Bridging the Advice Gap — Profitably

Pricing & Process Tweaks that Let You Serve £50k–£250k Portfolios

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: the UK's widening advice gap isn't just a social problem—it's a massive commercial opportunity that most firms are missing. Right now, approximately 12.4 million adults sit in this gap with a collective £700 billion in investable assets, yet only 9% of the population paid for financial advice in the past year.

Most of these potential clients have portfolios between £50k–£250k—too substantial for them to feel comfortable with DIY investing, but traditionally seen as too small for adviser fee models to work. To successfully capture this market without crushing your margins, you need two key levers:

1. Dramatically reduce your cost-to-serve
2. Reimagine your pricing so the value is unmistakably clear and frictionless

I'm going to share a practical playbook—grounded in real numbers and current regulatory changes—that demonstrates just how profitable this market segment can be.

Understanding the Economics

The cost challenge: It still costs advisers approximately £800 annually in people hours (adviser + paraplanner + admin time) to serve a client under the traditional model.

The fee challenge: Average UK initial fees run at 2.4% of assets with ongoing fees at 0.8%—perfectly reasonable for £500k portfolios but appearing steep (and frankly regressive) on a £60k pot.

The margin squeeze: Consumer Duty now requires you to demonstrate "fair value"—and many firms have responded by simply raising their minimum client size to £200k+ rather than rethinking their approach.

The bottom line: To serve £50k–£250k portfolios profitably, you must: 1) slash your service costs by at least 50%, and 2) offer a fee structure that feels as straightforward as Netflix, not obscure or complicated.

Process Tweaks That Actually Halve Your Cost-to-Serve

1. Digitize the Major Friction Points

- E-fact-finding & electronic ID verification: Eliminate paper forms, wet signatures, and postal delays
- Self-service risk profiling: Embed questionnaires directly in your client portal; adviser reviews results but doesn't need to administer the process
- Dynamic templating: Ensure suitability letters auto-populate from your CRM fields

(Tip: Platforms like JustFA come pre-built with these features - fact-finds, AML checks, risk profiling, and suitability reports, fully integrated into a single advice flow)

2. Automate Meeting Administration 

- AI note-taking assistants: Tools like Jump or Wealthbox's new AI note module can save hours on every client review (while maintaining robust Consumer Duty audit trails). Adoption is surging among advisers serving smaller balances—with solo practitioners and small teams now leading the way in implementation
- AI paraplanner assistance: 44% of advice firms are already exploring or piloting AI solutions to draft reports and extract insights from CRM data.

3. Standardize Your Investment & Advice Outputs

- Model portfolios or MPS: Offer one clear menu, risk-graded, with ESG options already integrated
- Be Core Advice / Targeted Support ready: Design a streamlined "single-issue" ISA or pension advice journey—15 pages maximum—so you can pivot quickly when the FCA finalizes the Advice-Guidance Boundary reforms that could potentially unlock access to 5.3 million additional clients with £250bn in assets.

4. Implement One-to-Many Engagement Strategies

- Replace some of your one-on-one education with group webinars and on-demand micro-videos
- Develop employer partnerships through financial wellness programs that let you reach dozens of mass-affluent employees in a single workshop, each feeding into a low-touch advice funnel

By implementing these changes strategically, a 30-minute annual review that previously consumed 4.6 hours of preparation and admin can drop below 2.5 hours. At a blended staff cost of £80/hour, that's a £168 saving per client per year—over 40% of your original service cost.

Pricing Models Millennials & Mass-Affluent Clients Actually Respond To

Millennial and Gen-X accumulators aren't opposed to paying for value, but they absolutely hate pricing mystery. Here's what's working right now:

A. Flat Subscription (Gym-Style)

£50–£120 per month covers: 

• Digital portal with live plan tracking
• Two video reviews annually
• Between-meeting Q&A via secure chat
• Light portfolio rebalancing

This approach offers predictability for clients and creates recurring revenue for your practice. NextWealth reports subscription model adoption at 18% of firms and climbing rapidly.

B. Project Fee + Low Ongoing AUM

• One-off "Foundation Plan" (£750–£1,500 depending on scope)
• Ongoing 0.45% AUM for portfolios under £250k
• Built-in escalator to tiered pricing as assets grow (Quilter's platform now enables automated tiered adviser charging, simplifying your Consumer Duty 'fair value' documentation)

C. Core Advice Ticket

Once the FCA's Core Investment Advice rules are finalized, consider offering a streamlined ISA recommendation for a capped fee of £250–£400 delivered entirely online—perfect for first-time investors contributing £5k–£20k annually.

D. Hybrid Flat + Performance-Linked Fee

For clients closer to the £250k mark who appreciate skin-in-the-game arrangements:

• £900 annual retainer covering planning and compliance
• 0.20% of AUM on balances above £100k
• Performance bonus only triggered if the portfolio outperforms an agreed benchmark after all costs

Putting It All Together—The Profitable Math

Let's look at a practical scenario with 150 clients averaging £120k each:

Revenue (subscription @ £90 pm)
£90 × 150 × 12 = £162,000

Cost-to-serve (post-automation)
£480 per client → £72,000

Gross margin: £90,000 (55%)—and that's before factoring in potential platform revenue-shares, cross-sales, or AUM upsells. Scale this to 300 clients or add group-scheme leads, and the model becomes a powerful growth engine.

Your Action Checklist for the Next 60 Days

- Map your current workflow in detail—identify every manual hand-off point

- Test an AI note-taking solution with 10 review meetings; carefully measure the time saved

- Rewrite your service menu to include both Subscription and Project-based tiers

- Draft a "Core Advice" one-pager that aligns with CP22/24 guidelines

- Publish your pricing openly on your website (even if competitors don't). Which? research shows that pricing opacity is the biggest turnoff for prospects with under £250k

- Launch a targeted webinar series for employees with restricted stock units, NHS professionals, or other cash-rich cohorts (£50k+ investable assets)

The Bottom Line

The advice gap isn't a charity case—it represents £700 billion waiting for the first advisory businesses that effectively combine streamlined processes with transparent, millennial-friendly pricing models. With the right technology stack and fee structure, serving £50k–£250k clients isn't just viable; it can potentially become one of your highest-margin segments.

Platforms like JustFA can enable firms to deliver all of this — from onboarding to suitability — inside one branded digital ecosystem, helping advisers win this market without rebuilding from scratch.