What changes
Hourly fees and fees based on a percentage of assets both assume that professional time and expertise are scarce. When AI does most of the legwork, an hour of work produces far more than it used to, and a percentage of a larger portfolio doesn’t reflect any extra effort. The New Model firm prices what the client receives: a defined service for a fixed fee, or an ongoing subscription with clearly stated inclusions.
Scale follows. Once the legwork runs on AI and clients have the firm’s own tools between meetings, each professional can look after many more clients without the service getting thinner. That opens the firm to people it couldn’t serve profitably before, such as younger clients, smaller businesses and those who only need help at particular moments in their lives.
Why it matters now
If AI makes expertise cheaper to produce, clients will notice and expect prices to reflect it. Repricing on your own terms, before that pressure arrives, lets you design services clients want to keep paying for. It also helps with regulation. For advisers, FCA Consumer Duty asks firms to show that price and value are reasonable. For solicitors, the SRA transparency rules already require published prices for some services. Clear, fixed prices make both easier to demonstrate, and accountants benefit in the same way when clients compare firms.
Checklist
- Use your Move 3 timings to cost each service. Work out the real hours per client now that AI does the first pass, then the cost of delivering each service at that level.
- Design two or three tiers. Define exactly what each tier includes, how often you’ll be in touch and what’s charged as an extra, in plain language a client could repeat back.
- Test the prices with existing clients first. Offer the new structure to 10 to 20 clients at renewal, record who accepts and why, and adjust before a wider launch.
- Set a capacity target for each professional. Decide how many clients each person can look after well under the new model, and plan your marketing to reach that number.
- Write a transition plan for existing clients. Nobody should find their fee changed without a conversation and a clear comparison of old and new.
Illustrative example
An accountancy practice has 120 small business clients paying an average of £1,800 a year, which is £216,000 in total. Each client takes about 14 hours a year, or 1,680 hours altogether. After handing over the legwork, the same work takes about 8 hours per client. The practice moves to a subscription of £175 a month, or £2,100 a year, which now includes a quarterly tax forecast from its own tax checker. Over the next year it grows to 180 clients. Together they take 1,440 hours, fewer than before, and bring in £378,000 a year.
Common mistakes
- Cutting prices to match the time saved. The saving is yours to reinvest. Price on the value of the service and the outcome for the client.
- Vague subscriptions. If a client can’t say what they get each month, they’ll start to question the fee. Spell out the inclusions in writing.
- Taking on clients faster than capacity allows. Grow only as fast as your processes and people can keep the standard of service up.
Coaching your clients
Many of your clients face the same question about their own prices. A business owner whose staff now use AI needs to rethink how they charge and how much work they can take on. A client whose job is changing needs a plan for their income. Talking openly about how your own firm repriced is a useful way into that conversation, and helping them work it through is part of the service.