Your first meeting with ValidPath 

If you are seeking independent financial advice from ValidPath, please note that we generally manage things by holding an initial meeting with you.  The aim of the meeting is for us to get to know you a little, and for you to get to know us - sufficient for both parties to have a sense that we'd like to work together, and for us to obtain some idea of your priorities, and how (or whether) we will be able to help you.  For this reason, we do not charge for that initial meeting.

It does help, however, if you come to that first meeting prepared for an exploratory conversation about your finances.  We do not, at this stage, need exhaustive detail, but the following items would certainly help:

• A recent bank statement - partly for 'Anti-Money Laundering' purposes, but mostly to give us a picture of income and expenditure (we'll also need some form of photo-ID, such as Passport or Drivers Licence)
• Some kind of summary list (a spreadsheet, or written/printed list) of your existing arrangements, such as:
  • Mortgages and other debts
  • Life and health insurances
  • Investments (ISAs, unit-trusts, savings plans etc)
  • Pensions
• A sense of your own priorities and concerns (perhaps even written down)
• A record (or memory) of any previous advice received

In this first, introductory, meeting, we'll take some handwritten notes.  They will remain entirely confidential, and will only be retained if we decide to work together - otherwise they will be shredded.  If we proceed towards providing you with specific advice, we will ask for quite a bit more detail, and this will be retained on a secure system which helps us with our analysis.  ValidPath comply with the data-protection requirements laid down by the Information Commissioner's Office, and updated in the 2018 GDPR legislation.