Compliance & Legal

Our Regulator

Dartington Wealth Management Limited is Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Our firm’s reference number is 717593 and you can find details about our firm on the Financial Services Register. For any further information, please contact our Compliance Director.

Principles Based Regulation

We adhere to the 11 FCA principles which are that we must:

  • Conduct business with integrity.
  • Conduct business with due skill, care and diligence.
  • Take reasonable care to organise and control its affairs responsibly and effectively, with adequate risk management systems.
  • Maintain adequate financial resources.
  • Observe proper standards of market conduct.
  • Pay due regard to the interests of customers and treat them fairly.
  • Pay due regard to the information needs of clients, and communicate information to them in a way which is clear, fair and not misleading.
  • Manage conflicts of interest fairly, both between ourselves and our customers and between a customer and another client.
  • Take reasonable care to ensure the suitability of advice and discretionary decisions for any customer who is entitled to rely upon its judgement.
  • Arrange adequate protection for clients’ assets when it is responsible for them.
  • Deal with its regulators in an open co-operative way, and must disclose to the FCA appropriately anything relating to the firm of which the FCA would reasonably expect notice.

What is principles based regulation?

Principles-based regulation means placing greater reliance on:

Principles Outcome-focused, high level rules and less reliance on: Prescriptive rules

The FCA’s aim is to focus more clearly on the outcomes they want to achieve, leaving more of the judgement calls on how to achieve those outcomes to the senior management of IFA firms. In certain areas FCA will continue to need to rely on detailed rules and prescriptive processes to ensure adequate consumer protection. Why principles based regulation?

The detailed FCA rules / prescriptive standards unable to prevent mis-selling or market misconduct. FCA prefer regulation that focuses on outcomes rather than prescription. FCA believe that a large volume of detailed, prescriptive and highly complex rules can divert attention towards adhering to the letter, rather than the purpose of FCA regulatory standards.

What are the benefits of principles based regulation?

For consumers and investors, the FCA’s belief is that their regulatory approach achieves outcomes that produce significant benefits both from more efficient markets and from firms better attuned to consumers’ needs.

Complaint Handling

We take complaints very seriously and we do everything we can to resolve them as quickly as possible. You can read how we handle complaints in our Complaints Procedure.

After we have investigated a compliance complaint and provided our response, if you are not entirely satisfied with the outcome, you are able to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). The FOS is an agency for arbitrating on unresolved complaints between regulated firms and their clients and full details can be found on its website at www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk Further information can also be found in their leaflet : Your complaint and the ombudsman

Data Protection & Duty of Privacy

We will treat all client information as private and confidential (even if you are no longer a client) except where we are permitted by law, required for audit purposes or where the disclosure is made at the client’s request or with the client’s consent.

Retail Distribution Review (RDR)

Following the RDR from 1st January 2013 a number of significant changes have affected the financial advice sector. These include:

The abolition of commission payments to advisers selling investment products. The introduction and definition of ‘restricted’ advice versus ‘independent’ advice. The introduction of a minimum ‘Level 4′ qualification level for all advisers.

This is usually where you begin your application. Your adviser will begin a ‘fact find’ and a detailed affordability assessment, for which you’ll need to provide evidence of your income and specific expenditure, and ‘stress tests’ of your finances. If your application is been accepted, the lender will provide you with a ‘mortgage offer’ and a mortgage illustration and key features documents explaining terms of your mortgage. This will come along with a ‘cooling off period’ of at least 7 days, which will give you the opportunity to reflect on accepting your lender’s offer. Some lenders might give you more than 7 days to do this. You have the right to waive this period to speed up your home purchase if you need to. During this period, the lender usually can’t change or withdraw their offer except in some limited circumstances. For example, if the information you’ve provided was found to be false