ISO9001 Certification

At Clarkson Wayman Ball Limited we put our customer at the heart of everything we do and our aim is to develop each relationship over the long term, to the maximum possible standard of care and consistency.

Our aim is to provide the highest standard of customer care and as a company who offers service and advice to the public this is dependent primarily on the quality and the synergy of our people and our processes. As an Independent Financial Adviser, the products that we sell are generally available to all equivalent regulated companies within our industry.

The company has developed a highly effective and efficient management system, which includes processes and procedures that conform to industry and regulatory requirements. To ensure that our activities are measured and continue to develop to the highest business standards, we decided to subject ourselves to further scrutiny by seeking assessment and certification to the internationally renowned ISO9001:2000 Quality Management Systems Standard.

A team was formed to drive the implementation of this standard, together with enlisting the assistance of an external consultant. In the process of defining our Quality Management System a “process map” has been constructed, covering all business processes and has formalised and improved all of our processes into an operating system that is based on a Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) model. The prime objective of the PDCA model is to achieve continual improvement in the ability to fulfill company and customer requirements.

ISO9001:2000 requirements are based on 8 quality management principles, these are
Customer Focus; Leadership; Involvement of People; The Process Approach; a Systems Approach to Management; Continual Improvement ; a Factual Approach to Decision Making and Mutually Beneficial Supplier Relationships.

As part of the certification process an independent assessor carried out a formal assessment of our policies, procedures and activities to ensure that they conformed to ISO9001:2000 requirements. We were delighted to receive confirmation from Worldwide Quality Assurance that we had been awarded Registration to ISO9001:2000 on the 29th March 2006. For our business, this is the beginning. The process of external scrutiny will re-occur on a regular basis without notice of arrival. Formal reports that identify both positive and negative findings are published and actions resulting from these visits are assessed at the next opportunity for timeliness and completion. This process ensures that we are constantly striving to make improvements and challenge our own standards further.

The Benefits to Our Clients

We believe that by working to achieve registration to ISO9001:2000 we have improved the standard of care and efficiency and that the company management system has improved. This has led to a more consistent approach to the services that we offer, differentiates us in the market place and will lead to further improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness in the long term.

Clarkson Wayman Ball Limited recognises that our success will be measured through the commitment and development of all employees within the business. We have a ‘people focused’ structure, which is the bedrock of our success to date and the aim is to lead the field in our industry.

To achieve this, the Company has created a learning, training and support culture where we aim to develop all our employees to the highest professional standards. We have created an environment where structured training and development plans for all employees (both full and part time), are at the heart of everything we do. We deploy time, money and people to achieve our objective and the results are measured by the continuing professional development of our employees, together with the improvements through learning that are made to our support systems and processes. This ultimately is measured by the quality of advice that is given and the excellence of service to the customer.

The Company wanted to benchmark its structure and process and prove its ‘people success’ against a recognised quality standard. Therefore, in January 2004 we announced our intention to work towards the Investors in People accreditation standard.

We sourced assistance with the planning from a representative of Business Link and formed an internal voluntary project team to manage the achievement of the award. All employees were involved in that their opinions were sought through a questionnaire asking for comments on company procedures, systems and management performance. In general the feedback from the staff was excellent, as evidenced in the assessor’s comments.

We were assessed against the standard in June 2004 and received confirmation of our accreditation in August 2004. Amongst the assessors positive comments made to the Investors in People panel were:-

“The Managing Director sees training as a permanent feature of the work that they do. There are embedded processes in place to support and sustain this approach. The Company’s commitment to staff development starts at the recruitment stage and endeavours to attract personnel who are motivated to develop their knowledge.

There were no negative comments from any of the interviewees, which is unusual. There is a low staff turnover and people clearly benefit from the commitment to their development, which contributes to motivation and job satisfaction.

This is a Company that values its staff and understands how the development of their skills and knowledge has a direct impact on the success of the business.”

For the future, we see the Investors in People accreditation as a demonstration of our ongoing commitment to the training and development of all our employees. However, as a development tool, to review our progress and to ensure that the Company builds on the standards that we currently have in place, we have already started work to achieve the new Investors in People ‘Profile’ standards, which we intend to be assessed against in 2006.

Client Benefits

Building towards professional status is long overdue in the financial services advice sector. Our belief is that our clients benefit in a number of different ways:

• Advice that we provide is consistent across all members of the team
• All members of the team value the client relationship and take ownership
• The range and depth of advice that we offer is born out of a sound practical knowledge of the economy, markets and potential client solutions
• We are consistently challenging what we do to ensure we strive towards the delivery of a high quality service