Money coaching sessions for £150 an hour launched by Charles Stanley

• Firm says experts will answer questions and help you avoid common mistakes 
• It aims to offer cost-effective tech solutions ‘without losing the human touch’ 
• What to consider before paying for money advice: Read our tips below 

A new one-hour money coaching service costing £150 including VAT is being launched by wealth manager Charles Stanley, This is Money can reveal.

You can start with a free 15-minute call to discuss your needs with a qualified financial planner, then opt if you want for a more in depth video call at the fixed hourly fee.

The firm says its experts will answer questions to help people save and invest with added confidence, and avoid falling foul of common mistakes.

Topics for discussion could cover good financial habits such as budgeting, understanding financial products like Isas and Sipps (Self-Invested Personal Pensions), how to get started with investing, and preparing for retirement.

The OneStep Financial Coaching service will be run alongside the firm’s OneStep Financial Planning ‘hybrid advice’ service for £750 plus VAT.

> What to consider before paying for money advice: Read our tips below

The higher-priced service covers several online sessions with a qualified financial adviser to discuss individual circumstances, a personalised plan of action and a follow-up support service.

Clients can choose to invest using its DIY platform Charles Stanley Direct, or to get more intensive help from a financial planner or investment manager if they wish.

The OneStep services don’t make product recommendations. The wider Charles Stanley business offers a ‘restricted’ advice service, focusing on a limited selection of products and providers, rather than a full range like an independent financial adviser.

The firm says a OneStep coach will be offered to all new customers signing up to Charles Stanley Direct, and those with complex financial needs such as inheritance tax liabilities will be referred to other suitable services.

It adds that it is trying to help address the advice gap in the UK with cost-effective tech solutions but ‘without losing the human touch’.

What is the ‘advice gap’ and how do you find money help

The ‘advice gap’ is finance industry shorthand for how getting money help has become a lot harder unless you are well-off, following the big financial services overhaul which banned cosy backdoor commission deals in 2013.

If you can’t afford or are unwilling to pay for full-scale personal financial advice, many firms offer to bridge this in various ways, including via robo or automated advice, and model portfolios based on your needs and risk appetite.

The DIY investing platform Bestinvest offers free investment coaching delivered by the platform’s own advisers, alongside two on-demand advice services with one-off fees.

The Investing for your Goals deal costs £295 and recommends a suitable ready-made portfolio or an asset allocation.

The Portfolio Health Check helps customers who have already invested with what to sell, hold and buy for £495. If you transfer £50,000 or more to Bestinvest, you get one of the above deals for free.

The M&G investment platform, called &me, offers customers access to consultants who can answer questions or a plan about how to help.

Meanwhile, there is enormous amount of free financial information available from reputable sources online if you are willing to do the research. 

If you are inclined to take a money course, some of the UK’s biggest financial firms offer free ‘midlife MOTs’, aimed at people who want to do a stocktake of their current finances and make a plan for the future.

We tested an online course devised by Legal & General and the Open University here, and an Aviva MOT here.

The Government runs a free general service called MoneyHelper and one to help people prepare for retirement called Pension Wise. 

Artificial intelligence is still at a fledgling stage – right now there will be lack of trust in AI chatbots to help make important money decisions, and privacy concerns about handing over private financial information to their owners – though this option is highly likely to develop and improve over time.

Lisa Caplan, Director of OneStep Financial Planning at Charles Stanley, says of its new one-hour money coaching service: ‘Sometimes you just want to talk to somebody, but people don’t know where to start or who to turn to.

‘Bots’ like ChatGPT, finfluencers and Google can get you so far but it’s not personal, you can’t be sure who to trust and you don’t always get all the options.

‘At Charles Stanley, you can always pick up the phone to someone and trust that you are speaking with an accredited expert.’

What to consider before paying for money advice

Paying a fixed amount for one-off financial help rather than an annual percentage of your investments can achieve massive savings if you have a large portfolio, although the benefits diminish for people with smaller sums.

For example, you could save thousands of pounds a year if looking to invest £100,000 for five years, instead of using an adviser charging a fairly typical 3 per cent initial fee and 0.75 per cent annually.

Financial advisers routinely levy upfront percentage fees plus ongoing charges on savings for their services – not including platform and investment fund costs which come on top – and some have stopped doing business with any but the most wealthy clients.

Some adviser firms have also launched their own in-house or ‘white-label’ platforms and investment funds, to harvest bigger ongoing fees by getting a cut from them as well as for advice.

To avoid signing up to a financial adviser’s tied funds and platforms, you can take one-off or ongoing advice from a firm that is willing to use an investing platform that’s available across the market, direct to consumers and to other advisers.

That way, if you decide you don’t like your adviser, or simply want to look after your investments yourself, you won’t be tied to your original firm and their platform or limit your future choices.

As a result of high fees, many people opt to research and buy their own investments via a DIY online broker, which is cheaper but you have to go it alone.

One halfway house option could be to pay an adviser to set up a portfolio you are comfortable monitoring and managing yourself, and then get your investments and financial circumstances reviewed at intervals.

You could aim to do this every five years, or when there is a significant development like receiving an inheritance – and perhaps use a new adviser each time, which would have the advantage of getting fresh eyes on your finances.