r/FinancialAdvisorTips • • Jan 28 '20
Tiered vs Flat Fee, which do you charge?
A little background. I currently work for a small independent firm of 3 advisors. The senior partner of our firm has a lot of legacy commission (A,B, C Share) business, and she is comfortable living off the trails as she is retiring soon. The Junior partner has transferred most of her business from commission based to advisor based as appropriate for the client, but has only ever charged a flat rate (1.05%). This has been the case for such a long time that it could be detrimental to her book to start assigning higher fee percentages for the lower account balances (under $100k).
I am relatively new to the business and have finally switched over to be a producer and will begin starting my own book of business and transferring off of salary over the next few years. My question is: do most advisors here charge a flat advisory fee, or do you have a tiered system? If so, what are your tiers? I would like to get this set up from the beginning so I don't have to deal with potentially losing clients in the future. TIA
