How to Migrate Away from a Financial Adviser

You have been paying your financial adviser for years. Maybe you set it up when you got your first proper job, or when you inherited something, or when the bank suggested it. You have a review meeting once a year. They send you a nice letter before it.

But lately, you have been wondering: is this actually worth it?

This is a completely reasonable question. And it is one most people never ask, because asking feels like admitting you might have made a wrong decision. You are not admitting anything. You are just asking a practical question: is my money better off with someone else managing it, or with me?

What IFAs Actually Do For You

Before you decide whether to leave, you need to be honest about what you are actually paying for. This matters, because if you leave, you are taking on everything your adviser has been doing.

A good IFA should be doing some or all of the following:

The Honest Cost of Each Service

The annual fee is typically between 0.5% and 1.7% of your portfolio. For a portfolio of £300,000, that is £1,500 to £5,100 per year.

For that money, here is what you should be getting versus what many people actually get, and how you can do it yourself with Delphina:

If you are paying £5,100 a year and getting three items from the right column, you are paying £1,700 per service. That is expensive.

The Question to Ask: What Am I Actually Getting?

Look at the last three years of your financial life. Ask yourself:

1. Did my financial adviser reach out when something relevant happened? A career change. A new baby. A house purchase. A death in the family. If they waited for you to call them, they are not managing your financial picture proactively.
2. Did they explain things in plain English? Or did you leave meetings feeling like you had signed something you did not fully understand? Good advice should make you feel more capable, not less.
3. Do I actually know what my portfolio is invested in and why? If you could not explain your investment strategy to a friend over a drink, you do not understand it.
4. What would happen if I just stopped engaging? Some people effectively manage their own finances with minimal adviser involvement. If you are doing all the work anyway, you are paying for a service you do not need.

When Staying with an Adviser Makes Sense

To be fair, there are situations where an IFA genuinely earns their fee. If you have genuinely complex finances, an adviser can pay for themselves:

• You have a final salary pension from a previous employer and need to decide whether to transfer
• You run a business and need to optimise your personal and corporate tax position simultaneously
• You have a complex family situation: multiple properties, trusts, international elements
• You have recently received a large inheritance and need to make significant decisions quickly
• You are within five years of retirement and need to make irreversible decisions
• Your estate is large enough that inheritance tax is a real concern and trusts might be appropriate

What You Will Need to Replace: The Complete Service Map

This is the section most people miss. When you leave your adviser, you are not just moving investments from A to B. You are taking on a set of ongoing responsibilities.

Investment Selection and Rebalancing

Every year, check your portfolio allocation. If your target is 80% equities and 20% bonds, and markets have shifted it to 85/15, sell some equities and buy bonds to rebalance. This takes about an hour once a year.

For fund selection, you do not need fifteen funds. You need one global equity tracker and one UK bond fund. Providers like Vanguard, Legal & General, and Barclays Smart Investor offer these at low cost. The ongoing charge for a global equity tracker is typically 0.1% to 0.2% per year. Compare that to the 0.75% your adviser might have been paying.

Pension Contribution Strategy

Know your annual pension allowance. For most people it is £60,000 per year, though it tapers for higher earners. Your employer will match contributions up to a certain percentage. The first rule is always to get the full employer match before anything else.

After that, decide whether to prioritise pension contributions or overpaying your mortgage or investing in an ISA. There is no single right answer. The pension gives you tax relief now but you cannot access it until 55 (rising to 57 by 2028). An ISA gives you flexibility but no tax relief. Most people should use both.

Tax Efficiency

Use your ISA allowance of £20,000 per year before the tax year ends on 5 April. If you have spare cash, the ISA should usually come before extra pension contributions because of the flexibility.

If you are a higher or additional rate taxpayer, claim your pension tax relief via self-assessment. Basic rate relief is added automatically. Higher rate relief requires a return.

When selling investments, be aware of capital gains tax. Everyone has an annual CGT allowance of £3,000. If you are selling more than £50,000 of investments in a year, speak to a tax adviser first.

Retirement Modelling

The government provides a free state pension forecast at gov.uk/check-state-pension. For your workplace and personal pensions, most provider websites show a projection based on your current contribution rate.

The rule of thumb: if you want to retire at 65 on an income of £30,000 per year, you need a pension pot of around £600,000 (using the 5% withdrawal rule).

Life Event Reviews

When something changes, you review. The list of events that should trigger a review:

• New baby or dependants
• Career change or promotion
• Significant pay rise
• Inherited money
• Divorce or separation
• Mortgage paid off
• Large one-off expense
• Health diagnosis

The review itself is straightforward. Does your current allocation still match your risk tolerance? Are you still contributing enough? Has anything changed that means you need more or less life insurance? You do not need a meeting. You need a checklist and an hour with your statements.

Behavioural Coaching

This is the hardest one to replace on your own. During a market crash, every instinct tells you to sell and move to cash. Your adviser's job was to talk you out of it.

But leaving an adviser does not mean leaving yourself without support. A financial coach can give you exactly the behavioural coaching you need, when you need it, without the ongoing portfolio management fee. The coaching relationship is lighter and more focused: you get the rational perspective during volatility without paying for active investment management you might not need.

If you know you will panic during a crash, factor coaching into your plan. It is cheaper than a full adviser and it addresses the real risk: not market volatility, but your reaction to it.

Without coaching, your fallback is discipline: do not look at your portfolio during a crash. The evidence is clear: people who sold during the 2008 crash and moved to cash missed the recovery. Check your portfolio no more than four times a year. Your default position during volatility should be: do nothing.

Inheritance Tax Planning

Inheritance tax is only a concern if your estate is worth more than £325,000 (the nil-rate band). Above that, the rate is 40%. Married couples can pass assets between them tax-free, effectively doubling the threshold to £650,000.

The main ways to reduce an inheritance tax bill:

• Gifts: You can give away £3,000 per year, plus £250 per recipient
• Pension death benefits: Generally outside your estate for inheritance tax purposes
• Trusts: Complex and require specialist advice

Complex Products

Some products your adviser may have recommended are genuinely complex and difficult to replace:

• Final salary pensions: Do not transfer without specialist advice. The guaranteed income is extremely valuable.
• Trusts and estate planning vehicles: Require legal expertise. Get a solicitor or specialist estate planner.
• Business relief investments: Designed specifically for inheritance tax purposes and not simple to evaluate independently.

If any of these apply to your situation, get specific advice before leaving your current adviser.

How to Actually Migrate Away

Step 1: Get a Full Record of Everything

Your adviser is legally required to provide this when you leave. Get a complete picture of what you hold: every pension policy, every investment account, every protection policy, your current financial plan.

Step 2: Choose Where You Are Going

For most people managing their own finances, the destination is straightforward: your workplace pension, one or two broad-market index funds, a stocks and shares ISA, and potentially overpaying your mortgage. Know what you are buying before you sell what you have.

Step 3: Work Out the Tax Implications

Moving investments can trigger capital gains tax. Moving pensions is usually tax-free. The exception is final salary pensions: get specialist advice before transferring. If you are thinking of selling more than £50,000 of investments in a tax year, speak to a tax adviser first.

Step 4: Contact Your New Provider First

Do not cancel your old arrangement until you have the new one set up. Open your new account, complete the application, set up your portfolio, then initiate the transfer. Most transfers take five to ten working days for pensions, a few weeks for investments.

Step 5: Give Your Adviser Written Notice

A short email is fine: "I have decided to manage my finances independently. Please transfer my portfolio to [new provider]. All relevant documentation should be sent to me directly." They may try to schedule an exit meeting. You do not have to attend.

Your New Annual Financial Calendar

When you manage your own finances, a few hours a year keeps you on track:

The First Thing to Do This Month

If you are wondering whether to stay or go, do this one thing before you decide anything else: find out exactly what you are paying.

Call your adviser or send an email and ask for a full breakdown of every fee you have paid in the last three years. Include platform fees, fund costs, and their advice fee. Total it up. Then divide by three.

That number is what you are paying per year for the service you are currently getting. Now ask yourself: for that amount of money, what would I need to be getting to feel like it was worth it?