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Diploma of Financial Planning - 2012
File Notes
A File Note is also referred to as a Diary Note or a Client Note.
You should prepare File Notes to document important events that occur
between you and your client. File or Client Notes help fill in the gaps and
allow the reader to understand that what has occurred that may not be
included within the SOA.
The information held on main documents such as the Fact Find, Statements
of Advice and application forms are specific, however much information is
missed out such as interaction and decisions based on current and changing
situations. Also, a File Note can document important qualitative issues, such
as the duration of the meeting, the interaction between the clients (i.e.
husband was a growth investor and argued that the wife should also be
growth, but she was adamant and stuck to her position on the investment
risk profile as a balanced investor) or body language (i.e. client was hostile
towards the idea of life insurance and abruptly requested me on two
occasions that he was NOT interested in this, despite my observations of the
dire risks associates with not having adequate insurances!)
You can use this document to complete the "client picture" with a written
narrative of your interactions with the client over time. This may include
things said, suggested, or inferred. It can also to be a tool you use to read
before re-entering a discussion with the client to update you on their
circumstances as when you last spoke.
A diary note must be completed within one day of the discussion with the
client or within a “reasonable” time after the event. It should definitely be
completed as soon as possible and from a compliance view point, should
certainly be completed within a week or less of the original interaction.
This way it can be contemporaneous in nature and give rise to validation in a
court of law. It must be signed and dated at the time. It can be hand written
or typed electronically. In the vast majority of cases, you will work in an
office which subscribes to licensed software that includes the diary or file
note feature in the client database. The computer system will therefore time
and date stamp the record, however you need to enter the time and date of
the meeting with the client (as in almost all cases, you will not be typing the
client note during the meeting with the client, so the time (and possibly date)
of the meeting with the client will not correspond exactly with the time and
ate of you entering the client note!)