How much does an IFA cost?

The short answer is that it varies from client to client, depending on how much time we would need to spend, gathering the necessary information about your existing investments and pensions etc, and importantly, researching the market to provide you with the best recommendations as part of our overall advice.

Since January 2013, IFA’s no longer receive commissions in relation to any products a client may purchase. This was a great change for clients, because it meant that the less scrupulous advisers could no longer profit from “selling” clients products which give them the most commission, rather than recommending the right product. The result of the changes has meant that most of the less scrupulous advisers have now left the market, because at the same time, all financial advisers had to re-qualify to new minimum standards.

Financial Advisers now charge fees for the work that they do for clients.

The level of fees are agreed at the outset before any work is undertaken and can be set either as a percentage of the overall level of investment, or at an agreed fixed fee, or on an hourly rate for the work done to produce the recommendations.

Fees are payable on completion of the research and recommendation report, regardless of whether you want to proceed with any of the recommendations or not.

If you want to proceed with a recommendation, then in some cases the fee may be paid by the Product Provider through an Advisor charge. This is effectively a deduction of fees from the initial investment into any particular product. It’s entirely down to your individual preference as to whether the fee is paid by cheque from your own funds or via an Adviser Charge. There is no difference in the level of the fee either way.

We provide you with an initial consultation free of charge up to 1 hour.  We will discuss the costs and levels of our services both initially and throughout our relationship with you.

We charge for our services on the basis of a percentage of investments under advice, with a minimum and maximum fee.

It can be hard to get clear comparisons with other advisers charges because they are often not publicised. But looking at two recent articles in the FT Adviser (the advice industry’s No#1 publication – owned by the Financial Times), research by Bancroft Wealth (13/1/20) suggested that the average initial advice charge was 3%.

More recently some advice firms have introduced different charges for the way advice is provided, for example online, by telephone or face to face. One major Bank has now introduced these charging levels. Their charges for face to advice are 2.75% of the investments as long as that is above their £100,000 minimum, with a £960 minimum charge.

Our tiered charges mean that our percentage charges change according to the amount of investments under advice, but for comparison our charge for advice on £150,000 would be 3.0%.

On £300,000 it would be 2.5% and on £750,000 for example it would be 1.8%.

Most of which are well below the 3% average market charge and mainstream banks charges.

Our percentage charge is applied on a tiered basis according to the value of your investments under advice, as follows:

(* These minimum and maximum fees do not apply to advice in respect of safeguarded benefits which require specialist advice)

Our charges include:

• Gathering information about your existing financial arrangements and full personal circumstances.
• Understanding your investment knowledge and attitude and tolerance towards investment risk.
• Understanding your needs, objectives, aspirations and priorities.
• Evaluating your current financial position.
• Developing a financial plan to meet your needs, objectives, aspirations and priorities.
• Recommendation of an asset allocation model that matches your risk profile and the subsequent assessment and suitability of any existing holdings.
• Preparation of our recommendations to you.
• Full written report documenting our recommendations.
• Subsequent appointments to explain and discuss our recommendations in detail, and further appointments if required.

Should you instruct us to proceed with any of our recommendations we will act for you in the following ways:

• Manage all fund and policy administration on your behalf.
• Provide regular updates to keep you informed of progress.
• Ensure all your documents are issued in line with your expectations.
• Provide confirmation of all actions taken on your behalf in writing

Once any initial advice has been concluded and recommendations implemented, you will usually enter into an ongoing Service Agreement with us, under which your individual circumstances and product suitability and performance will be reviewed periodically. However, you are under no obligation to enter into a Service Agreement.

A fee is payable under the Service Agreement and will depend on the level of service you require. It could be a simple service, like online access to fund platforms and telephone advice, or it could be more regular level of service, for example quarterly face to face reviews.

All fees and payment options are always discussed at the FREE initial meeting and there is no obligation to proceed to any level of advice after that initial meeting.

In the case of pension transfers we offer a Pension Review first to all our clients to help them determine whether they need to pay for advice.