3. THE COST OF OUR SERVICES
You will pay for our services by either a fee or a combination of fee and/or fee by
payment facilitation through product charging. We will discuss your payment
options with you and answer any questions you have. We will not charge you
until we have agreed with you how we are to be paid. For payment options
relating to investment advice, please refer to paragraph 14. For payment options
relating to protection products, please refer to paragraph 15. For payment
options relating to mortgage advice, please refer to paragraph 16 and general
insurance, please refer to paragraph 17.
Value added tax may be payable on some or all of the work we do. We will
inform you if VAT is applicable.
4. INVESTMENT AND PENSION ADVICE
When paying by fee, you will pay us for our advice and services (whether you
buy a product or not) at an amount or a rate agreed before we commence any
work. Our fees may include VAT. Where this is the case, you will be informed and
invoiced accordingly.
Our hourly rates are:
Director £150 per hour
Financial adviser £100 per hour
Pension Transfer Specialist £200 per hour
Any other specialism £150 per hour
Administration £50 per hour
These fees are indicative only and in any event are subject to review annually on
1st January. In cases that we deem to be complex in nature, our fees may be higher than our stated rates. However, we will always provide you with a
breakdown of our estimated fee and agree this with you prior to undertaking
any work.
Our fees as a percentage of the funds invested are:
Amount Invested % Fee
Up to £100,000 2%
£100,001 – £250,000 1.5%
£250,001 and above 1%
For example:
An investment of £100,000 would cost £2,000
An investment of £200,000 would cost £3,500 (2% on the first £100,000 and 1.5% on the remainder)
You may wish to set a fixed amount of fees that cannot be exceeded without
further reference to you, in which case please speak with your Adviser. Where
charging a fixed fee we will provide you with a fee agreement showing the actual
fee that will be payable for the agreed service being provided. Where charging
an hourly rate we will provide a letter of engagement to indicate how much we
might charge in total.
5. ON-GOING SERVICES & FEES – INVESTMENTS AND PENSIONS
YOUR PAYMENT OPTIONS
SETTLING YOUR ADVISER CHARGE THROUGH A SINGLE PAYMENT
You will be required to settle the payment of our fees on completion of our work.
We accept cheque or bank transfers. We do not accept payment by cash. You will be provided with a receipt upon payment.
SETTLING YOUR ADVISER CHARGE BY INSTALMENTS – PAYING BY INSTALMENTS THROUGH YOUR RECOMMENDED PRODUCT
If you buy a financial product, you can choose to have your adviser charge
deducted from the product through instalments. Although you pay nothing to
us up front, that does not mean that our service is free. You still pay us
indirectly through deductions from the amount you pay into your product.
These deductions will pay towards settling the adviser charge. These deductions
could reduce the amount left for investment.
HOW YOUR PAYMENT PLAN WORKS
Total cost for advice £600
Total monthly premium payable into your plan £250
Length of repayment period 12 months
Monthly payment for advice £50
Of the £250 monthly premium paid for 12 months, £200 is invested and £50 is
payment for advice.
On month 13, the £250 monthly premium will be invested in full.
PAYING THROUGH OTHER ARRANGEMENTS
You can choose to pay your adviser charge by standing order on a monthly,
quarterly or annual basis. The adviser charge can be paid up to a maximum of
12 instalments on the 1st day of the month from your bank account. The
adviser charge will be taken in equal instalments.
KEEPING UP WITH YOUR PAYMENTS
If you fail to keep up repayments of the adviser charge, we will terminate our
relationship.
You may elect that we are remunerated by fees and offset fees (paid by a
product provider) the actual amounts will depend on the service provided to you
but will be in line with the arrangements set out above in section headed
“investment advice”.
The fee will not exceed the rates shown in this document. We will agree the rate
we will charge before beginning work and we will tell you if you have to pay VAT.
The fee will become payable on completion of our work. You may ask us for an estimate of how much in total we might charge. You may also ask us not to
exceed a given amount without checking with you first.
WE OFFER AN ONGOING SERVICE WHERE WE REVIEW YOUR ACCOUNT.
This service is provided at a charge of 0.5% of the value of your investment per
annum (paid monthly) and can be either deducted from your investment or paid
by direct debit. This service can be cancelled at any time.
Where we agree to provide you with a service that includes an ongoing review of
the suitability of the investments we have recommended, we’ll carry out this
review at least annually unless agreed otherwise.
To do this we will need to make contact with you to assess whether the
information we hold about you remains accurate and up to date. We’ll issue you
with a report setting out the results of our assessment and, if relevant, any
updated recommendations.
We will make at least three attempts by different means to contact you, so it is
important to keep us up to date with regard to any changes of contact details
such as a change of address, email or telephone number.
We may, where appropriate, recommend holding some, or all, of your
investments with a discretionary fund manager (DFM), a professional investment
manager appointed to monitor your portfolio and make investment decisions on
your behalf. In such cases we’ll explain the respective responsibilities of
ourselves and the DFM in relation to your investments.
In some circumstances we may need to act as your ‘agent’ in relation to the part
of your portfolio held with a DFM. This means that you won’t have a direct
contractual relationship with the DFM and the DFM will instead treat our firm as
its client. Before setting up this type of arrangement we’ll explain the
implications to you.
Whilst our fund managers will deal with the day to day management of the
funds and any switching deemed necessary as part of that process, we will also
carry out internal quarterly reviews on the performance of our chosen fund
manager.
Additionally, if we do not feel our chosen Fund Manager is acting in your best
interests, we will recommend a change of that fund manager.
If we do not get a response to our request for a meeting on two consecutive
reviews, we will switch off any fee being received and change your status to
transactional (as described in the following table (Service Level 5).
If you do not require ongoing service, you will be classed as a transactional
client (Service Level 5) and there will be no ongoing costs levied by ourselves.
As a result of this you will be liable for any investment decisions and if you
require advice at any time there will be a cost involved and we will have no
responsibility to provide any additional services.
6. SERVICE LEVEL OPTIONS
There are five service levels, and each service level is described below. Please
note, you can choose to move within the service levels if you so wish. However, it
is important to understand that given the service provided within each service
level is different, any change to the service level will be valid for a 12-month
period.
WHAT YOU GET
*this means that for the level 5 clients who are not paying for ongoing servicing,
we will contact each year and ask if you want a review. If you choose to have a
review this will be carried out a cost of £750.
** when funds are switched from an existing non-tax efficient investment to an
ISA.
What does it cost?
With an ongoing service charge of 0.5% this means that you will pay:
£5 per £1,000 invested
£50 per £10,000 invested
£500 per £100,000 invested
What does the Review entail?
At a review we will (this is not an exhaustive list:
- Assess personal circumstances
- Assess any changes to objectives, needs, circumstances and how any such change could affect your financial plans going forward
- Reassess Attitude to Risk
- Reassess Capacity for Loss
- Review holdings performance against objectives
- Discuss valuations and investment Commentary
- Recommend any changes to portfolio as and when necessary
- Discuss any additional needs you may have
Any cash top up investments will be charged as described on the previous page;
however, any new switches or transfers will be charged at the normal rate as
described on page three.
There is a minimum ongoing servicing fee of £1,000 which can be deducted from
your investments or paid direct by Standing Order.
Your ongoing service can be cancelled at any time by informing us in writing.
Please note that we do reserve the right to charge you for services received that
are pending payment.
Please note that the fee is based on the plan value which means that although all
clients within a particular service band are charged the same percentage, the
actual cost may vary depending on that fund value.
7. PURE PROTECTION PRODUCTS
If you buy a protection product you may elect that we are remunerated by
commission. The commission is paid directly by the provider. Although you pay
nothing up front that does not mean our service is free. The commission paid to
us forms part of a ‘product charge’ which you pay when you purchase the product.
Product charges pay for the product provider’s own costs and any commission
payable to third parties.
You may elect that we arrange for the protection premium to be discounted by
the commission that otherwise might have been payable under the policy
recommended. In this instance you will need to pay a fee appropriate to cover our
advice and work, in accordance with paragraph 14.1 above.
The amount of commission we receive will vary depending on the type of policy
and (sometimes) the term of the policy or your age, as in the following example:
If aged 40 you took out a Life and Critical Illness policy with a sum assured of
£100,000 and premium of £45pm we would receive commission of approximately
£1000 and from year 5 onwards £13.50 per annum.
If aged 30 you took out a Life and Critical Illness policy with a sum assured of
£100,000 and premium of £22pm we would receive commission of approximately
£450 and from year 5 onwards £6.70 per annum
8. MORTGAGES
Our Fees for Mortgages Advice
In accordance with the regulatory requirements, for providing mortgage advice
there is:
A fee of £300 for arranging a mortgage is payable on completion. We will also
be paid commission from the lender.
Refund of fees
Fee charged on completion. No refund…
9. GENERAL INSURANCE
For general insurance advice we do not charge a fee as we will receive commission from the insurance provider.
We may also receive commission or other form of benefit from working with the
issuer of a security, a product provider or from another intermediary. We will
inform you before the transaction if we are likely to receive such commission or
form of benefit from recommending any product to you.
In respect of any regular premium policy which we may recommend, should you
subsequently cease to pay premiums on the policy and as a result of your
cancellation we are obliged to refund product charges or other commission that
has been paid to us we reserve the right to charge you a fee representing the
amount we have to repay, for a period of up to four years after commencement
of the policy. We will not charge such fee if you exercise your right to cancel in
accordance with the cancellation notice sent to you by the product provider.