Our fees

Woodruff Financial Planning is a fee-based firm of financial advisers based in Colchester, Essex. We charge you for our time, advice, research and expertise just like any other professional service. If any adviser tells you their advice is free, do not believe them - they are not a charity! In fact they will probably be earning a commission from selling you a product. Commission is paid for through the charges of the product.

We believe that commission creates an inherent conflict of interest between your and our interests, as this payment method is intended to encourage use of certain product providers over others. After all, if your garage was paid only if they sold you a new part on your car, rather than for the service, do you think they would sell you a new part each time? Of course they would because that is how they would get paid; and they would certainly be more likely to recommend the most profitable part for them rather than you.

We work on a fixed fee basis, so that you can be sure of the cost to you, regardless of how long the work takes.

-- About us -- Our philosophy -- Key staff -- Why advice? -- Advice process -- Our fees -- Research tools -- Our location -- Testimonials --

Benefits to you of a fixed fee-based approach

• You get advice, not sales
  You don't want to be sold to, you want to get the right advice for your circumstances (not ours).
  
  
• Cut out bias from your decisions
  if an adviser is commission based, he will be incentivised to sell you a product. But what if the best advice is not to take out a product? For example, you might be better off to pay off your mortgage rather than save money. Would a commission-based adviser recommend this if he is not paid for it?
  
  
• Get the best product for your needs
  Since we strip out the commission costs, you can be sure that there are no hidden commission charges.
  
  
• You can clearly see how much we are paid for our work
  Many people feel uneasy when they do not know how much commission will be paid to arrange a product. We declare our position so everything is out in the open.
  
  
• Larger investments greatly benefit from this approach
  For those making larger investments we will take a smaller proportion of your investment than a commission-based adviser as our fee will be based on the work, not the size of the investment.

Click here to download our client brochures.

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Flexibility - Fee only or commission offset

We agree with you the cost of the work to be done before you commit to the process. This fee is payable whether any products are taken out - we provide the advice and expertise, along with unbiased research.

Fee only
If you select this option, we will take no commission from the contracts recommended, making the charges lower.

Commission offset
Alternatively, you can choose to ask us to take commission from the product to pay our bill. If there is too much, we will retain this on account to use against future services; if there is not enough, you will be liable for the balance.