Will IFAs give you one-off advice without the ongoing review?

Malthusian

ajfielden said:

Just got off the phone to an advisor. I still don't get their charging model.
He tells me that he can review my current pensions, and provide plans. So if I choose to accept a plan, which presumably will involve transferring pensions from one place to another, at that point he gets paid a percentage of those assets.
If I choose not to accept the plan, he gets paid nothing. So potentially he's done all the legwork of gathering information about pensions and reviewing everything, for nothing.
And also with this charging model, is there immediately an incentive for him to get me to accept transfers?
Why not pay up front for the work of doing the assessment and producing plans?
Nobody appears to want to work on that basis.

Not many clients want it. If you pay for a job in advance the tradesman has little incentive to get the job done any time soon.

A professional who has numerous projects on the go can bear the disconnect between getting the work done and getting paid more easily than the individual customer can bear the disconnect between paying and getting the work done.

Long term financial plans should be reviewed regularly, annually at minimum. Most people who want some help with the initial review also want help with the next annual review and the one after that.

One-off transactional advice is a niche. There is nothing wrong with it, but all niche markets usually require a bit more legwork to find someone who will serve it.

That free advice is what I mentioned in my previous post. That the advisor has gathered information about my current pension assets, reviewed it, given me advice on my early retirement plan, and come up with investment plans, which I can either take or not.

Unless he's given you a specific, personalised recommendation it's not financial advice.

davethebb said:

I am having exactly the same problems in finding a good IFA to give general advice. Some I have found to be linked to various companies that indicate that maybe they are no so independent after all. One I have found and liked seems to have connections to "Tenet Group" and that is putting me off using them as I am not sure how independent it makes them. 
What is the best way to find a good IFA?

The best way is to ask someone you trust to recommend someone they have taken advice from for many years (or can otherwise vouch for, e.g. they received a recommendation like that in turn).
Failing that, the second best way is to contact a few independent advisers in your area until you find one you get on with.

LV_426

Malthusian said:

Failing that, the second best way is to contact a few independent advisers in your area until you find one you get on with.

Yes, the search goes on.

Linton

The problem I see with the sort of "advice" the OP wants is:

Suppose the OP finds an IFA and goes over his retirement plans with them.  The IFA asks a few questions, comes up with some suggestions and then says "looks OK to me".  The OP goes away happy but 10 years later his investments have been a disaster and he is clearly going to run out of money far too early.  Can the OP claim compensation from the IFA?  If not why not?

If he can, is an IFA  going to put themselves in that position for the want of going through a full fact find, assessment of risk tolerance, financial modelling etc etc and a full set of documented  and caveated recommendations based on a portfolio of carefully chosen investments.  I cant see them risking their future on what may be a randomly chosen set of funds that looked good at the time.

[Deleted User]

Linton said:

The problem I see with the sort of "advice" the OP wants is:

Suppose the OP finds an IFA and goes over his retirement plans with them.  The IFA asks a few questions, comes up with some suggestions and then says "looks OK to me".  The OP goes away happy but 10 years later his investments have been a disaster and he is clearly going to run out of money far too early.  Can the OP claim compensation from the IFA?  If not why not?

If he can, is an IFA  going to put themselves in that position for the want of going through a full fact find, assessment of risk tolerance, financial modelling etc etc and a full set of documented  and caveated recommendations based on a portfolio of carefully chosen investments.  I cant see them risking their future on what may be a randomly chosen set of funds that looked good at the time.

Then the adviser is in the wrong job.  Any consultant doing business is at risk of being sued in the future, whatever that business may be. Nobody is ever obliged to pay money in perpetuity.  You take responsibility for your advice rather than for whatever an advised person does in the future. 

Ibrahim5

The perfect business for an IFA is to have a few rich clients paying ongoing fees and it's off to play golf. Not rich they don't want to know. No ongoing fees they don't want to know.

Fabtasia

ajfielden said:

The IFA sent me a letter of authority, which is fine. However this letter also includes a statement to transfer all servicing rights to them. So am I right in thinking this would then start to pay them any trail commission/fees etc associated with the pension fund?

Go Back To them and get them to amend the letter. That's what I did and they were happy to do so.

Dale72

IFAs will only suggest ongoing dealings with them, if it's in your best interests, LOOOOOOOOOOL

OldMusicGuy

You can get one-off advice from Hargreaves Lansdown (see https://www.hl.co.uk/financial-advice). Now before everyone says they are not independent, they have a very large selection of funds to choose from, not quite whole of market but enough for most people. I used this service and they do a fairly thorough review of what you have, talk about your goals and risk profile and will recommend a portfolio for you. At no point did they try to push HL products (like the HL Multi-manager funds)

However, as I said on your other thread, it was ultimately a waste of money. My own investing style is based around diversified, low cost multi-asset funds and it's working well for me. At the time I took the advice, I didn't know the difference between active and passive funds, I didn't have a proper understanding of investment risk and I didn't know what a fund of funds was. If I had, I would have interacted differently with the FA. Maybe if you go in armed with the knowledge you have gained from this site and the John Edwards book (and hopefully some other reading), you will get better value out of the service.

I think this is probably the closest to what you are looking for, because their business model seems to be more transactional. 

dunstonh

You can get one-off advice from Hargreaves Lansdown (see https://www.hl.co.uk/financial-advice). Now before everyone says they are not independent, they have a very large selection of funds to choose from, not quite whole of market but enough for most people. 

two issues here.  HL's platform is around twice the cost of a platform from an IFA.   Plus, HL now use their own brand funds.

 I used this service and they do a fairly thorough review of what you have, talk about your goals and risk profile and will recommend a portfolio for you. At no point did they try to push HL products (like the HL Multi-manager funds)

IIRC, this was before they changed their process.

want_to_save

Fabtasia said:

ajfielden said:

The IFA sent me a letter of authority, which is fine. However this letter also includes a statement to transfer all servicing rights to them. So am I right in thinking this would then start to pay them any trail commission/fees etc associated with the pension fund?

Go Back To them and get them to amend the letter. That's what I did and they were happy to do so.

Ask them to provide you with a Letter of Authority for Information only to sign that way they can obtain the information but do not transfer the servicign rights across