Hi Quantum Leap,
You are doing exactly the right thing by looking at the cost structure you father is being charged on his ARF. To echo the comments above, better value in terms of net allocation rate to your father or lower ongoing annual charges are available to him. To know if he is getting good value you need transparency from the adviser into exactly what all the charges are and what commission the adviser is earning.
However I think costs are only part of the overall picture. We would advise that you do get an adviser to do some Risk/Returns analysis for you and your father. Any good adviser should be able to shift through the various providers/ options and come up with a good value cost structure. As the ARF is to provide retirement income for your father we apply 20% of the outcome to cost structure and 80% to the investment returns. Even with standard Life Company ARFs ( ignoring self admin ARFs for the moment) there can be very large differences in the investment returns for the same asset class or risk. As an example we looked at the 5 year historic returns for 'Cautiously Managed Funds' ( amongst others.). Over 5 years the investment returns from the best provider was 19.5% superior to the 'Sector Average' . Clearly this is historic and may not be repeated but when you look at this across a range of asset classes the differences are significant. If repeated/continued this over the medium term would dwarf the beneficial effect of an additional 1% or 2% upfront.
Secondly look at the level of risk required to produce these returns. We tend to use Volatility and Maximum Drawdown i.e what you would have received if you got in and out at the worst possible time, as reasonable ways to measure risk.
If you are paying an adviser any on going fee to help manage the ARF investment, get the adviser to articulate what their overall investment approach is and what relevant experience or credentials they have to be advising on investment risk.
There are no silver bullets, but we believe that when you have done the above you and your father will be in a better position to make an informed decision as to his ARF.
What I find is ironic is that the 'better' advisers out there will do the above analysis for you, probably for a fee to avoid you being tied to them in case you dont agree with their ultimate recommendation, and at the same time provide you better value on the ARF than what your fathers current adviser is offering. What value are they adding?
The challenge for many is to find the 'better adviser' but there are plenty of advisers who post on this site to help educate and advise people to avoid the obvious pitfalls. You could make contact with a couple of them and you can ask about their service, their credentials and what they charge.
I hope this helps. Vincent