When someone is new to a professional financial planning service, they don’t always know what to expect in terms of fees. If their only previous experience of financial advice was from someone who sold them a pension, it takes a shift in perception to understand the value a good financial planner can bring.

It’s not uncommon to meet people who think they’ve not been charged for previous advice and that’s usually because they were not told how. They may not have written out a cheque to the adviser but of course they were paying through the charges taken off their investments or through commission payments added to their product fees.

There’s an element of education needed to raise awareness of how a good financial planner can be worth their weight in gold (don’t worry we’re not moving to a new charging model!). 

When you’re paying an annual fee or an hourly rate for financial advice, you’re paying for the expertise and service you receive. Just as you’d pay a lawyer for legal advice or a doctor for their expert opinion. The team at LIFT are amongst the highest qualified in the country. Their level of attainment sets them apart from most advisers but that doesn’t mean we charge more than other firms. Our approach has always been to be open and transparent with charges and we have processes in place to make sure clients pay a fair fee. For every client we track the time spent on their account and review this every year to make sure fees reflect this.

What price do you put on peace of mind?

Financial good health is an important factor in quality of life. It’s not necessarily about being wealthy, but about having the reassurance that you’ve planned for the future and being confident that you’ve taken the right steps to make the most of your assets. A great quote from a client of LIFT was that we were his ‘sleep at night solution’ – peace of mind is priceless.