How we are Paid
We are a fee-based practice, clearly demonstrating complete
impartiality.
We will collect any commissions available for any new, or
your existing, arrangements and use it to offset fees, passing the surplus on to you, our client.
Our fees follow the various stages involved in preparing,
implementing and monitoring a financial plan for you as described on our new client's page.
The three advice stages are -
- Initial meeting, analysis and Report preparation and
presentation
- Agreement and implementation of a plan
- Monitoring & review of the plan
Report preparation
For this we charge a nominal agreed fixed fee and this
covers preparing a report and discussing this with you. You would usually pay the report fee after completing this stage.
We do however offer a free and without obligation initial meeting to discuss your requirements and, if you wish, agree how
to proceed and what the expected costs will be.
You will not incur any costs without being told how much these will be in advance and your agreeing to
proceed. Our usual fee for this stage is £ 425.00, and this sum is usually exempt from vat, but can of course vary depending
upon the nature and amount of work involved.
Our reports aim to exceed the minimum standards for a comprehensive financial plan as laid down by the
Institute of Financial Planning.
If you wish you can download a copy of the IFA Promotion Free Consultation voucher (pdf).
Implementation
If actions are recommended, agreed and you ask us to then
implement these for you then on completion of making the arrangements we charge an implementation fee. We will discuss and
agree this with you before proceeding. This fee is usually a fixed sum.
Where this stage involves the arrangement of products we will
collect any commissions from products or providers and use it to offset your fees, passing any surplus back to you.
Monitoring & Review
Most plans and arrangements require some form of ongoing
monitoring and review and for this client's pay a modest quarterly retainer to us, currently £75. Again however the level
of retainer will reflect the value, type and extent of work expected for your affairs.
Where the arrangements are an investment, pension or similar
portfolio we usually also charge a quarterly or half-yearly portfolio advice and management fee based upon the sums and
work involved. These sums are often met by retaining sufficient commissions from the investment or pension product(s).
You can read further about our charges by reading our
Key Facts documents available on our downloads page.
In many cases fee-based advice is actually cheaper than commission
advice for the following reasons -
- commission is based on the sums involved. Commission
for an investment of £100,000 is usually 10x larger than for a £10,000 investment but the time involved may not be much greater.
- commission advisers are only paid if they sell a product and
not everyone they see buys a product. Therefore those client's who do buy have to subsidise those who do not buy. As a fee
based adviser everyone pays their own way and there is no cross subsidy.
Commission based advice is therefore usually a better option
for those who wish to buy only low value products or who are not sure if they will buy a product.
The only way to avoid the possibility of you having any
concerns as to bias towards products or providers paying a higher commission is to employ a fee-based adviser.
In addition a fee-based adviser will always consider products
and services that do not pay any commission, such as National Savings, Investment Trusts and Deposit accounts.
"It is unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose
a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable
of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it
can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you
will have enough to pay for something better."
John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)
