• Ashlea is an independent Financial Advisor, which means that if a client of Ashlea you will receive professional impartial advice to achieve your stated goals, and which will not be product focused.

• Ashlea services are chargeable through a fee based payment.

Role of the Regulator and Good Business Practice                       .

Ashlea is an independent Financial Advisor, and therefore is subject to regulation by the Financial Services Authority (FSA)

The FSA undertake an ongoing programme of Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) assessment of individual IFAs across the industry.

The FSA assessment of Ashlea, (carried out in 2009) was that consumers can be confident that they are dealing with a firm where the fair treatment of customers is central to its culture, and that the Ashlea business model around values based financial planning, is aligned to TCF.

Ashlea endorses the aims of the FSA, which is to ensure outcomes for the client which are fair. Ashlea has implemented the following business practices which we believe reflect these aims, whilst meeting the compliance requirements of the FSA for small business firms, and which ensure good business practice.

• As part of our management of your investment portfolio, we make use of a comprehensive on line platform in the management and administration of your investment portfolio.

• Ashlea strongly encourages its clients to use this on line service platform for full consolidation and management of their investment portfolio.

• Ashlea undertakes full contingency for all business reporting, which is ensured through a daily back up to multiple remote sites of all company documents, by means of tested document management software. This includes a full document restore capability in the unlikely event that Ashlea will need to invoke a contingency.

• Internal File Management of all company documents through in house digital document management and storage tool.