Your Investment In Financial Advice
Good financial advice is worth paying for and can make the difference between the success and failure of your financial plans. The investment in advice comes in two forms – time spent talking to us and the payment of our financial planning fees.
We like to carry out a full financial planning review as we believe this leads to better financial planning outcomes. The initial ‘fact finding’ exercise is very important as this provides the foundations for later advice and recommendations. It also enables us to see what level of involvement is required from us, and therefore helps us to set our fees.
Paying For Our Advice and Services
We seldom work on a ‘commission only’ basis but can do so if required.
We normally agree a level of cost for our services and then agree whether this is to be paid by:
- the retention of sufficient commission to offset against our fees, or
- the issue of an invoice for our financial planning services, with any financial contracts being set up on ‘nil-commission’ terms.
Commission Basis
Product providers include in their charges an allowance for the costs of advising on, and setting up, policies and investments. This allowance is paid to financial advisers in the form of commission, which can include an ‘up front’ payment and/or a recurring monthly or annual commission or trail payment.
Fees Basis
Once we have established the financial planning objectives, we can quantify our involvement in the planning and then set the level of fees for the work to be undertaken. Our fees can take the form of:
- a time cost based upon hourly rates
- a fixed ‘project’ fee
- a percentage of the investment capital
Our hourly charge-out rates are as follows:
|
Position
|
Hourly Rate
|
|
Director
|
£150
|
|
Financial Adviser
|
£100
|
|
Administrator
|
£ 50
|
Where a complex Financial Planning Report is required, we will agree in advance a fee for the Report which is payable regardless of whether the advice is taken up.
For investment based fees, we consider the work involved with preparing financial planning advice and then progressing through the Report to the implementation of the planning. We then set a fixed fee as a percentage of the investment capital.
We can retain sufficient commission to cover our agreed fees, or we can work on a nil-commission basis.
Wealth Management Service (c) Fees
A major part of our financial planning practice centres around our Wealth Management Service (c), this has its own fee structure which is detailed on a separate webpage, click HERE for details.