How I am paid, and how you see it before you decide

I am paid in two ways: commission on the products arranged and an ongoing fee on the assets managed. There is no separate flat advisory fee dressed up as independence. What matters is that every cost, and what each cost pays, is set out in writing before you decide anything.

The figures that apply to you are agreed in writing in the engagement letter before any work begins. You may ask what any specific recommendation pays me, and you are entitled to that answer in writing, not in conversation.

The structural problem at the root of every horror story I have heard from clients arriving here after a bad experience elsewhere is not commission itself. It is commission that was never disclosed, where the client never knew what the recommendation paid the person making it. The conflict is real and it cannot be wished away at the individual-advisor level. What can be fixed is whether you see it. Mine is on the table, in writing, before you act.

If a product is part of the right answer, you will see what it costs and what it pays me before you proceed. Ask the question of any adviser, mine included, and insist on the answer in writing. If that answer is vague, you have learned something worth knowing.