Investment bond charges

[aspender]

I'm in the process of sorting out a discretionary will trust for my late mother's estate and have somewhere just north of £300k. The general plan is to use an investment bond.

The advisor I'm working with has given me an illustration for a Canada Life Select product with the following charges:

Initial advisor fee: 3%
Ongoing advisor fee pa: 0.5%
Investment charge pa: 0.43% (obviously this would vary with the investment chosen)
Monthly management charge: ~0.044% (it's done in bands that reduce as the amount invested increases, with 0.025% above £150k)
Bonus (every 5 years): 0.5%

Given that access to investment bonds is generally through an advisor it's hard to determine if these charges are reasonable or not. By my calculation, using a 3% growth rate, the initial investment would only show a positive return after year 3.

Any thoughts appreciated.

[Simpo Two]

If it can only be set up by an IFA I suppose you're rather over a barrel. £9K gone overnight. I'd also like to know what he plans to do to earn the subsequent £1,500 he plans to take from it every year. I'd also want to know what my money is actually being invested in - Google suggests they have 150 funds.

Investment charges seem OK; I had one with Aviva and that was 1%pa (to Aviva - no IFA). Mine didn't have a bonus but at 0.1% a year I didn't miss much!

ETA: Is it this one? https://www.canadalife.co.uk/save-invest/select-ac...

Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 13th December 21:51

[aspender]

Yes that’s it. The fund used for an illustration is this one:

https://www.canadalifeassetmanagement.co.uk/multi-...

But that’s not yet based off any risk discussion. It’s more the advisor/management fees I’m interested in for now.

The only googling that’s helped tells me that SJP are unsurprisingly more expensive. The below site talks about having an advice-less no advisor fee approach but I suspect is instead commission based and the management fees reflect that.

http://investment-bond-shop.co.uk/about-us/why-use...