Our Fees

Our Fees

Initial services and fees

Your Financial Plan

£1,500

Our service starts with the creation of your Financial Plan. This includes: Helping you to set financial goals and understanding how to achieve them. Seeing where to save or spend money to minimise tax. Reviewing the suitability and cost of existing investments or cash savings. Identifying non-investment risks, such as dealing with the effects of health and life events. When your Plan is completed you will receive a report and clear set of action points, on which we are both agreed. Where action points require a Personal Recommendation for regulated financial products, additional implementation fees will apply as set out below. Alternatively, you are free to implement the action points yourself or with advice from other professional advisers.

Where your Financial Plan requires you to take out or change an investment or financial product, we have the expertise to provide you with a Personal Recommendation. Our recommendations will be provided in a separate Suitability Report and a separate implementation fee will apply.

Personal Recommendation	Implementation Fee
Investment Plan	0.5% of the amount invested (minimum £500)
Business Relief Investments	1.5% of the amount invested (minimum £2,000)
Annuity Purchase	1% of the annuity purchase price (minimum £750)
Pension Flexi-Access Drawdown	1% of the amount crystallised (minimum £750)
Pension Transfer (non-Safeguarded Benefits)	1% of the amount transferred (minimum £1,000)
New Cash Deposit	0.25% of the amount invested (minimum £250)
Pathway Fund Recommendation	0.25% of the amount invested (minimum £500)
Life Insurance	See Life Insurance Recommendations (page 10)
Mortgages	See Client Agreement Mortgage Planning
Equity Release	See Client Agreement Equity Release Planning

We also undertake work that does not fall within one of these specified services, for which we charge on an hourly basis at the rate of £180 per hour. We will work within a budget which can be agreed at outset.

You may ask us for an estimate of how much in total we might charge. You may also ask us not to exceed a given amount without checking with you first.

How our fees work in practice

Our initial fees are a mixture of a fixed fee for financial planning and a percentage fee if you engage us to implement your financial plan. For example, if you are taking our advice for an investment of £100,000, we charge a Financial Planning fee of £1,500 and an Implementation fee of 0.5%, or £500, making a total fee of £2,000. If you are taking our advice for an investment of £250,000 our Financial Planning fee is still £1,500 and our Implementation fee is 0.5%, or £1,000, making a total fee of £2,500. Our Implementation fees increase for more complex investments, such as Business Relief investments, and reduce for less complex investments such as cash savings.

Ongoing services and fees

The ongoing suitability of any products we have arranged for you will only be kept under review as part of an agreed ongoing service. We offer three levels of ongoing service and the services provided for each level are set out in the tables below.

No Ongoing Service
If you do not choose to receive an ongoing service from us, we will not provide any ongoing suitability or investment reviews unless explicitly requested by you. There will be a charge in line with our Client Agreement at the time. We may retain copy correspondence from your plan providers, but we will not be obliged to forward any correspondence to you.	No Ongoing Charge

Level 1 Services

Level 1 Fees

An annual review of your objectives, attitude to risk and capacity for loss, and a written review of your plan’s suitability Recommendations to keep your plans on track, such as increasing contributions or changing investment strategy Consolidated valuations, annually or on request 50% discount on new Financial Planning fees and top-ups to existing plans Transferring money between accounts (such as to use your ISA allowance) Online valuations and confidential file sharing Telephone and email access This service is intended for clients who have £120,000 or more to invest.

Our ongoing fee is 0.5% of money under advice, subject to a minimum fee of £900 per year. For a portfolio of £100,000, our fee would be the minimum fee of £900 per year payable in monthly instalments of £75. For a portfolio of £200,000, our fee would be 0.5% of £200,000 = £1,000 per year For a portfolio of £600,000, our fee would be 0.5% of £600,000 = £3,000 per year

Level 2 Services

Level 2 Fees

An annual Plan Dashboard providing an easy-to-read summary of your plans’ performance and progress against goals Recommendations to keep your plans on track, such as increasing contributions or changing investment strategy An annual review of your plans’ suitability Bespoke Portfolios, subject to suitability Consolidated valuations, annually or on request No charge for new Financial Planning or top-ups to existing plans Transferring money between accounts (such as to use your ISA allowance) A review of your inheritance tax position Online valuations and confidential file sharing Telephone and email access at all times This service is intended for clients who have £200,000 or more to invest.

Our ongoing fee is £600 per year plus 0.5% of money under advice, subject to a minimum fee of £1,500 per year. The fixed element of this fee (£600 pa) is not charged where money under advice exceeds £1,000,000. For a portfolio of £100,000, our fee would be the minimum fee of £1,500 per year (payable in monthly instalments of £125. For a portfolio of £200,000, our fee would be £600 plus 0.5% of £200,000 = £1,600 per year For a portfolio of £600,000, our fee would be £600 plus 0.5% of £600,000 = £3,600 per year For a portfolio of £1,000,000, our fee would be 0.5% of £1,000,000 = £5,000 per year

* A model portfolio is a mix of investment funds designed for clients with common investment objectives and attitudes to risk. The model is maintained centrally and reviewed at least six-monthly. You will be informed of any changes to the model and be invited to adopt the changes within your own investment plan. Changes will not be applied to your plan without your permission.

No Ongoing Service

You are not obliged to accept an ongoing service from us, in which case we will treat you as a Transaction-only client and will not charge an ongoing fee.

Some financial products, such as an annuity, do not require an ongoing service. However, other financial products, such as drawdown plans, need to be reviewed to ensure they remain suitable. This means that we will not recommend some financial products unless you agree to receiving an ongoing service for which we charge an ongoing fee. You will always be free to appoint a different financial adviser or to terminate our services, though this may affect the terms provided by your product provider.

VAT

Fees for financial advice which includes a personal recommendation to start a financial product are VAT exempt. This applies to most of the services we provide. However other types of advice, such as Financial Planning with no personal recommendation, are not VAT exempt. We will always tell you if you have to pay VAT before we undertake any work for you.

Commission Payments

Upper Street is not permitted to receive commission from providers of new Investment and Pension products we recommend to you. This includes any kind of inducement such as entertainment or business expenses.

We are permitted to receive commission from Life Insurance and Mortgage providers, and we recognise that often this can be a better way for clients to pay for the cost of advice because it spreads our fees over many years. We therefore offer clients the choice of paying a Fee or paying a Reduced Fee plus Commission for these types of Personal Recommendation.

Other Charges

Depending on the services we provide, there may be costs and charges (including taxes), not charged by us, but related to the financial products and services we arrange for you. These charges may be one-off charges (payable up front) or charges payable on an ongoing basis. For example:

• Service costs: If your investments are held on a platform (an online investment administration service) or held with a Discretionary Fund Manager (DFM), the platform provider or DFM will make a charge for administering or managing your investments.
  
• Investment costs: These are the costs relating to the manufacturing and managing of your investments – for example, fees charged by the investment fund manager, costs relating to investment transactions.

We’ll always disclose any third party costs as part of making our recommendations.
Before we provide you with our advice we will add together all the costs and charges payable so that you are able to understand the overall costs of our services and recommendations. This is referred to as aggregated costs and charges information.

HOW FEES ARE PAID
Paying our Initial Fees

Our fees are payable on completion of our work and must be settled within 14 business days.

Payment can be made either by:

1. Initial fees can be paid by cheque or bank transfer (we do not accept payments by cash or card).
2. You may also pay our fees via deductions from the financial product(s) that you might invest in, where the product provider allows this. Please note that if you choose to pay by deduction from a financial product this will reduce the amount left for investment and may, depending on your circumstances, have other consequences. Although you may pay nothing to us up front that does not mean that our service is free. You still pay us indirectly through deductions from the amount you pay into your product.
3. If your investments are held on a platform (a platform is an online investment administration service) you may choose to pay our fees out of the funds held within the platform cash account (where the platform provider offers this facility).

If you select option 2 or 3, we will discuss how it works and the implications of using this payment method with you prior to putting it in place.

Paying our Ongoing Fees

Payment of ongoing fees can be made either by:
1. A regular fee paid by standing order. The fee will be agreed annually in advance and paid monthly;
2. By deduction from your investments on a monthly basis, where the investment provider can offer this facility;
3. A combination of both.

Ongoing services can be cancelled at any time by simply informing us in writing but please note that we reserve the right to charge you for services provided prior to cancellation.