Fees

It can sometimes be difficult to understand the fees you would pay should you engage a financial adviser. The fee structure may appear overly convoluted (they often are!).

Below, we outline the fees our clients pay.

We believe the fees our clients pay are:

Clear.
Competitive.
Not complicated.
Not conflicted.

More details below.

Initial fees (one-off)

The initial fees cover the following five stages of our retirement planning process:

Stage One: Expenditure analysis.
Stage Two: Creation of a financial plan.
Stage Three: Creation of an investment “engine” (portfolio).
Stage Four: Advice (Suitability Report).
Stage Five: Implementation of recommendations as required.

Initial fees are based on several parameters and range from £3,500 to £5,500. The fees are only due once the above five stages are complete and you are happy that you have a robust retirement plan in place.

Ongoing fees (annual)

There are typically three components to the ongoing fees:

Financial adviser fees: As above, these are based on several parameters and typically range from £3,000 to £7,200.
Platform fee: These range from around 0.05% to 0.3%.
Investment management fees: These are typically around 0.25% to 0.3%

We don't:

Charge exit fees
Charge fees for topping up investments (for example, annual ISA contributions)

Example client

As an example, a client with an investment portfolio we onboarded in 2024, with a £1.45m portfolio, paid initial retirement planning fees of £5,000 and total ongoing fees (financial adviser, platform, and investment management fees) of £12,345 (0.85%) per annum.

Comparisons

Below, we compare the fees for our example client above with alternatives:

Wealth Manager

We estimate that typical wealth management fees for a portfolio of £1.45m split equally between ISAs and pensions would be:

Initial fees (one-off): 2.5%/£36,250 (5% on ISAs worth £725,000, assuming no discounting)

Ongoing fees (annual): 1.72%/£25,000.

FCA research

These wealth manager fees are broadly in line with research from the FCA, which estimated initial fees to be 2.4% and ongoing fees of 1.9%.

We have demonstrated above that our fees are highly competitive compared to many other alternatives, often saving them a five-figure sum each year. However, fees are just one side of the question. What you are getting for the fees you are paying is an arguably even more important consideration.

The fees vs value tradeoff

In an ideal world, individuals planning for retirement would be able to:

Undertake a life planning exercise to understand the cost of their ideal lifestyle, both now and in the future.
Create and maintain a financial plan designed to deliver their life planning goals, iterating where required.
Create a suitable investment portfolio with sufficient diversification that balances the risk (volatility) required to deliver the financial plan against the risk (volatility) they were happy to accept.
Construct a withdrawal strategy that provides the desired income in retirement, whilst giving sufficient confidence that the investment portfolio will not be exhausted. Withdrawals would be adjusted as necessary depending on market conditions.
Ensure lifetime taxation is optimised.
Generate returns in line with broad market indices and not succumb to investor pressures. (e.g., buying high, selling low, etc.).
Pay no fees.

Realistically, this utopia is very unlikely. For example, being objective enough to undertake your own financial planning exercise can be challenging. Indeed, many financial planners hire a financial planner for this very reason (something we also plan to do when we retire). Funds and platforms charge fees. The general public does not widely use cash flow and retirement planning tools, and many investors are subject to biases that impact their returns and, therefore, their retirement plans.

When considering the cost of financial advice, look at it not through the lens of an ideal implementation but with real-world pragmatism. There is no escaping the reality that costs, all else being equal, have an impact.

Only you can decide whether the fees the financial adviser will charge are worth paying.

Comparisons are tricky

If you decide that the fees are worth paying, it's important to understand what you are getting for your money. We believe that investment management is commoditised, and those paying for financial advice should demand more for their fees than just the creation of a portfolio. The focus should be on what you are trying to achieve and building a plan of how best to achieve these objectives before discussing investments and portfolios. We estimate that we spend 90% of our time with clients on tasks unrelated to investing!