There Is No Perfect Custodian, but . . .

This past week I received a couple of phone calls from advisors who were seeking an unbiased opinion about my custodian, TradePMR. Although I’ve written about this in past blogs, I thought it might be good to consolidate a few of my thoughts in a single posting. From fees to product offerings to service, I hope this information will help answer any questions you may have.

First, there is no such thing as the perfect custodian.

For a custodian to be perfect, it would have to satisfy every need of every advisor. Since advisors’ needs vary, this is both impractical as well as impossible. Although some custodians may be a better fit for some advisors there is no “perfect” fit. Finally, my comments will obviously stem from my own point of view.

One of the questions I fielded this week was, “If you had to do it all over again would you have chosen TradePMR?” My answer is “Yes.” Sure I’ve had a few frustrations, but I’m very satisfied with my choice.

Fees

TradePMR doesn’t “nickel and dime you to death.” In fact, its fees are reasonable (actually some of the fees charged are assessed by their clearing firm). Its trading fees are in the middle of the pack and its annual IRA fee is not excessive. Outside of those fees, every other fee is for something to which I choose to subscribe such as performance reporting, account aggregation, or streaming quotes.

Service