Barclays: advise caution...

jem16

whiteflag wrote: »

If clients wants to pay us that way , rather than writing a cheque.

For example, I did a lifestlye planning case recently which involved drawdown £250k) , personal pension £2,000 per month , offshore investment bond £100k , national savings and full ISAs . Using our hourly rates the fee came to just over £3k .

Client asked if we could take £3K commission from the drawdown to save vat , which is what we did. All the other products were on nil commision basis.

Sounds fairly similar to what Dunstonh said in Post 37 except he said 1% of amount invested with a £2000 cap.

or another way to look at it is that our lifestyle financial planning clients with over £165 K invested are getting a bloody good deal.

What happens to those of use with less than that though? £165k is an awful lot of money to me.

whiteflag_3

jem16 wrote: »

What happens to those of use with less than that though? £165k is an awful lot of money to me.

Everyone pays the same hourly rate and retainer so it doesnt matter. They are paying for the planning and advice remember, not the implementation.

As Ive already said our view is that the only fair way of doing things is charging the same rate for the same service. While I applaud Dh's charitable approach to his clients, I find this "our clients are not so wealthly so they get a Rolls Royce service for less money than I should be charging them" bizarre to say the least. I dont suppose they walk into their local Tesco and get a discount on their shopping becasue they are less well off?

jem16

whiteflag wrote: »

Everyone pays the same hourly rate and retainer so it doesnt matter. They are paying for the planning and advice remember, not the implementation.

Your initial fee for planning and implementation I can understand. (although personally I would prefer to know what I'm paying before starting)

The retainer fee though;

How much time is spent on the servicing of the client you mentioned earlier with drawdown £250k) , personal pension £2,000 per month , offshore investment bond £100k , national savings and full ISAs

compared with a client who needed an investment bond of £100k, no pension as there is a final salary pension, and ISA (with Bed & ISA each year from the bond)

I dont suppose they walk into their local Tesco and get a discount on their shopping becasue they are less well off?

No but they have the choice of going for the Tesco Value brand or the Heinz named brand.

whiteflag_3

How much time is spent on the servicing of the client you mentioned earlier with drawdown £250k) , personal pension £2,000 per month , offshore investment bond £100k , national savings and full ISAs

same time as we use the same lifstyle planning review process for all our clients

No but they have the choice of going for the Tesco Value brand or the Heinz named brand.

Yes , but Dh is giving his clients the Heinz brand for the Value brand price

nrsql

>> Barclays advisers at different branches across the country have been advising clients to cash in with-profit funds, bonds and other investments and put the lot into a single, high-risk unit trust. The advisers all chose the same unit trust in fact, which, incidentally, has high levels of trail commission.

If this is the Aviva balanced fund then I heard (I think - wasn't paying too much attention) on radio 4 that this fund had been re-evaluated. It was thought to be low risk then changed to high risk but this wasn't communicated to the investors.

From the Bacrlays wealth site

>> If you want a way to increase your income but do not accept the risks that investing in funds made up wholly of shares involve, then the Aviva Investors Global Income Funds might be the solution.


The man on the program to give a balance (don't think he was Barclays) basically said that it might have been appropriate for some investors. That was the best he could come up with.

nrsql

whiteflag wrote: »

Yes , but Dh is giving his clients the Heinz brand for the Value brand price

More likely giving the value brand at the value brand price rather than the damaged goods at the Heinz++ brand price.

Wouldn't it be nice if the norm in financial selling was to get value for money.

nrsql

wow
http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=184528&d=pnd2&h=pndh2&f=pndf2
Barclays does, however, have a complaints' department. The plumber is the only one yet to have had a reply to his complaint. Barclays told him that because he held "windfall shares" worth £8,500, he was an "experienced" investor who must have known the risk he was taking.

Didn't know that receiving free shares made you experienced.

jem16

pooter wrote: »

Do you not understand the difference?

Yes - do you not?

See the employment ads for IFAs. Most are currently paid in the same way as double-glazing salesmen.

Perhaps if you stop the IFA bashing EG you might get taken more seriously.

So now you want a "standard fee" that's variable?

So you have never heard the term standard variable rate?

And that would be clearer to everyone?

To agree a fee beforehand, whether paid through commission or by cheque, is the only way I want to do business. I don't want to see an IFA who tels me his charges will be £180 per hour but I don't know until he's finished how long it takes.

jem16

whiteflag wrote: »

same time as we use the same lifstyle planning review process for all our clients

If that's the case I would be pretty unhappy at spending £3k for all the inital planning plus £1180 pa (£1680 retainer fee minus £500 natural trail rebated) for my £100k investment when I could get the same work for £1k and £500 pa elsewhere.

Difficult to define "fairness".

Yes , but Dh is giving his clients the Heinz brand for the Value brand price

I doubt his clients will be complaining then.

whiteflag_3

jem16 wrote: »

If that's the case I would be pretty unhappy at spending £3k for all the inital planning plus £1180 pa (£1680 retainer fee minus £500 natural trail rebated) for my £100k investment when I could get the same work for £1k and £500 pa elsewhere.

with respect , how do you know you can get the same work elsewhere, if you dont know what work we do. We have been told by a company of IFA business change consultants that what we do is only being done by 5% of the UK's IFAs. We also use planning tools that have less than 1000 licences in the UK , when there are 30000 UK registered advisers.

I doubt his clients will be complaining then.[/QUOTE

]

does that make his model right then?