How to review your wealth manager: a practical checklist

By the Y Invest team · Updated July 2026 · 6 min read

You don't need to be an investment professional to run a meaningful review of your wealth manager. You need three documents, an hour, and a willingness to ask direct questions. Here's the process we use professionally, adapted for doing it yourself.

Step 1: Gather three documents

• Your latest valuation statement — the full list of holdings, not the summary page.
• Your annual costs & charges disclosure. Your manager is required to produce this under MiFID II, showing everything you paid in pounds and percent. If you've never seen one, request it — the response time is itself informative.
• Performance reports covering at least three years, ideally five, net of fees.

Step 2: Establish your true all-in cost

From the costs disclosure, take the total pounds paid last year and divide by your average portfolio value. That single number — your all-in percentage — is the foundation of the whole review. Anything under ~1% all-in is competitive; 1.5% demands justification; north of 2% needs a very good story. The full breakdown of what's normal is in our fees guide.

Step 3: Test performance properly

Performance means nothing without a fair comparison. The test: net of all fees, against a passive benchmark at the same risk level.

1. Identify your portfolio's rough equity/bond split (e.g. 60/40).
2. Compare your net returns over 3–5 years against a low-cost multi-asset index fund with the same split — these are publicly quoted and cost under 0.25% a year.
3. Persistent underperformance of 1%+ a year against that simple alternative is the single most important finding a review can produce.

Step 4: Inspect the portfolio itself

• In-house products: what proportion of the portfolio is in funds run by the manager's own firm?
• Genuine diversification: lots of holdings is not the same as diversification — do the funds overlap heavily?
• Wrapper efficiency: are ISAs and pensions being used fully? Are taxable gains being managed?
• Turnover: heavy trading generates costs; ask what it added.

Step 5: Score the service

Ask yourself: when did I last have a substantive review meeting? Does my manager know my current circumstances? Do I understand every page of my reporting? Can I get a question answered within a couple of days? "No" answers accumulate into a service problem, whatever the returns.

Step 6: Put your findings to your manager

Send the hard questions in writing: total cost in pounds, net performance versus a named passive benchmark, rationale for in-house holdings, and what fee they'd offer to retain your business today. A good firm engages seriously with all four. Deflection, jargon, or a charm offensive without numbers tells you what you need to know.

The honest limitation of DIY reviews

Steps 1–6 will get you a long way. The hard parts are calibration — knowing whether 1.4% is fair for your specific situation, whether performance lag is bad luck or bad process, and what better alternatives actually exist at your portfolio size. That's where experience inside the industry earns its keep.

This article is for information and education only and is not financial advice. Y Invest is not authorised or regulated by the FCA.