When it comes to fees, you need a firm that offers excellent value for money.

Our first meeting together is at our expense.

We strive to find out all about you and your goals and objectives. What does money mean to you? What are your ambitions in life?

The Discovery Meeting can occur at your home or office, at our offices in Cranleigh, or remotely via Zoom or Teams. It’s up to you.

Following this first meeting, we write to you with a personalised engagement letter confirming the services we will provide and the precise cost of those services.

The fees we charge are based on several factors, including:

-The complexity of your financial situation. As well as having to gather information about you, your income, expenditure assets and liabilities, we collect data from product providers to ensure we provide the very best advice to you;

-We will use our team’s extensive technical skills and experience to analyse the data we have captured and apply that to your goals and objectives before providing our recommendations;

-We always prepare a comprehensive Financial Plan to ensure that the advice we provide fits into your plan and reflects what you are trying to achieve in your life with your financial resources.

-We present our findings to you in two stages. The first is a Strategy Meeting where we present your lifetime cash flow forecasts and carry out “What if?” scenario modelling to identify how you might achieve your goals and objectives;

-The second stage is a Sense Check Meeting where we present your financial planning document and implement any advice and recommendations we have made to you. A chance to ask and have answered any questions that you may have about your plan.

RH was an existing client of Informed Choice for whom we had provided a complete Financial Plan some years previously. He had now retired and wanted to determine the best course of action regarding benefits he held in a previous employer’s defined benefits pension scheme.

To provide such advice, we needed to update his Financial Plan regarding all of his income and expenditure, assets and liabilities. This update meant we could prepare multiple lifetime cash flow forecasts. We tested the consequences of retaining those pension benefits and taking them from the scheme in the form of a pension commencement lump sum (PCLS) or transferring to a personal pension arrangement and taking the benefits in the form of flexible access drawdown.

As well as updating all of our existing records, we also had to acquire complete details of his defined pension benefits and the available cash equivalent transfer value. Our technical team carried out an Appropriate Pension Transfer Analysis and a Transfer Value Comparison and prepared reports in respect of both.

We then linked the calculations to the goals and objectives that RH had expressed and considered some “what if?” scenarios in the cash flow forecasts.

The most appropriate course of action for this client was to transfer his benefits to a personal pension arrangement. We provided advice regarding a pension product that satisfied his requirements in terms of low cost, the provider’s financial security, and access to a wide range of investment funds.

Based on his attitude towards investment risk and reward, we prepared recommendations for a portfolio of investment funds into which his cash equivalent transfer value could be invested. We then executed the transfer from the scheme to the recommended pension plan.

Our fee for this project was £9,750 for the Financial Planning, advice and implementation of his plan.

The fee we charged reflects the degree of work involved, the expertise we needed to use, and the additional regulatory risk and Professional Indemnity Insurance costs associated with this type of advice.

D had just stopped working for a large firm in the City of London. He was a highly paid executive and was used to receiving a substantial monthly salary in addition to significant yearly bonus payments. For D & his partner R, their main concern was how they were going to manage when the salary stopped being paid?

They had, over time, accumulated a significant investment portfolio from which they could choose to take an income. In addition, D had a very substantial guaranteed pension accumulated during his long career.

D’s pension vastly exceeded the current Lifetime Allowance limit. Still, some years previously, we had advised him about applying for protection against the Lifetime Allowance tax charge, and he had followed our advice.

The Financial Planning process we went through together reassured them that they did indeed have enough financial resources to have the retirement lifestyle they were looking forward to.

Some of D’s colleagues had “cashed in” their guaranteed pension income in return for a lump sum to be paid into a pension plan. However, for D & R, it made sense for them to keep the guaranteed pension coming into their bank account to replace a significant part of D’s previous salary.

This meant that they could look at their investment portfolio like a fund into which they might dip to pay for one-off events and to help their children with gifts in the future.

The lifetime cash flow figures contained in their Financial Plan gave them the absolute reassurance that they were looking for

Our fee for our professional services was £6,550.

We meet with you at least once per year to review your plans and check your progress against objectives. This is so important because in our experience it is the investments and retirement plans that are reviewed on a regular basis that tend to perform in line with expectations over the longer term.

We work with you each year to make sure that you keep on track to achieve your financial planning goals and objectives.

Not only do we look at the management of your investment and pension portfolios but we also review all the key items that you need to consider.

Each week we send you an email newsletter. This is designed to keep you up to date with the important things that are taking place in the financial world. We hope this stimulates questions from you and keeps you thinking about your financial plans.

Our annual wealth check agenda is as follows;

1 – An update of your financial situation and any changes to your financial goals and objectives;

2 – A strategic review of your portfolio examining the asset allocation mix;

3 – A review of the underlying investment funds and an examination of their ongoing suitability;

4 – A discussion of the investment recommendations that we may make to you;

5 – A review of any debt that you may have and how that might be managed;

6 – A review of your income tax, inheritance tax and capital gains tax position;

7 – An update of your pension entitlements;

8 – A review of any protection plans that you may have;

9 – A review of your estate planning, wills and power of attorney;

10 – Sorting out your paperwork (what to keep and what to get rid of);

11 – A wider family view (children, grandchildren and elderly parents or relatives) and their needs;

12 – Updating your professional connections (Accountants and Solicitors)

We use this as the agenda for our review meeting together and believe it will add real value to your financial wellbeing.