A big fee you pay once can end up cheaper than a small fee you pay every year. That is the whole lesson, and a fee table is not designed to show it to you.
Once-off costs tend to show up when advice is given, an investment is started, a transaction goes through or a product is changed. Ongoing costs are charged monthly or annually, for advice, administration, investment management, insurance or other services. And there is a third group that is easy to miss until it happens: event-based costs, like transaction charges, early-exit consequences, or fees for work that falls outside the normal service.
The labels are not consistent between documents, which is what makes this genuinely difficult. An “initial” fee may be deducted from your contribution rather than billed separately. An annual percentage may be calculated daily and reflected in the unit price, so there is no line item to find.
So ask three things about any charge: when it starts, what amount it is calculated on, and what would make it stop.
Try this now
Draw two columns, “once-off” and “ongoing”. Put every disclosed fee from one proposal or statement into a column, with the recipient, the frequency and whether the quote includes VAT. If a fee will not go into either column, write it down as unclear. That list is your question list.
Ask your advisor
- Which costs will be paid only once and which will repeat?
- What could trigger an additional charge later?
- If I end the service, which fees stop and which product costs continue?
Timing is part of a fee. A percentage without its frequency and calculation base is incomplete information.