£602 a second.
That is roughly what investors on UK advised platforms pay in investing costs: £1 trillion of assets, at the FCA's average all-in cost of 1.9% a year. The same assets, run by independent investors at a demonstrated cost level, would pay £95 a second. Every number on this page carries a date and a source. The workings are below.
The story in one paragraph
A fee percentage on its own tells you almost nothing; 1.9% sounds like a small number and £602 a second does not. They are the same fact. What gives the number meaning is the distance to the alternative: the same £1 trillion at 0.30% pays £95 a second, and the £507 a second between the two clocks is not a rounding error, it is £16 billion a year. We do not call that figure a saving, because it is not ours to promise and some of it buys real things: planning, tax structuring, discipline, someone to call. The honest name for it is the difference, and the honest question, worth asking once a year, is what the difference is buying you.
Your clock
The only version of the clock that matters is yours. Enter your own balance and the same two published rates do the rest.
Not a forecast and not your actual bill: your real costs sit somewhere between the two rates, and finding out where is the point. The figure you type stays in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere. For the compounded version against your own horizon and growth assumptions, the True Cost calculator does this properly. Whichever way markets move, these amounts leave first.
The workings
Advised cost: the FCA's averages are 0.8% a year for ongoing advice, and 1.9% a year all-in once underlying product and portfolio charges are included (reported by Which?, 10 September 2025).
£1,000,000,000,000 × 1.9% = £19.0 billion a year = £52.0 million a day = £602 a second.
The same assets at 0.30% all-in = £3.0 billion a year = £95 a second.
The difference: 1.6% a year = £16.0 billion a year = £43.8 million a day = £507 a second.
(Year = 365.25 days = 31,557,600 seconds.)
And the DIY pool?
Independent investors hold a further £653 billion across 14.9 million platform accounts at the end of June 2026 (Boring Money, Market Monitor). Here the honest answer is that nobody publishes the average all-in cost. The components are public: platform fees typically 0.25% to 0.45% a year or a flat monthly amount, index trackers 0.05% to 0.25%, actively managed funds commonly 0.6% to 1% and above. The aggregate, with transaction and currency costs included, is measured by no one. So for this pool we state an assumption and let you change it:
| If the DIY pool's average all-in cost is | Per year | Per day | Per second |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.25% (a genuinely optimised pool) | £1.63bn | £4.5m | £51.73 |
| 0.50% (a deliberate floor) | £3.27bn | £8.9m | £103.46 |
| 1.00% (closer to many real portfolios) | £6.53bn | £17.9m | £206.92 |
For calibration from our own published work: the cost methodology's worked example of a typical UK independent investor's portfolio lands well above 1% a year once platform fees, fund charges, transactions and currency costs are added honestly. The weight of evidence sits above the 0.50% row, not below it. That no one measures this number for £653 billion of ordinary savers' money is half of what this page exists to point at.
Nothing hidden. Everything disclosed.
None of this is theft, and none of it is secret. Every component is disclosed: in a key information document, a rate card, a tiered schedule, an FX conversion note. The costs are collected smoothly, as percentages, netted from returns before you see them, never as a single visible event. Which raises the only question the clocks exist to ask: of the money being counted above, how much did the people paying it actually see leave?
Costs are the one part of investing that is fully knowable in advance. Returns are not. That asymmetry is why this arithmetic is worth five minutes of anyone's time.
This page is educational arithmetic, not advice. The clocks estimate aggregates for whole market pools under stated, sourced inputs; they say nothing about your costs, which may be higher or lower, and nothing here is a recommendation to leave an adviser, change platform, or buy any product. Advice can be worth every basis point; that is precisely why the difference deserves an annual look. See our Methodology for how we compute costs, and our Disclaimer.
Sources: advised platform assets from Platforum, UK Adviser Platforms: Platform Selection, 21 August 2026 (Q2 2026 data). Advised cost averages from FCA figures as reported by Which?, 10 September 2025. Self-directed assets and accounts from Boring Money's Market Monitor (data to end of June 2026, published 18 August 2026, as reported by DIY Investor). The 0.30% independent investor cost level is the optimised worked example in the Allocra cost methodology, built from published retail rate cards. Computations verified 12 September 2026 and re-checked when the quarterly figures update. Corrections: hello@allocra.co.