A £1200 pound fixed fee for the initial advice with an implementation fee of 1.5% and a maintenance fee of 0.75%. The platform that is handling the investments, Transact, are charging 0.25% yearly. I also was loathed to pay any commission etc for this but this is the way I'm afraid. But the help I have already received in transferring monies from one place to another is worth the cost... just them dealing with Nest alone is possibly worth it And I suspect ongoing tax advice & strategy will also be worth it...
Projected future financial plans which are annually revisited interests me Looking at your retirement, spending/ investing and your eventual demise on a projected graph in a darkened office certainly holds some significant captivation
And this was exactly what my FA did in the initial consultation. Provided a number of predicted different forecast cases wrt spending e.g. current, additional, one partner dies etc and as you say it was quite illuminated. In my case is showed quite clearly I could retire early. He was using some third party application web site where he could input various relevant assumptions e.g. CPI rate, spending rate etc. Ongoing advice will be very much based on what I want to do and will be money for old rope if I decide to leave things as they are.
It’s quite hard to convert a final salary scheme into a cash pot. Took me a year to find an IFA that offers that service / advice and it’s not cheap because they cover themselves with liability insurance.
Agreed - my IFA wasn't interested in my old Final Salary pension. Fees are are biggie. Many IFAs will happily tell you their fee is 1/2%. However, add to that ongoing platform and product fees and any modest returns the pot may make will soon be consumed. Extrapolate the fees over the forecast life of the fund (or yourself) and the outcome is rather sobering. I recently binned my IFA, he's 'ongoing advice' was always add more funds ( I wonder why). I was/am making more money buying bonds than the pension or ISAs.
A work colleague said same, in the end you can kind of force the provider to release it, but it’s effort and time. My fund is massively in the red, you’d think they’d want to get the liability off…. I did write and get a divorce settlement figure as you can’t get cash equivalent without going via n IFA, so you wonder what happens in those circumstances when pensions can be divided as they count as assets
Initial consultation/investigation was FoC This for a GIA Advisor fee on transfer of £2.5k and then 0.85% annually. Investment platform charges: Custody charge: 0.18% Management fee: 0.08% Platform fee: 0.09% I'm about to retire and won't be adding to the pot unless there's a windfall of some sort. So ongoing fees are 1.2% overall. Reviews for Cheltenham IFA and what they do are encouraging.
To my mind as long as the FA is truly independent i.e not a salesman in disguise for a (much) larger financial institution and not taking the piss on the charged fees I've pretty much resigned myself, & am just about happy, to pay them. The last thing I really want to do in retirement is spend hours pouring over fractions of a percentage of fees for platform/maintenance etc let alone spend even more hours poring over what combination of bonds & trusts to invest in. I want to spend it in the garage making a pigs ear of repairs and dropping off in front of the snooker with a whisky tea in me hand.
The financial landscape is constantly changing, I plan to review my arrangements every couple of years, which has paid off recently. I take your point re IFA's many are not 'I', even the independents need some DD, as many will sell you what's good for them, not so good for you.
The important things with IFAs in my mind are: Trust, as much as you can anyway Reputation; independent reviews and references Exit is an option without hefty penalty Fees are not unreasonable Not always important but I prefer someone local The Individual and/or firm are on the FCA register SJP failed on most the above and the other providers I questioned didn't clear the bar on many. My chosen outfit ticked all the boxes and got my business.
My FA fulfilled all of those in addition to being a small local concern who is also a motorcyclist - Aprilia RS650 & Honda VTR.
Been searching and using this site. Any experience or views? https://www.unbiased.co.uk/advisers...dviceMethod=face-to-face&assetValue=£501,000+
I used Unbiased - for their recommendation - and I am 54.. They recommended Fairstone.... lets see what his initial assessment comes up with... but their fees seem high...
It may be because I want advice mainy based on a defined benefit pot. It’s my main pension source and most don’t like dealing with it. I was dealing with SJW for a pension when I was contracting but as soon as I stopped so did the reps interest….which amazes me as he knew I wanted to look at getting my funds out, he makes a decent wedge from it too
It is a legal requirement to have ‘taken’ advice if the transfer value is >30k. The pension provider that you intend to transfer to will require evidence that the advice has been given. There is no requirement for you to agree with the advice.
