231 Firms Charging Ongoing Advice % Fees but No Advice Given

As part of the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) thematic review of Retirement Income Advice, the FCA has already found 231 financial advisory firms that are charging an ongoing % adviser fee (usually around 1% of the value of pensions and investments) but then not actually delivering an ongoing service or annual review and advice for some clients.

Read the FCA’s Thematic Review.

Originally, the FCA delilvered a ‘Dear CEO’ letter to 20 of the largest advice firms warning that there investigations had found sigificant numbers of clients have an ongoing % fee charged to and deducted from their pension and investment funds but then receiving no ongoing advice or service.  Several advice firms reacted to this with St James’s Place allocating a staggering £426m for fee refunds and Quilters suggesting they were also looking to pay signifcant fee refunds.

Of the next round of firms investigated for the ongoing advice service for clients in 2022, 231 firms (out of 456) were found to have charged for ongoing advice and then not given any advice for some clients.  This lack of service affected over 6,100 clients out of a total of 213,000 clients for this next phase of the review.  That’s nearly 3% of all their clients. 

If we take this as an industry average, that’s nearly half of all advice firms charging for ongoing advice and not delivering advice to 3% of clients that are paying for it.  This is huge!

In response to the FCA, the 456 firms highlighted the following reasons for no advice given:

• 382 firms said some clients declined or did not respond to them.
• 157 firms admitted not having adequate records to monitor which clients were due an ongoing advice review.
• 29 firms admitted missing client reviews in error.
• 10 firms claimed lack of staff resources (yet they still took the money!).

Are you a consumer that is being charged a % for ongoing advice but never hear from your adviser?  It’s time to claim back the fees you have paid/had deducted.

Comment

We have championed the issue of banning ongoing % adviser fees for nearly 25 years and made countless warnings.  If an adviser is charging/getting paid 1% pa on your pension fund worth a modest £250,000 then they are getting paid £2,500 pa for doing nothing and if you have say just £30,000 in your fund, then you are unlikely to even get just a phone call from your adviser.  This is disgusting and why we have always offered a clean and transparent ongoing advice service at a fraction of the above costs.

Our Money MOT Service

Many of you will know, our ongoing advice service is called the Money MOT service with 4 service level options of Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum to give you choice and put you in control of what ongoing service you prefer.  We do not charge % of funds under management but charge specifc fees based upon the number of schemes that we review each year, again, meaning you only pay for what you need.

We do not just offer an annual review, we offer much more with our ongoing services at a fraction of the costs of the % model that so many advisers use.

Summary of what’s included in the Money MOT Service:

Ongoing/Optional regular 'Money MOT' Service (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum)

Introduction

Review

Blueprint

Platinum

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Alerts

MOT Fees

Apply

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