Price: Value Without Compromise

Financial advice has never been free, and sometimes it's wrapped in so much jargon it feels like cracking a secret code. Terms like initial units, capital units, bid/offer spread, and deallocation—it’s enough to make anyone's head spin. Even we have to double-check our dictionaries now and then.

As wealth managers, our job is to cut through the proverbial smoke and mirrors. To truly understand value, it's essential to go through everything you pay for. An advice fee of, say, 0.5% per annum can be a red herring because the firm providing the service often receives fees for the platform, their unit trust, initial advice fees, and charges to move. How on earth do you work all this out?

We like to think in terms of the total cost to the consumer, including everything. Then, we evaluate what the firm does to further increase value, such as crafting a really efficient asset allocation for your portfolio, negotiating discounts on funds and dealing, managing all your tax wrappers, and providing comprehensive cash flow modelling. It’s about looking beyond the surface and ensuring every penny contributes to your financial success.

We also strive to keep our initial fees to a minimum or cut them altogether where we can. An upfront fee of, say, £2,000 or an initial fee of 2% can really impact long-term value. For example, if you invest £100,000, a 2% initial fee means £2,000 is taken out immediately, leaving you with £98,000 to invest. Over time, that £2,000 could have compounded significantly. By reducing or eliminating these upfront fees, we help ensure more of your money is working for you from the start.

Our ongoing fee starts at 1% per annum, which includes everything we do and any VAT. In addition to this, you may pay a platform fee of, say, 0.25% per annum, and a portfolio fee of 0.15% per annum. Therefore, the total maximum cost with us would be 1.4% per annum. This comprehensive fee covers full financial planning, discretionary management, tax wrapper advice, and more.

It is very important to us that we don’t manufacture our own unit trusts, which can lead to bias and shoehorning. We believe in maintaining our independence to ensure unbiased advice. Demonstrating value at 1% per annum is straightforward when we are independent, buying at a discount, and providing tax wrapper advice. Of course, you may want to adopt some more expensive funds or use an external discretionary manager. If this is the case, we will reduce our fees and subsidise this to ensure you will pay no more than 1.4% per annum for our total wealth management and discretionary service, capping any external rate at 0.10% per annum by providing a subsidy.

So, there you have it. The total cost to you, the consumer, without any fancy footwork, is 1.4% per annum. This is what you need to compare us against. This covers everything. As you gain more assets, we would likely reduce this on a case-by-case basis. Our largest clients and our friends and family rate is 0.4% per annum, which is pretty much the lowest rate in the UK for any equivalent service. We are happy to benchmark ourselves against any other firm.

Our goal is to provide you with exceptional service and support while maximising the value of your investments. We believe in a transparent, holistic approach that looks at the total cost to the consumer and focuses on strategies that enhance your financial success.

Cash Management

A significant part of what you pay us goes towards compliance and regulation. When managing segregated cash mandates, which are not regulated, we include this service for free if you have a portfolio with us. Our own instant access cash rate is 4.45%. Other cash management platforms can integrate with our portal, and we manage all of this for free as part of our service.