One of Britain’s largest independent financial advice firms removed a document from its website that disclosed the high fees its customers are charged — only to put the details back after being contacted by The Times.
After last week’s Times exposé on the sales culture at Chase de Vere, the firm took down the link for a 6,600-word brochure that outlined most of its fees and charges. The document was available on the firm’s website when The Times revealed how top-performing advisers, who are understood to earn more than FTSE 100 bosses, were able to win luxury all-expenses-paid trips.
Calculations showed that Chase customers who invested £100,000 could end up paying £100,000 in fees over 20 years, eating into half of their profits. Last week the company’s Private Client Terms of Business document was no longer available on its website.
When Times Money raised the issue, Chase claimed that the document was never published on its website and was not removed. It was only intended for use by its advisers to send to prospective clients. Later that day it said the document may have accidentally become available via a Google search. However, it stated that the document would now be made available on its website.
On top of this, the firm published a slimmed-down version of its charges online that was aimed at customers, including its upfront “initial” and annual “ongoing” advice fees.
However, this new fees web page left out many charges. These include fees for moving money into an Isa, re-balancing a portfolio and transferring money between different funds. Most other wealth managers do not charge separate fees for these services, instead including them within their annual fee.
Chase manages about £10 billion for 16,000 clients and levies a fee of up to 3 per cent for these procedures on up to £499,999, according to the Terms of Business document. This is on top of its annual advice charge of up to 1.08 per cent. Schroders Personal Wealth, St James’s Place and Hargreaves Lansdown include these simple services in their annual fees of up to 0.65, 0.5 and 0.438 per cent respectively.
Mark Polson of the Lang Cat, an analyst, said: “Most firms include all normal portfolio services in their ongoing charge. This normally includes portfolio re-balancing and all ongoing advice services. It’s unusual to find firms who charge explicitly for such activities. I’d expect any firm that does so to charge a lower ongoing fee than the market.”
When Times Money queried the lack of detail in Chase’s new fees page, the company said it would add more of its charges “within 48 hours”, and did so by yesterday morning.
There is no regulatory requirement on advice firms to publish their fees. There are also no rules about what initial and ongoing fees should cover.
Chase said that it was transparent when it came to fees, and that it focused on long-term client satisfaction.
Source: The Times