Financial Advisors - True Potential

SonOf

CFrood said:

Thanks CapitalOne and SonOf.
The platform fee is 0.4%, fund fee 0.8% and 0.5% advisor fee. 

By comparison, one we did earlier this week was 0.16% for platform, 0.25% for funds and 0.5% for adviser.   IFA platforms have been getting cheaper over the last year and 0.1x%-0.2x% is more typical nowadays.

SonOf

fred246 said:

'Whole of market' always makes me laugh. An IFA gave me quotes for life insurance. She had scoured the 'whole of the market' for ages to get me the best deal. Our of interest I quickly googled life insurance and 10 minutes later had a better quote from Tesco. £5 a month cheaper. £1500 cheaper for the lifetime of the policy so I took it out. She was absolutely furious because she missed out on her commission. She wanted me to be £1500 worse off.

Tesco life assurance was a reviewable plan with GIO options stripped out.  Reviewable premiums are rarely advised as best advice but you do pay less if you choose that option.

Tesco were not providing advice either.  So, they did not need to factor that into their premium.  So, it is not comparable on a like for like basis.

fred246

SonOf said:

fred246 said:

'Whole of market' always makes me laugh. An IFA gave me quotes for life insurance. She had scoured the 'whole of the market' for ages to get me the best deal. Our of interest I quickly googled life insurance and 10 minutes later had a better quote from Tesco. £5 a month cheaper. £1500 cheaper for the lifetime of the policy so I took it out. She was absolutely furious because she missed out on her commission. She wanted me to be £1500 worse off.

Tesco life assurance was a reviewable plan with GIO options stripped out.  Reviewable premiums are rarely advised as best advice but you do pay less if you choose that option.

Tesco were not providing advice either.  So, they did not need to factor that into their premium.  So, it is not comparable on a like for like basis.

It was not a reviewable plan. Why post when you don't know what you are talking about? The only advice the IFA gave was that she had checked the 'whole of the market'. Obviously hadn't bothered with Tesco!

CFrood

I've had a read through some some of the other threads here and also other comparison sites. What I'm hearing is that what my FA suggested wasn't totally unreasonable, but it is expensive and there are much cheaper options available. The cheapest is to DIY (as fred246 found), but only if you know what you're doing, otherwise you need to pay someone to do the work for you. People who use the TP platform seem happy with it despite the cost, as it's very user-friendly and customer support is good. However, the best option for me is to find a real IFA (not necessarily the very cheapest, preferably recommended, and one I will feel comfortable working with) who will be able to select from a wide range of platforms/funds rather than just their own company's offerings. Meanwhile, I need to wise up about pensions and investments!
I'm so grateful for all your replies (and previous posts), they've been very helpful.   

Mick70

this is interesting as i was approached by them for a pension platform and had some reservations

mick

iwannbejockmctavish

I don't know if anyone can give me some information on True Potential.  My IFA is advising to move from Nucleus SIPP to a TP Personal Pension, on the basis that the technology platform that TP are using is based on Blockchain and is therefore more secure, utilises Open Banking (not going to use that) and allows a secure depository for documents and data.  I can stay where I am and I guess my IFA may see some incentive but I don't see it and there hasn't been much information to back this recommendation up.  I saw one of the financial sites describe TP as a 'robo platform'.  There would be a 0.01 advantage to me in the fees, really???  Any links to information would be of a great help, thanks.

[Deleted User]

iwannbejockmctavish said:

I don't know if anyone can give me some information on True Potential.  My IFA is advising to move from Nucleus SIPP to a TP Personal Pension, on the basis that the technology platform that TP are using is based on Blockchain and is therefore more secure, utilises Open Banking (not going to use that) and allows a secure depository for documents and data.  I can stay where I am and I guess my IFA may see some incentive but I don't see it and there hasn't been much information to back this recommendation up.  I saw one of the financial sites describe TP as a 'robo platform'.  There would be a 0.01 advantage to me in the fees, really???  Any links to information would be of a great help, thanks.

Interesting that the incentive to move was technical. Blockchain - okay in theory an immutable ledger - but if you have enough firewalls in place then the platform isn't going to get hacked.

Amateurretiree

I’m not one to make any recommendations as I hardly know anything but my OH has his SIPP with TP( I have an NHS pension so it’s DB ) and he is now in drawdown as he retired a year ago.
We were recommended TP by DH’s work colleague.
I have to say, we have had good service off them, they obviously came and did the whole risk tolerance thing and we are in cautious funds. Although we did have a bit of a dip at the start of all of this we are almost back to where we were started.
I like the technology, we can log in any time and see the status of the funds, all transactions and also the fund allocation.I have tried to learn a bit about equities/ bonds etc so I like that I can see what percentage of each we have etc .
Also our ‘advisor’, who I know is not an IFA he works for TP after all, has been very helpful and is always accessible.
I must admit I was a bit nervous at first as I read a few negative things on here about them in terms of their fees but so far we are happy with them.

iwannbejockmctavish

@Amateurretiree Thanks for that.  The problem is, I can log into my fund too and see all of the same information as you have indicated.  I'm not getting 'the move'.  Also the IFA sent me some additional info on TP that I've already found doing my own search on the web, not very hard to do.  I would have thought he may have had access to 'industry info' that could back up his recommendation.  I'm inclined to stay where I am for the time being, my fund has also recovered to a much better place and I can see no real evidence of any benefits to me if I move.

dunstonh

  My IFA is advising to move from Nucleus SIPP to a TP Personal Pension, on the basis that the technology platform that TP are using is based on Blockchain and is therefore more secure, utilises Open Banking (not going to use that) and allows a secure depository for documents and data.

Whilst TP is available to IFAs, it is mainly used by reps of TP.    I would not be surprised to see an IFA recommending a move to TP are planning to drop their IFA status once they know they have enough people moving to TP.

The "blockchain" reason, to me, seems like there is no real justification and that is the only difference and they need to say something.   Desperate comes to mind.

I can stay where I am and I guess my IFA may see some incentive

There is no incentive for the IFA unless they drop their IFA status and become an FA.  TP take on most of the costs that an IFA would have to pay themselves.

 I saw one of the financial sites describe TP as a 'robo platform'.

Its not.

There would be a 0.01 advantage to me in the fees, really??

Ask your IFA why they are not recommending a platform like Standard Life Elevate or even Aviva (both cheaper than Nucleus. Aviva's software is not quite as good but they are buying business with cheap deals and getting 0.1x or low 0.2x is possible - the more you have and younger you are, the more they discount).