Our Approach
We strongly believe that our fees reflect the hard work and commitment that our team put into serving you as a client, every single day. Our guiding principles are built on empathy, impartiality and honesty which is why we are happy to be transparent and disclose our fees online.
We understand that this is not the norm, with market research providing evidence that only 1 in 20 Financial advisers and planners disclose their fees online. This is why we are different, we live and breathe our principles and in everything we do, we have our clients at the forefront of our decision making.
Investment Services & Costs
We provide you with an initial consultation free of charge. This helps us to understand your financial objectives and we will confirm how we can support you in working towards these goals. We will also discuss the cost, and levels, of our services both initially and throughout our relationship with you. We charge our services by way of a fee. These fees are based on a percentage of the amount you invest, subject to a minimum fee. The 2 steps of this process are explained below.
Financial Review and Recommendation
This can be a continuation from the initial discussion, where agreed, or a further appointment.
This process covers the:
- gathering of information about your existing financial arrangements and full personal circumstances;
- understanding of your investment knowledge and attitude and tolerance towards investment risk;
- recommendation of an asset allocation model that matches your risk profile and the subsequent assessment and suitability of any existing holdings;
- preparation of our recommendations to you;
- arranging a second appointment to explain and discuss our recommendations in detail.
Our charge for this service is a fixed fee of £1,500 payable on provision of the report containing our recommendation(s) to you. This fee will be waived wholly or in part should you decide to implement any of our recommendations.
Policy Arrangement & Implementation
Should you instruct us to proceed with (any of) our recommendation(s) we will act for you in the following ways:
- Handle all fund and policy administration on your behalf;
- Provide regular updates to keep you informed of progress;
- Ensure all your documents are issued in line with your expectations;
- Provide confirmation of all actions taken on your behalf in writing.
Lump Sum Investments or Transfers
Our charge for this service is based on a percentage of the amount you invest and/or transfer. These charges are applied as follows:
2% of the value of investment
This payment can either be facilitated by the product provider when they receive your funds or paid directly by you. Where we receive such a payment we will waive our ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee by the same amount.
if we arrange an investment on your behalf for £50,000 our Policy Arrangement & Implementation fee would be £1,000 (2% of £50,000). As this is less than the ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee of £1,500 we would charge you an additional £500 as the balance.
The total fee payable would be £1,500.
if we arrange investments on your behalf totalling £100,000 our Policy Arrangement & Implementation fee would be £2,000 (2% of £100,000). As this exceeds the ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee no other charges would be applied.
The total fee payable would be £2,000.
if we arrange investments on your behalf totalling £500,000 our Policy Arrangement & Implementation fee would be £10,000 (2% of £500,000. As this exceeds the ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee no other charges would be applied.
The total fee payable would be £10,000.
Regular Savings / Investments
Our charge for implementing a regular contribution savings or investment plan is 20% of the first year’s contributions. Again, we will waive our ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee by the same amount.
You can pay this under either of the two options
listed below:
Option 1: You can pay this directly on commencement of the policy.
if your monthly contribution is £500 our Policy Arrangement & Implementation fee would be £1,200. As this less than the ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee of £1,500 we would charge you an additional £300 as the balance.
The total fee payable would be £1,500.
if your monthly contribution is £1,000 our Policy Arrangement & Implementation fee would be £2,400. As this exceeds the ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee no other charges would be applied.
The total fee payable would be £2,400.
Option 2: You can facilitate the implementation fee through your policy.
For monthly contributions under £625, 20% of the first year’s contributions would be less than our minimum fee of £1,500. 11 payments of 20% of each monthly contribution will be deducted from month 2 to month 12, and the balance will be paid directly by you at the start of your policy, to bring the total fee payable to £1,500
For monthly contributions of £625 and over, the payment will be deducted proportionally from each monthly contribution during the first year.
Should you decide to pay this charge through your policy and payments to the policy subsequently cease, we will calculate the total payments received to date and charge you the balance against the implementation fee.
if your monthly contribution is £500 our implementation fee would be £1,200 (£500 x 12 x 20%). This will be collected by deducting £100 (£500 x 20%) from each monthly contribution for months 2 to 12 (11 x £100 = £1,100). As this is less than the ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee of £1,500, we would charge you the balance of £400 by direct payment, at the start of your policy.
The total fee payable would be £1,500.
if your monthly contribution is £1,000 our implementation fee would be £2,400. This will be collected by deducting £200 from each monthly contribution for the first 12 months. As this exceeds the ‘financial review and recommendation’ fee no other charges would be applied.
The total fee payable would be £2,400.
if you invest £1,000pm our total charge will be £2,400. We will deduct £200 from each monthly contribution until paid in full. Should payments cease after month 6 (and £1,200 has been collected) the difference will be charged to you i.e. £1,200.
Ongoing Reviews and Changes to Existing Investments
We strive to build long-lasting trusted professional relationships with all of our clients. We achieve this by continuously reviewing and adjusting your investment plans to ensure they remain suited as you evolve throughout your financial planning journey.
All investments should be reviewed on a regular basis and this agreement sets out the terms on which we charge for our ongoing services to you. Should you decide to sign up for our ongoing services we will ask you to acknowledge your consent at the end of this agreement. You should then retain your copy of this with our ‘client agreement’ previously provided to you.
Below we set out the on-going services we provide and the associated cost to you. Please notify me if you wish to discuss any aspect of these terms.
We will discuss the full range of our on-going services during our initial consultation. These services include, but are not limited to, providing you with:
- Structured reviews to give you peace of mind;
- Review of the suitability of your investments
- Provision of a personal recommendation
- Reviewing your personal and financial circumstances and any changes to your plans that are needed;
- Regular updates and information regarding your holdings;
- A choice of differing levels of support depending on your needs;
- Ongoing support with correspondence and administration issues.
Service Proposition
Review Meeting:
- Review of needs & objectives
- Review of risk profile & appetite of capacity for loss
- Review of asset allocation (if required)
- Rebalance investments (if required)
- Review platform/product (if required)
- Review of tax changes
- Updates & valuations
Cashflow planning
Annual statement of holdings
Tax planning
Estate planning
Ongoing access to your advisor
Ongoing access to our support team
Quarterly Newsletter
Budget statement review newsletter
Liaison with accountant/solicitor (if required)
Subject to a minimum charge of:
It should be noted that if you choose any of our ongoing management services they may be subject to a minimum fee.
Where we agree to provide ongoing services, you can choose to cancel this at any time by providing us with written confirmation of your decision. Payments would then cease within 7 business days or after collection of any due proportion of any period charges if later. The charges listed can be deducted from your investments or paid directly by you.
See table for 4 examples of our ongoing charges.
If your investments are valued at £200,000 and you select Wealth Planning service, at 1% the ongoing management fee we would receive is £2,000. As this is less than the minimum ongoing service fee for this service level, we would charge you an additional £1,600.
The total fee payable would be £3,600 per annum.
If your investments are valued at £100,000 and you select Financial Planning service, at 1% the ongoing management fee we would receive is £1,000. As this is less than the minimum ongoing service fee for this service level, we would charge you an additional £1,400.
The total fee payable would be £2,400 per annum.
If your investments are valued at £50,000 and you select Core service, at 1% the ongoing management fee we would receive is £500. As this is less than the minimum ongoing service fee for this service level, we would charge you an additional £700.
The total fee payable would be £1,200 per annum.
If your investments are valued at £150,000 and you select Core service, at 1% the ongoing management fee we would receive is £1,500. As this exceeds our minimum ongoing service fee for this service level, there would not be any additional charge.
Our costs are dependent on the frequency of review you require and are based on the value of your investment(s).
Where the value of your investments rise, then the fees for this service will increase, conversely if the value of your investments fall, the cost of this service will decrease.
You can choose to pay these fees directly or by deduction from the investment(s) you hold. Should you wish to pay directly you can spread the payment over a 12 month period by standing order. At each 12 month anniversary we will work out total ongoing fees collected from your investment(s) and charge any remaining ongoing fees required according to our minimum charge based on your selected service levels.
When the level of on-going services has been agreed these are deemed to commence immediately and are payable monthly in arrears. You can choose to cancel this at any time by providing us with written confirmation of your decision. Payments would then cease within 7 business days or after collection of any due proportion of any period charges if later.
Other Charges
Depending on the services we provide, there may be costs and charges (including taxes), not charged by us, but related to the financial products we arrange for you. These charges may be one-off charges (payable up front) or charges payable on an ongoing basis. Examples overleaf.
Service costs: If your investments are held on a platform (an online investment administration service) or held with a DFM, the platform provider / DFM will make a charge for administering / managing your investments.
Investment costs: These are the costs relating to the manufacturing and managing of your investments – For example, fees charged by the investment fund manager, costs relating to investment transactions.
We’ll always disclose any third party costs as part of making our recommendations.
Aggregated Costs and Charges
Before we provide you with our advice we will add together all the costs and charges payable so that you are able to understand the overall costs of our services and recommendations. This is referred to as aggregated costs and charges information.
Initial consultation at no cost
To start your journey with Expert IFP, all you need to do is reach out to us and we will assess how we may be able to help. We ask that you complete the simple form below noting what specifically you are looking for help/guidance on and what your main objectives are. We’ll take it from there.