The key difference is the level of social responsibility that is being taken with each one. The Core portfolio applies no filters for whether a company has good practices or not, it invests in everything according to its financial data alone.

The Good Practice portfolio applies a set of filters to its equity and bond exposure, to exclude those companies with the worst practices when it comes to environmental sustainability, social responsibility and good governance. It excludes companies with harmful activities and tilts towards those with good practices and beneficial activities.

Fund costs

Each investment range has a slightly different cost because the underlying funds are different. The charges can be found here. For each portfolio range we can supply a summary pack for the risk level you are interested in, and this will also tell you the specific investment fund costs.

Platform costs

You can also expect to pay platform costs for the provider’s technology and custodian services. These typically range from 0.15% - 0.3% a year as outlined here.

Investment management costs

We charge 0.2% a year spread across all investors, which pays for the management of the whole portfolio range.

The best way to explain this is to imagine each portfolio springing from the one before it.

The Core portfolio is our starting point. with some adaptations, this leads to the Good Practice portfolio.

Each portfolio requires more consideration than the last, because it becomes more complex. This is wholly due to the fact that responsible investment funds are not consistently labelled or scored, so they must be examined one by one to determine whether they are suitable for inclusion in the portfolio.

In the Good Practice portfolio, the equity and the bond content is different to the Core portfolio so there is more involved in its management.

With any investment, there’s a risk - or even an inevitability - that it will go down in value at some point. The risk of that happening for you depends on which portfolio you are invested in. The lower risk portfolios have much lower volatility, so they are less likely to fall in value, and will have more modest returns too. The higher risk portfolios have a higher chance of falling in value, but they offer higher returns too.

We publish data about the historical returns of each portfolio, including the best and worst periods they’ve experienced, so you can get a good idea of what to expect.

It is also worth pointing out that some things you might think of as ‘no risk’ such as money in the bank, do have their own risk of loss. That’s because interest rates on savings are nearly always less than the rate of inflation, which means the spending power of that money is usually falling all the time, even with the best interest rates you can find.

The Core portfolio range should closely mirror the benchmark against which it is being measured, with the difference being the cost of investing and a small allowance for time lags in investing.

The Good Practice portfolio should have a fairly close relationship with the benchmark against which it is measured, but less so than with the Core portfolio. The difference is partly related to the cost of investing, which is a little higher than with the Core portfolio. Also, it is slightly less diversified, so the performance can be a little different. That is not to say it will be higher or lower, just slightly different to the Core portfolio.

Funds are reviewed potentially as frequently as every month, but our investment philosophy promotes an approach where we do not make frequent changes to the portfolio unless there is good reason, so you should not expect frequent fund changes. Funds might be changed every 1-2 years if a more suitable option is found.

We review the position routinely every month and we would call an interim review if there was cause to do so - such as happened at the start of the Covid 19 pandemic for example.

We routinely review portfolios to rebalance the funds inside them on a six monthly basis in June and December.

Our default position is that we will only make changes to your portfolio with your explicit consent, which we ask you to provide electronically.

However there are some exceptions to that. You can give us your consent to rebalance your portfolio automatically every 6 months without asking for your consent each time. Also, you can provide your consent for us to move money up to your ISA allowance from a General Investment Account in your name at the start of any tax year.

We can tell you which companies are included in any portfolio, but it is much more difficult to show which have been excluded and why.

We would like to be able to do this for you, as part of a wider report of what impact these portfolios are making. At present, the necessary data from the fund managers is not sufficient to do that, but we are hopeful that this will develop in time and you will be able to have full sight of exactly what you are, and importantly what you are not invested in.

We will assess your situation carefully and give you our advice.

We will take into account your tolerance for taking investment risk, your ability to manage any losses, how long you are likely to be investing that particular money for, whether it will be paying out an income to you, and more.

We will advise you about this before any changes are made.

However, in most cases there are no charges, penalties or transaction fees for leaving one investment platform and moving to another.

If you are moving an ISA or pension plan, there are no tax consequences of changing the investment platform.

However, moving other types of investment such as a General Investment Account, onshore bond or offshore bond can crystallise capital gains and so can lead to capital gains tax being due. We will assess and advise you about this.

Your investments will remain exactly where they are, and you will still be able to see them online. All the adminstrative responsibilities will go to the platform provider, who will be able to action your requests to take money out of your plan or transfer it elsewhere. They will also continue the regular payments and investments that might already be in place.

You will no longer have a financial planner or investment manager to give you advice and guidance, so you may want to find a replacement company to take over that role. With your consent, they will be able to access your investments on your platform and manage them or move them from there as needed.

In this situation, what is most likely is for another financial planning company to purchase the trading concern of Balance: Wealth Planning and you would find yourself continuing to work with much the same administrative and advice team, but under a different ownership structure.

Balance does not hold any of your money or investments in our name, and are not permitted to do so by strict regulation. We simply administer and manage it for you.

However, should you have any reason to make a claim against Balance: Wealth Planning when it has gone out of business, you can take this claim to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Different limits apply to the claim you can make, depending on what has happened.