About Us
What is our background?
Our principal, Andrew Hirst, has spent his whole working life in the Financial Services Sector. He carries experience which has been honed from working across a range of disciplines within several large financial organisations, which include:
- Provident Financial Group
- Lloyds TSB Group
- Barclays Financial Management
- Zurich Advice Network
With regard to financial planning advice, we have been offering our services to both private individuals and businesses, for well over decade. In 2004 The Dales Mortgage and Financial Services was set up with an office in Wensleydale. From here we look after clients who are principally based in West and North Yorkshire, although we do have clients in both East and South Yorkshire, as well as ones as far north as Newcastle and as far south as London.
Our advisers are fully qualified to give any advice they might recommend, and a programme of continuous professional development is maintained to ensure skills and knowledge levels are kept right up to date. As we have chosen to work through a network, our advice processes must also meet the professional standards of that network. This means that the quality of our advice is checked by a professional third party, so adding in an additional degree of protection and reassurance for our clients.
What can we do for you?
As fully Independent Financial Advisers, we work on your behalf, rather than on behalf a company (or a group of companies). Effectively, you employ us to put you in the position which most suits your needs. As we represent your interests and not those of a company, we don't have to try and 'fit' you into the nearest product that we have available to us; if there's a more suitable product in the market place, we can access it for you.
We offer a genuine, whole-of-market proposition, which means we can deal with any companies who openly practise in the market place, along with a number who do not deal with the general public, but only with intermediaries such as ourselves.
Another benefit of our independence is that we can look after all of your financial planning dealings with other companies. If you wish, we can write to all your existing service providers and (with your authority) ask them to note on their records that we are now looking after you. One of the things this means is that we should be copied in on future statements, etc. meaning we can keep an eye on the bigger picture for you, and advise you accordingly.
For example, many of our clients have had more than one occupation during their working lives, and often they have accrued various (sometimes quite modest) pensions in each one. We can manage these pensions as a whole, due to the fact we are able to deal with all providers.
We also provide a full advice and recommendation service. This means that we not only research the market place for the best solution, we also make a recommendation on which course to take (rather than simply presenting you with a list of alternatives and leaving you to make a decision alone).
Treating Customers Fairly
We are committed to the Financial Services Authority's philosophy on 'Treating Customers Fairly'. To demonstrate our service promise to you, we give you an overall, broad commitment at our initial meeting that we will:
- treat you as we would expect to be treated ourselves;
- never take advantage of you;
- be open and honest;
- and that if we ever make a mistake, we will quickly correct it.
When we write to you after the advice process, we enclose a ten-point feedback form (in all cases) which asks you to measure us against the commitment we made, and other areas. We always review the responses to make sure our own high expectations are being met.