National financial services and Financial Planning group AFH today said it would be the first financial adviser in the UK to scrap platform fees for its clients.

AFH chief executive and Chartered Financial Planner Alan Hudson said clients investing with AFH would in future not be charged platform fees with the company choosing to absorb any costs.

He said: “Platforms are too expensive anyway, and as it’s mainly advisers who benefit from using them we don’t think it’s right that our clients pay for them.”

“We believe that investment returns in the future will on average be lower than they have been historically. That means we have to look to reduce third-party costs wherever possible, so our clients can achieve sufficient net investment returns to meet their Financial Planning objectives.”

Mr Hudson said he believed other advisers would follow AFH’s lead.

“For us, it wasn’t a question of whether but of when. This is a natural development of our strategy to make investment advice accessible and improve outcomes for our clients.”

AFH has hinted before that it was considering scrapping platform fees.

The company was founded by Chartered Financial Planner Alan Hudson in 1990 and is based in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. It has expanded rapidly in recent years with a string of acquisition and claims to be one of the fastest-growing Financial Planning-led investment management companies in the UK.

It currently has around £3.2bn funds under management.