Concerned about commission hungry salesmen?

Research shows that commission-based advisers are up to 6 times more likely to give poor advice than advisers who charge fees. Click here for a leaflet on this subject. Why is this? Because of a conflict of interest. We are fee based so you pay us for our expertise, advice and time, not the sales we make. We will agree a fee with you before we do any work, so you know how much our advice will cost. You can then either choose to pay us a fee for our advice with commission boosting your plan, or to offset our fee with commission from the solutions we recommend. This offsetting either reduces or eliminates your bill; if the commission is more than our bill, we do not rip you off by keeping it as extra profit - we will retain this on account for you against future advice. This way you can be sure that we do not need to try to sell you policies that you do not need.

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An example of how fee-based advice works in practice

• Commission offset
  Let's say you come to us needing advice on a mortgage and also want to ensure that you are covered should the worst happen. We therefore do some research into the best mortgages for your needs and come up with appropriate recommendations. We also help you to set up some life cover so that your mortgage is paid off in the event of death, and also income protection to ensure that you still have an income should you be too sick to work.
  
  In this example, the fee is £1000. The commission from the contracts set up is £500 for the mortgage, £350 for the life cover, and £400 for the income protection. These figures are used for this example only, and do not reflect actual fees or commissions. In our scenario you are faced with a bill from us for £1000, and commission received of £1250. Therefore the commission will completely offset our bill, leaving you with nothing to pay (unless you cancel the products and leave us with commission to repay).
  
  What happens to the excess? Well, unlike other advisers, we don't think it is fair to keep the excess as extra profit, so we will retain the £250 against future advice. This means that you could have some 'free' advice when you need it next.
  
  Click here for a leaflet on the commission offset option.
  
• Fees
  In another example, let's say you have £50,000 to invest. We do all the research for you and the bill comes to £1000. The likely commission for this transaction would be between 3% and 7.25% of the investment. That's £1500 to £3635. Taking the extreme you would be far better off paying us £1000, and having the commission going straight back to you to enhance your contract. This would increase your investment by the amount of the commission, making your actual investment £53635!. By paying us using the fee route, you would gain an extra £2635.

Need to find out more?
Click here to find out more about our payment options.

Click here to speak to us about our fee structure.

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