Fee disclosures

BNY Pershing declined to state the size and fees of its clearing and custody business with RIAs and other wealth management firms. But that's hardly unique in a channel of the industry with shrinking margins.

Raising firm fees — whether under a flat-fee or AUM model — is essential to maintaining a profitable RIA. Wealth advisors shared how they were able to increase prices and revenue with little client turnover.

For some RIAs — particularly those that focus on financial planning — adopting a flat-fee structure can make more sense than a traditional AUM-based model.

Members of the Transparent Advisor Movement are meeting around the country in "Flat Fridays" events. And the collaboration is revealing all of the nuance around fees.

Fidelity Institutional Wealth Management Services faces competitive threats in an era of ETFs and multicustodian advisory practices. But it has big advantages.

Financial planners who joined the Transparent Advisor Movement's first "Flat Fridays" meetup touched on the difficulty of explaining the industry to consumers.

Rossby Financial is deploying a profitability tool as it competes against much larger RIAs for financial advisor talent.

The influential planning entrepreneur and the FPA are leading an effort to change a tiered fee structure for continuing education providers that started three years ago.

Schwab services 16,000 RIAs with 2,000 different fee structures. According to the industry's largest custodian, the exact costs come down to "a very personalized negotiation" with the firms.

Jess Polito of Turkey Hill Management says she believes her firm is the only M&A advisory firm that exclusively uses retainer fees, rather than commissions.

Advisors with asset minimums find themselves rejecting clients arbitrarily and can often feel disconnected from their clients' planning goals.

Steve Lockshin and Michael Kitces tied what they view as some mistaken assumptions around fees to the competitive need for more estate planning services.

Vanguard was accused of giving advisors incentives to enroll clients in certain financial service without disclosing how they were being compensated.

Other than satisfying important regulatory requirements, RIAs and their clients can exercise a lot of choice on costs. Here's how experts view the process.

Net of expenses, many financial advisors and investors could find similar yields and exposure for their portfolios elsewhere, according to a Morningstar study.

They must file the lengthy and highly specific Form ADV document with the SEC and state-level agencies. And that's just one aspect of the many strategic decisions.

State regulators accused LPL Financial, Edward Jones, Stifel, RBC and TD Ameritrade of charging their clients unreasonably high and unfair commissions on 1.12 million equity trades over a five-year period.

Only two out of nine firms included the total amount of money involved in revenue sharing — a practice critics say should be ended entirely — in their disclosures.

Four experts say that video training and giving the TLDR versions can go a long way to securing and keeping clients confident and engaged.

The industry conflict of interest takes many common, controversial or outright confusing forms. Here's what financial advisors and investors should know.