How we are paid

The Cost of our services

Getting sorted financially is a bit like getting fit and staying fit. In other words you can't expect to go to the gym once or perhaps twice and expect to stay fit for life. It just doesn't work that way.

Financial planning is the same. You can't do a 'one off' financial plan and expect it to work for the rest of your life. It's a long term process which involves careful and regular monitoring, and that is why we offer a long term service.

1) The First Service - Lifeplanning™ - in order to create a long term relationship with you (and to ensure that you are committed to the process) we charge a monthly commitment fee payable by Standing Order. This is a fee that enables you join our list of committed clients. Although it contributes towards our expenses it does not cover the time or other costs involved in advising you, but it does confirm yours and our commitment to the process.

2) The Second Service – Financial Planning – To contribute towards the costs of our comprehensive financial planning service we charge our clients fee equating to 1% per annum of all funds under our influence. Our aim is to add value. This could be in helping you achieve your required growth rate on your portfolio, or in many instances, help you to ensure that the risk/reward profile of your portfolio matches your real needs identified within the first (Lifeplanning™) process and the second financial planning process. Often we can demonstrate to you using sophisticated software and thorough research that you do not need to take unnecessary risk and hence protect you from such risk. Our view on this 1% per annum fee is simple: if we cannot prove added value then we do not deserve to be paid. Therefore you can cancel it at any time. The incentive is therefore on us to provide an excellent on-going service so you benefit. And of course, we benefit by building recurring income into our firm which ensures that we have a viable business and will be available to provide you with advice for many years to come. The Financial Services Authority supports this model as it builds stronger and longer term client relationships. It is true to say that the vast majority of quality advisers now build this fee into their agreement.

3) Finally, Independent Financial Advice - Should you need to make financial transactions, implement financial products, or rearrange investments, our fee will be fully disclosed to you as will all charges incurred in any product we may recommend.

Any fees or commissions we receive are firstly used to offset the time costs involved in the research, report writing, recommendation and implementation of those transactions, together with on-going administration of such transactions. In addition we employ the services of an external compliance provider at considerable cost and we are required to cover the cost of on-going professional indemnity insurance. Currently, at least 20% of all fees/commissions received are used to cover regulatory/compliance related costs and that is in addition to all usual business / staff expenses.

However, should any fee or commission received by us be in excess of that needed to cover the time costs for implementing transactions in stage three then any surplus is used to offset the need to charge additional fees for the substantial work involved in stages 1 and 2 above.

Should no transactions involving commission be necessary, we may charge you a fee based on time costs involved in advising you for all three stages. In this event you may choose to pay this fee personally, or via your company, your investments or your pension fund. We will advise you in advance should this situation arise.

In any event, should you wish to pay a fee for all advice and time costs incurred by advisory and support staff then this option is available. Our current hourly rates are detailed in our terms of business.

For a more comprehensive statement of our charges please refer to pages 6 and 7 of our Terms of Business.