is due within 7 days and we reserve the right to charge reasonable interest on overdue payments. Interest will be chargeable on a daily basis. We reserve the right to discontinue work on all current matters if any bill is not settled promptly.

We may also charge you for any disbursements we have agreed to pay on your behalf. We will notify you of these in writing, if they apply.

As part of this agreement we will provide you with our services for as long as you ask us to. If you decide to end this agreement and have paid fees in advance for future advice, we will refund a reasonable amount of those fees.

Client money
We never hold client money. ‘Client money’ is money that we receive and hold on your behalf. This can be in any currency, cash, a cheque or money in a bank account.

You must not:

Make a cheque payable to us (unless it is for payment of fees due to us); or
Give us a blank cheque; or
Give us cash (unless it is for payment of fees due to us).

The following is not client money:
Crossed cheques made payable to someone else, which you give to us to forward to them on your behalf;
A cheque made payable to us as payment for our services to you. If we have agreed to be paid fees for our services, we may ask for the non-refundable portion of it ahead of delivering the service to you.
If you are uncertain about any of the above, please ask us.

Handling assets owned by you
We can temporarily hold documents that evidence your ownership of assets, but you must make sure you have copies of them. We will return originals to you after using them to provide our services to you. When we arrange investments for you, we will register these in your name. We will also make sure you receive either a contract note, documents of title, or certificates confirming that you own those investments. This paperwork will be sent to you by post as soon as possible after we receive it. If we are arranging a series of transactions on your behalf, we will normally keep all the documents until those transactions have been completed. You must never transfer ownership of any assets to us or to any company in which we have a controlling interest.

If we need to contact you, we can either write to you or phone you. Please let us know which you prefer and if you want us to email or fax you. If you verbally ask us to do something for you, we will confirm this to you in writing to ensure we have understood your instructions correctly. If we give you advice we will normally confirm it to you in writing.

Ending this agreement
We may decide to stop acting for you at any time; if we do so we will write to you to confirm this. You can ask us to stop acting for you at any time, but you must do so in writing. We will keep a copy of this agreement on our files so that we have a copy of the terms on which we acted for you. Notices given by you under this agreement must be sent in writing by post. Notices will be treated as having been received by us on the second business day after you posted the notice to us.

We will have no authority to act for you after this agreement has ended. If the agreement is ended while we are providing services to you, we will finish providing the agreed services unless you ask us not to. You will have to pay any outstanding fees for our services even if this agreement has ended. Any fees outstanding at the date of termination will be due within 7 days of the termination date.

Law
These terms of business will be interpreted and construed in accordance with English law and is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts, except if your address is in Scotland, when the courts of Scotland shall have non-exclusive jurisdiction.