A prospective client lands on your homepage on a Sunday evening. They scroll. They click "Our Services." They click "About Us." They click "Fees." That last page tells them their fees will be "agreed at an initial consultation." They close the tab and open a competitor's site. That competitor's site shows a clear fee range and a short explanation of what it covers.
This scenario plays out thousands of times a week across the UK advice market. According to research published by Unbiased in March 2026, 70% of financial advisers do not publish their fees on their website, and 21% of consumers who have engaged an adviser still do not fully understand how they are being charged. The IFA website fees question is no longer about whether to mention pricing at all. It is about how much your silence is costing you before a visitor ever picks up the phone.
70%
of UK advisers do not publish fees on their website
Source: Unbiased, 2026
The IFA website fees transparency gap in numbers
The Unbiased research reveals an uncomfortable contradiction. Clients are broadly satisfied once they engage an adviser: 76% report satisfaction with the advice they received, and 85% feel more confident about their financial future as a result. But the journey to that engagement is cluttered with guesswork.
21% of clients do not know how they are being charged even after the engagement has begun. 37% of advisers say they have felt more pressure to justify their fees over the past two years. And for portfolios up to 100,000, the most common total fee sits between 2,000 and 3,000, a number that will come as a shock to a visitor who arrives on your site assuming advice costs 300.
The gap is not about whether your fees are reasonable. It is about whether a visitor can find out before they invest 45 minutes in a phone call.
Why don't most advisers publish IFA website fees?
The reasons advisers give for keeping fees off the website fall into three buckets, and each one deserves examining honestly.
"Every client is different." This is true, but it is not a good reason to show nothing. A bespoke quote for a complex estate plan does not stop you from publishing a typical range for an initial pension review. Saying "most of our clients pay between X and Y depending on complexity" is significantly more useful than saying nothing.
"I want to speak to them first." Many advisers believe that once they are in conversation, they can justify the fee. The uncomfortable reality is that the visitor who cannot find a price signal simply leaves. You never get the conversation. The people you think you are filtering out are often the same people who would have converted if they had been given a reference point.
"The competition doesn't publish fees either." This was true five years ago. It is less true now. The firms that have started publishing fee ranges in 2024 and 2025 report measurable increases in enquiry quality, not just volume. When most of the market is opaque, being clear becomes a differentiator.
| Feature | No fee information | Published fee ranges |
|---|---|---|
| Visitor can self-qualify | ✘ | ✔ |
| Builds trust before contact | ✘ | ✔ |
| Reduces time wasted on unsuitable enquiries | ✘ | ✔ |
| Requires frequent updates | ✔ | Only when pricing changes |
| Risk of underquoting | Low | Medium (use ranges) |
| Alignment with Consumer Duty | Weak | Strong |
Does publishing IFA website fees actually lose you enquiries?
This is the fear that keeps most advisers opaque, and it is the one worth testing rather than assuming.
The visitor who closes the tab when they see a 2,500 minimum fee was probably never going to engage you for a full planning service. Their exit is a feature, not a bug. You have spared them a phone call that ends in disappointment, and you have spared yourself the time.
The visitor who stays, sees a clear range, and picks up the phone anyway has already accepted the price region. They are calling to understand what they get for that money, not to negotiate you downwards. Conversion rates on enquiries from a site that publishes fees are typically higher, not lower, precisely because the calls are better qualified.
There is also a Consumer Duty dimension that cannot be ignored. The FCA expects firms to communicate in a way that helps consumers make informed decisions. A website that obscures pricing until the visitor has invested significant time does not sit comfortably with that expectation. This is one of the themes that came up in our earlier post on what visitors actually want from an IFA website: clarity beats cleverness, and information beats persuasion.
21%
of clients still don't know how they're being charged
Source: Unbiased, 2026
How to handle fees on your website without committing to a single number
You do not have to publish an exact price list. You need to publish enough for a visitor to self-qualify. A few practical approaches work well.
Publish a minimum fee. "Initial pension or investment reviews start at 1,500" gives a visitor an immediate reference point. If your minimum is too low for their pot size, they self-select out. If it is within their tolerance, they pick up the phone with a realistic expectation.
Use percentage ranges for ongoing advice. "Ongoing advice is typically 0.75% to 1% of assets under advice, with a minimum monthly charge of 100" tells a visitor with a 200,000 pot that they are looking at roughly 1,500 to 2,000 a year. They can compare that against the value you describe elsewhere on the site.
Show a worked example. A single worked scenario ("A 55-year-old consolidating three pensions totalling 350,000. Initial review and implementation: 4,200. Ongoing advice at 0.75%: 2,625 per year.") does more than any pricing table. It shows the visitor exactly what the total cost looks like for a real client, without committing you to a price for their specific situation.
Explain what is included. Fees quoted in isolation invite sticker shock. The same fee, alongside a clear description of what it covers (risk profiling, investment research, tax wrapper selection, ongoing portfolio review, annual planning meetings, ad hoc queries), reads as value rather than cost.
What does this mean for your enquiry flow?
The goal is not just publishing a number. It is using that number to filter and qualify before a visitor picks up the phone.
A visitor who arrives on your site, reads your fee range, sees a worked example, and still makes an enquiry is doing half your qualification work for you. They have effectively told you: "I understand the price region, I have a situation that looks roughly like the example you gave, and I want to talk." Your first call becomes a depth conversation rather than a price conversation.
This is one of the reasons advisers using AI chat widgets on their websites see higher enquiry quality. A visitor can ask a chat widget "roughly how much does pension consolidation cost at your firm?" and get a clear, content-grounded answer (drawn from your own published fee range) at 10pm on a Sunday. If the answer works for them, they leave their details. If not, they leave your site, politely and without wasting anyone's time. Either outcome is better than the current default, where they simply close the tab.
The shift is happening anyway
The FCA's Consumer Duty, the rollout of targeted support from 6 April 2026, and the growing availability of price benchmarks on comparison sites are all pushing the market towards greater fee transparency. Holding out against that shift is increasingly difficult to justify, both to the regulator and to the visitor who is doing their homework before they call anyone.
Publishing fees on your website is not about cheapening your proposition. It is about respecting your visitor's time, qualifying your enquiries better, and removing one of the most common reasons a good-fit prospect quietly leaves your site.
Make your fee page work harder
If you are updating your website this quarter, the fee page is one of the highest-leverage changes you can make. Add a range, add a worked example, explain what is included, and commit to keeping the numbers current.
And if you want visitors to be able to ask about your fees conversationally, rather than hunting through your site, try ChatIFA. It answers questions about your services and pricing using content from your own website, captures lead details when visitors are ready, and works 24/7 so your fee page becomes the start of a conversation rather than the end of one. You can see it in action at chatifa.co.uk and try the free tier: 25 messages, no payment details required.