Fees
You should not have to guess what advice costs. We set out our fees in plain terms before any work begins, so you can weigh the value of the advice against the cost of it — with no surprises later.
How charging works
Substantial pieces of advice — a retirement plan, a business exit, an inheritance tax strategy — carry a reasonable one-off fee. We quote it before the work starts, and we do not charge implementation or front-load fees on top.
Ongoing service is charged as a percentage of the investments we advise on, and the rate steps down as they grow — so larger portfolios pay proportionally less.
The ongoing fee covers our actively advised investment approach — portfolios researched, built and adjusted by us. Where investment work is bought in from elsewhere it usually carries its own charge; here it is part of the one fee.
What the ongoing fee covers
Advice firms handle the investment side in one of three ways, and all three are perfectly legitimate. Some keep it deliberately simple — a passive portfolio built from cheap index trackers, or a single multi-asset fund that does the whole job in one holding. Some pass the portfolio to a discretionary fund manager, or buy in a model portfolio service from an outside provider. And some, as we do, research and build the portfolios themselves. What matters is that a firm is clear about which of the three it is doing, and about what that costs you.
Only the bought-in route adds a layer of charge on top of the advice. The outside manager's fee sits alongside the adviser's own, and the two are usually quoted separately, which makes the total easy to lose sight of. Neither of the other two routes carries an extra layer of that kind.
We do the investment work ourselves — it is what the firm grew out of — so the research, the portfolio construction and the adjustments along the way are covered by the ongoing fee rather than charged beside it. A passive portfolio costs less because it does less, and for plenty of investors that is the right trade — so the fair comparison for our fee is with actively researched investment work of the kind you would otherwise be buying in on top. It also means that when you ask why something is held, you are asking the person who decided to hold it.
What it costs
The ongoing scale is tiered, and we would rather show you what it comes to than publish the whole thing — a table of brackets you may never occupy is not much use to anyone. So here are two points on it.
0.8% a year — around £4,000.
Covering the advice and the investment work behind it, with nothing charged beside it.
0.7% a year — around £7,000.
Twice the portfolio, and the rate has stepped down a notch rather than simply doubling the fee.
The pattern holds as the portfolio grows: the more we advise on, the lower the rate we charge on it. And because the fee is a percentage rather than a flat sum, it moves with the portfolio — when the portfolio falls, the fee in pounds falls with it.
These are illustrations at two portfolio sizes, not a quotation. Your own fee — one-off and ongoing — is set out and agreed with you in writing before anything is charged.
Taking on new clients
There is a portfolio size below which our ongoing service stops being good value for the person paying for it, and we would rather tell you where that is than find out together. As a general rule we take on new clients with at least £300,000 of investments under our ongoing advice, counted across a household rather than per person — so where there are two of you, the holdings are added together.
The reason is arithmetic rather than preference. The work behind the ongoing fee — the research, the portfolio construction, the reviews and the reporting — costs much the same to do whatever the size of the portfolio. On a smaller one, the percentage needed to cover that work climbs to a level we do not think is worth paying, and a low-cost route such as a direct-to-consumer platform would usually serve you better.
If you are close to that figure, or on your way to it, do ask anyway — the first conversation carries no obligation and no fee, and we will tell you plainly whether we are the right firm for you.
The costs that are not ours
Platforms and fund managers charge their own fees, which are separate from ours and paid to them rather than to us. We set out the whole picture when we quote — ours and theirs together — so the full cost of investing is visible in one place rather than assembled from three documents.
Those charges are part of how we choose what to hold. A fund has to be worth its cost to earn a place in the portfolio, and cost is one of the things we weigh when deciding whether it does.