“If your worth is measured by the market, you’ve already sold your soul to it.”
Across the financial advice industry, one number continues to dominate — 1%.
Whether your wealth grows or falls, the adviser’s fee remains tethered to it. The Citywire Top 100 Firms 2025 and FCA data show the same pattern: ongoing charges clustered around 0.75–1.00% of assets under management (AUM).
But what happens when that 1% is taken on only 1% of a person’s total wealth?
1. AUM Fees Are a Mis-measure of Value
An AUM fee taxes that small part of wealth a planner happens to “manage” — usually retail collective investments.
For total-wealth planners, who consider the full spectrum of a client’s assets and capacities, it’s an absurd metric.
It ignores:
- Property wealth and home equity
- Occupational pensions and deferred benefits
- Business interests and private shareholdings
- Savings, individual securities, and crypto holdings
- Tangible personal assets and other stores of value
- Intangible assets that create future earnings
In short, the AUM model charges on the 1% tip, of the tangible/ visible tip, of the total wealth iceberg, while claiming credit for the whole.
Why should a planner’s fee fluctuate with the 1% market they cannot control?
It’s illogical — and structurally untrustworthy.
2. The True Measure of Value Is Transformation
At the Academy of Life Planning, we don’t measure success in basis points on collective investment schemes.
We measure it by how supported our clients feel while navigating life’s great transitions — career change, retirement, loss, or reinvention.
Our value lies in helping people grow — not just financially, but in every dimension of wealth.
The right question is never, “Did your assets rise?”
It’s “Did you move closer to the life you wanted?”
We ask:
- Did our support give you clarity and confidence?
- Did you achieve your desired outcome with greater ease, peace, and joy?
- Did you grow — as a person — through the process?
When the answer is yes, that’s real value added.
3. Fair, Transparent, and Scalable by Design
Our model scales through three pathways:
Done By You (DBU), Done With You (DWU), and Done For You (DFU).
Each reflects a different level of collaboration and self-direction — and each charges transparently for time and value delivered.
- DIY subscriptions and remote programmes offer affordable self-directed growth.
- DWY mentoring provide group programmes and guided partnership for those who prefer shared responsibility.
- DFY professional services are billed hourly for bespoke one-to-one support — fairly, and with clear scope.
Our clients can dial their service up or down as life demands change.
We sell plans, not products — and our income reflects work done, not markets moved.
4. Scaling Consciously — Not Lazily
Percentage-based charging creates lazy income: fees rise with asset values, regardless of service.
It rewards planners for market luck, not meaningful labour.
It also fails to apply when clients redirect wealth into other forms — buying property, topping up company pensions, starting a business, investing in education, giving philanthropically, or planning for succession.
Our approach rewards contribution, not accumulation.
It is structurally trustworthy — because it aligns effort with earnings, and purpose with price.
When clients thrive, they choose to stay — not because their assets are trapped, but because their lives are transformed.
5. The Future Belongs to Transparent, Human-Centred Planning
The age of extraction is ending.
The future of financial planning lies in empowerment, education, and ethical pricing.
Holistic wealth planners are leading that evolution — from selling products to serving people, from chasing AUM to cultivating human potential.
We don’t take a cut of your wealth.
We help you create it — in every sense of the word.
Join the Movement
If you believe financial planning should serve life — not the other way around — join us at the Academy of Life Planning.
Together, we’re replacing extraction with empowerment.
Academy of Life Planning 