ICR170: It’s all about charges
How much are you paying for financial advice and investment products?
In this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Nick Bamford to chat about fees, charges and the cost of financial advice.
The Sunday Times recently published an article which was critical of the charges levied by tied adviser St James Place, with particular criticism of their exit charges of up to 6% on some financial products.
We also hear a lot about the cost of fund management charges, particularly with reference to lower cost index tracker funds.
And there’s a lot of debate about what financial advisers charge, whether investors should pay a percentage of their money to invest, or a flat fee.
Nick and I spend some time in this episode talking about the fees investors typically pay, some of the different remuneration structures offered by financial advisers, understanding value for money when it comes to fees, and the importance of fee transparency.
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Personal finance news update
Our newsreader this week is Informed Choice paraplanner Kelvin Riches.
-The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold at 0.25% whilst increasing its forecast for growth in the UK economy.
-Annual house price inflation weakened in January, falling to its lowest level since November 2015.
-Brits lack a plan for passing on wealth to future generations, according to a new survey.
-Widespread confusion over financial terms means millions of people may be taking out important policies or products without completely understanding what cover the product offers.
-Savings protection available from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, the FSCS, has risen by £10,000 this week.
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Listener question
David Horton from Brisbane in Australia writes in with the following question that we answer in this episode:
The rule on ‘don’t borrow to invest”; does that apply to borrowing to buy a “buy to let” property? Saving to buy outright would be impossible or very slow, and I think would run you up against rule 10, don’t pay too much tax. Though I guess such savings pay so little interest the tax would be minimal.
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Get answers to your personal finance questions
Do you have a personal finance or investing question for Martin?
Email martin@icfp.co.uk or ask on Twitter @martinbamford.
You can call our dedicated podcast voicemail line on 020 8144 2745 with your question or visit www.icradio.co.uk/voicemail to leave an online voice message.
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Aftershow links
–Martin’s book review on Medium
–Being Mortal by Atwul Gawande
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