How can I decide?

jazzy23

dunstonh said:

but when we rang two local to us IFAs they weren't interested in our business as the sums of money involved at the time were not large enough. One offered to have a look but was very clear that the fees would be better place in a pension or ISA than spent on advice. Told me that generally they don't look at portfolios that are under 500k.

£500k is very high.  I have seen £250k but more typically its around £100k.     

A quote from their FAQs on their website says:

"As we operate on a discretionary basis, we are not only free to use the financial products from all financial institutions (the same as an Independent Financial Adviser), but by employing professional Investment Managers, we can also invest directly into the underlying investments of these products i.e. directly into investments such as corporate bonds, gilts and shares. Therefore, we can establish truly bespoke investment portfolios for our clients, choosing investments from the whole investment universe and importantly, without any restrictions."

The text in bold seems to indicate that this company is NOT an IFA. It is the only place I have found on their website that states anything about their independence or otherwise.

They are not IFAs.  They are FAs (restricted) and do not offer the same as an IFA.    They retail their own branded products and their own investment DFM service.

They also charge VAT on their advice charges even though intermediation is non-vatable.  IFAs won't be charging VAT.



That is very expensive even before you put VAT on.

For example, IFA option for annual ongoing:   IFA 0.50%.   Investments 0.09%, DFM 0.09%.  Platform 0.15% and no VAT on any of it = 0.83% p.a.     (IFAs also don't have to use DFMs but can choose any from the marketplace.  And IFAs can use advisory portfolios rather than DFMs).

Its worth noting that their own-brand DFM can select from the marketplace but that is no different to most restricted FA offerings.  Even SJP could say the same.   The difference is that an IFA can pick from any DFM that offers services to the whole of market as well as picking any investments available to the whole of market.   Whereas an FA gets only their in-house offering.

For example:  here you have morningstars's DFM listing:
https://www.managed-portfolio.com/data
Its not comprehensive and an awful lot of firms are missing and the filter options are very basic as you need to pay to get more details/options.  However, there are a lot of DFMs on that list and if you click on 3 year performance annualised, it will sort in order.

If you go to an FA, you are in their option.  If you go to an IFA, you have the lot available to you.
Restricted options won't appear in tables 

@dunstanoh
The ifa, I believe I had the quote from, was recommending managing a
Three funds in an aviva sipp, charging 2.3% to move it and 1% to mange it. My pension is currently  worth 200K. I could simply  use his recommendations although I don't think one of the funds is available on the aviva platform when I looked