The ongoing fee, 0.65% a year, covers the annual review and everything in between. People are clear about what the initial plan buys them. The review is vaguer, so here is what the hour contains.
We ask what changed, before we look at any numbers
The first half is not about money. A new job, a new grandchild, a parent needing care, an illness, a business doing better or worse than expected, a plan to move, a plan to stop working two years earlier than you said last time.
Almost everything that makes a plan wrong is life rather than markets. A portfolio that is five per cent off target is a rounding error next to a client who has quietly decided to retire at sixty rather than sixty-five and has not told anybody.
Then we run the plan again
Your cashflow model is rebuilt with the real numbers: what you actually spent, what you actually earned, what everything is actually worth. We show you the same picture you saw last year with a year of reality in it.
Most years it moves less than people expect. When it moves a lot, it is usually spending rather than returns, and that is a more useful conversation than a discussion of funds.
The housekeeping
Four things get checked every year, without you having to remember them:
- Allowances. ISA, pension contributions, the dividend and capital gains allowances if they apply to you, and whether anything should be moved before April.
- Tax rules that changed, and whether any of them touch you. Most years, one does.
- The portfolio against its target, and whether the scheduled rebalance did what it should.
- Your expression of wish, your will and your beneficiaries. This is the dullest item on the list and the one that has saved our clients the most money.
Often the answer is that nothing needs doing
Somewhere between a third and a half of reviews end with no changes at all. That feels like a strange thing to pay for, and it is worth saying plainly why it is not.
An adviser paid by commission has to do something to get paid. An adviser paid a fee can tell you that your plan is working and that the best action this year is none. If we only ever earned our fee by moving your money, you would be right to wonder why there was always something to move.
What you get afterwards
A short written summary: what changed, what we did, what we deliberately did not do, and the two or three things to watch before next year. It goes to you within a week, in language your family could read without us in the room.
If something significant changes between reviews — a redundancy, an inheritance, a sale, a diagnosis — do not wait for the anniversary. Ring us. There is no charge for a phone call, and the conversations that save the most are nearly always the unscheduled ones.
Where it happens
Most reviews are at the office on Rodney Street, some are on a video call, and a few are at kitchen tables, which is usually where the honest conversation happens anyway.
An hour, once a year, whichever of the three of us knows your file best. If you are due one and have not heard from us, that is our mistake: ring 0151 555 0188 and Sarah will find you a date.
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