Initial vs Ongoing Advice Fees

When people talk about “what an adviser costs”, they usually picture a single number. In reality there are almost always two, and keeping them apart is the key to not overpaying. There is the cost of getting advice, the one-off work of building a plan, and the cost of keeping it, the annual fee for looking after that plan indefinitely. They are separate decisions, and the second one, repeated every year, is where the real money adds up.

This guide draws the line clearly: what the initial fee covers, what the ongoing fee covers, the typical numbers in 2026, when an annual charge genuinely earns its keep, and the rights you have to review or cancel it. It builds on our overview of how much financial advice costs, and as ever it is information rather than personal advice: the value of investments can fall as well as rise.

Two separate charges

Think of it like buying and then maintaining. The initial fee buys you the plan: the discovery meetings, the analysis, the recommendation and the paperwork to put it in place. The ongoing fee maintains it: the reviews that keep it aligned with your life, the rebalancing that keeps the risk where you want it, and the tax planning that adapts as allowances and rules shift year to year. You can buy without maintaining, take the plan and run it yourself, but you cannot maintain without first buying.

The reason the distinction matters so much is arithmetic. A one-off initial fee, however large, is paid once. An ongoing fee is paid every single year, and against a growing portfolio it grows too. Over a decade, the ongoing charge usually dwarfs the initial one, which is why it deserves far more scrutiny than it typically gets. Many people fixate on negotiating the initial fee and wave through the annual one, when it is the annual one that will cost them most over time.

What the initial fee covers

The initial fee pays for the heavy lifting at the start of a relationship. That means gathering the full picture of your finances, understanding your goals and appetite for risk, modelling different scenarios, researching suitable options across pensions, ISAs and investments, writing a formal recommendation, and then implementing it, opening accounts, transferring money and getting everything invested. It is genuinely substantial work, and it is where most of the intellectual value of advice is created.

Initial fees are commonly charged either as a percentage of the money involved, often around 1%–3%, or as a fixed sum, frequently in the £1,000–£5,000 range for a defined piece of work, and more for complex cases such as tax planning across several wrappers or estate work. On larger sums a fixed or hourly basis can be far better value than a percentage: a comparison worth running whenever the money involved is substantial, because 2% of £600,000 is £12,000 for work that might equally be quoted at a fraction of that as a fixed fee.

It is reasonable to expect the initial fee to feel like the bigger of the two at the outset, and that is by design: the first year is when the real thinking happens. What you are paying for is not paperwork but judgement, the decisions about how much risk to take, which tax wrappers to use, how to sequence contributions and withdrawals, and how the whole plan fits together. Done well, that work can be worth many times its cost over a lifetime. Done badly, or not at all, the mistakes it would have prevented can be far more expensive than any fee. This is the part of advice that is hardest to replicate yourself, and the part where a good adviser most clearly earns their keep.

What the ongoing fee covers

The ongoing fee buys a service, not a product, and the quality of that service varies enormously. At its best it includes a proper annual review of your plan against your goals, rebalancing to keep your portfolio on its intended risk level, active use of tax allowances such as the £20,000 ISA allowance and the £60,000 pension annual allowance each year, clear reporting, and access to your adviser when life changes. In turbulent markets it also buys behavioural discipline: the steady voice that stops a panic sale at the bottom, which research repeatedly suggests is where much of an adviser’s real value lies.

At its worst, an ongoing fee buys an annual letter and little else while the percentage quietly ticks over. This is precisely the gap the regulator’s Consumer Duty is designed to close, and it is why you should insist on a written description of the ongoing service before you sign up to it. Know what the fee is meant to provide, and you have the means to check each year that you received it, which is the difference between paying for a service and paying for silence.

The typical numbers

Figures vary by firm, region and complexity, but the 2026 shape of the market is reasonably consistent. The table below sets out the common ranges so you can sanity-check any quote you receive.

Notice that the ongoing figure, though the smallest percentage, is the only one you pay repeatedly. That is the number to interrogate hardest, and the reason so many confident investors take one-off advice and then manage the plan themselves. It is also why the total you pay across advice, platform and funds, not the adviser fee in isolation, is the figure that ultimately matters.

Is ongoing advice worth it?

The honest answer is: sometimes. Ongoing advice tends to earn its fee where your situation is genuinely dynamic, sizeable investments, a business, changing income, estate planning, or simply the wish to hand the whole job to a professional and get on with life. It tends to be poor value where your affairs are stable, your plan is simple, and you are comfortable running it yourself after an initial piece of advice.

A useful test is to ask what would actually change between one annual review and the next. If the answer is “a great deal”: you are drawing a pension, managing tax across several pots, or approaching a big decision: the ongoing relationship likely pays for itself. If the answer is “very little”, a periodic fixed-fee review every few years may serve you just as well for a fraction of the cost. Deciding between the two is one of the most valuable choices you will make, and we explore it further in our answer to whether a financial adviser is worth it.

There is a middle path many people overlook. You do not have to choose between an open-ended ongoing fee and going it entirely alone. Some advisers offer an “advice on demand” or fixed-fee review model, you pay the initial fee to build the plan, then return every two or three years, or when something significant changes, and pay a fresh fixed fee for a proper review. For settled investors with a straightforward plan, this can capture most of the value of ongoing advice at a fraction of the cumulative cost. The point is to match the frequency and cost of advice to how much your life and your money actually change, not to default into an annual percentage simply because it is the standard offer.

Consumer Duty and your protection

Since 2023, the FCA’s Consumer Duty has raised the bar on ongoing fees specifically. Firms must now be able to demonstrate that any service you pay for is actually delivered and remains suitable, they cannot simply keep taking an annual percentage for a relationship that has gone quiet. This led many firms to review clients they had been charging without meaningful contact, and in some cases to refund fees. The onus is on the firm, but the practical defence is yours: know what the fee buys, and speak up if a promised review does not happen. An independently vetted, FCA-regulated adviser should welcome that scrutiny, because it is exactly the standard they are held to.

Your rights to review and cancel

Ongoing advice is a service you opt into, and one you can leave. These are the practical steps to keep it honest.

• 1

  Get the ongoing service in writing

  A specific list of what the annual fee delivers, reviews, rebalancing, reporting, contact, not a vague promise of “ongoing support”.

• 2

  Read your annual cost statement

  Firms must send a yearly statement showing, in pounds, everything you paid across advice, platform and funds. Read it: it is the clearest single view of your total cost.

• 3

  Check you actually got the service

  Under Consumer Duty the firm must deliver what it charges for. If a review did not happen, ask why, and whether the fee should be refunded.

• 4

  Know you can cancel

  You can stop ongoing advice at any time; the fee simply ceases. Your investments stay in place, though you then manage or re-advise them yourself.