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By my reckoning, there won't be a single financial advisor in the country that will be able to call themselves independent from 31st March onwards.

The maximum tax free lump sum is €200k, regardless of which option you choose. In the case above, it would be worth looking in more detail at the DB benefits. Using the AVC fund to pay for the Lump Sum may allow for a larger DB annual pension income (i.e. some of the annual pension income is...

Have you looked at Degiro?

What is nonsense about a decent globally diverse equity portfolio that should be able to generate 3-3.5% income over the long term? Some offering 7% (Vodafone) and some producing 1% (Renishaw in your example).

Great in my book anyway, the rest of you are not so easily impressed! He is a 74 year old US advisor with 50 years experience advising investors. I’m not going to spend much time defending him or justifying his fees. He makes over $1m a year on his newsletter subscription fees alone so doesn’t...

I really like the idea of just living off the income produced in an ARF portfolio, and avoiding selling the physical asset wherever possible. I attended a Science of Retirement Conference in London in February where this was the international consensus for best practice retirement drawdown. The...

It's an interesting question Qwerty! As an advisor myself, I haven't done much research into low cost pension contracts that retail investors could access directly themselves. Most SIPP and Small Self Administered Pension providers have a similar ongoing charging structure to your UK pension...

Pricing across all the insurance providers, Conexim, Davy Select very similar now and falling all the time. I would recommend that anyone starting a pension now doesn't accept 5 years of early encashment penalties as I feel the market is going to get much more competitive. Fees will come down...

Thanks Stephen. I'm avoiding Betterment etc as we don't need to pay for the additional advice features. For pure execution only my further research seems to be leading to TD Ameritrade. They seem to offer very good value and a decent web interface. Dimensional gave them a thumbs-up too...

Anyone have any experience using US brokerages? I'm researching for an Irish Client moving to the US shortly. Ameritrade and Charles Schwab look to have strong low cost platforms, just wondering if anyone has any other suggestions? Vanguard also have a good platform but its limited in terms of...

The Friends First deal is a very good structure for larger accounts. The €120 annual policy fee (its not an application fee, and applies every year), takes the good out of the lower AMC until your account goes over €120,000 or so. The 0.95% MyFolio Market quote on the Standard Life site is the...

@Thecaddie Financial Planning almost always lead to investment advice, and ideally an advisor will set out a service level agreement and fee schedule covering both. I would argue that a sound long term financial plan should be put in place first, and the implementation of that plan MAY lead to...

@Sarenco The original poster didn't necessarily mention it had to be a PRSA so I'm using the Personal Pension pricing structures. The Davy Select PRSA has a 1% Annual Management Fee, with 0.50% going to the broker as 'commission / fees'. This 'commission' can always be offset against advisor...

The lowest cost pension contracts on the market at the moment have a base management fee of 0.50% (0.45 for Standard Life MyFolio Market and Aviva L&G). These have no deduction from your contribution (100% allocation) and pay no commission to the advisor. The Standard Life contract has early...

My own view is that Financial Planning should be charged for on its own, by way of invoice. It should not be contingent on setting up a product, or be calculated by way of a percentage of assets. Financial Planning revolves around reviewing your life goals, setting some targets and optimising...

I would agree with the previous poster. Assuming no penalties, I would stop paying into that scheme completely and start a new one. Use a discount broker or fee based advisor to ensure you know exactly how much you are paying. As an added bonus, the life company may also clawback some of that...

Axa Financial have a very competitive unit fund platform which has been available for quite a while now. Passive Equity and Bond funds, from Blackrock, are 0.45% mgmt fee while the active funds go up to 1.45%. No entry or Exit penalties, good rebalancing and drip feeding features and a vey...

There are a few available and a wide range of performance track records. The longest running fund that I know of is the KBC Alternative Energy Fund, promoted widely by New Ireland since July 07. Axa Financial have one on their platform run by Jupiter called the climate change solutions fund...

Hi Brendan, has there been any progress on drawing up a list/register of quality advisors as per Marc's post. The Graduate Diploma in Financial Planning and CFP graduations are on this Saturday in UCD. Would you be interested in coming along to meet some of the graduates. PM me if you are...

Interesting article Rory. I agree with most of it, and prefer to avoid Structured products for clients where appropriate. However, you do make a very common and sweeping generalisation that all advisors who recommend structured products take the full commission. As fee based advisors we tend to...