Breakaway Brokers May Be Driving Up AUM Fees

In response to my July Investment Advisor column “Upping the Ante,” I received the following email, which raises a question on the minds of many advisors these days, namely higher fees: 

“I am a CPA finally following my passion by dramatically reducing my accounting and tax responsibilities to focus primarily on asset management and retirement planning. I am trying to ramp up the asset management side as quickly as possible. I have been discounting my fees at times to build my practice (and offering to continue filing 1040s as a complimentary part of my asset management fee), but I think I may be giving away too much. Your article indicates that I may be able to adjust my AUM fees upward. 

I am currently charging 1% maximum to accounts <$500k and sliding downward to 60bps for accounts over $1mm. Assuming I am offering sufficient value to my clients, is it possible to go back to some of these people and ask for an upward adjustment to their asset management fee without sounding like I am reneging on our original agreement? Or do you think it would be better to ask for them to participate in the tax prep cost?”  

With the caveat that these are only my impressions, based in part on the work done by Dan Inveen and Eliza DePardo at FA Insight in their paper for Pershing, “Pricing Strategies to Create Growth: An Independent Advisor’s Guide,” here’s my answer: Yes, I think that the flood of breakaway brokers is moving the standard AUM fee up from independents’ traditional 1%. 1.50% feels too high to me, but something in the 1.25% range seems both defensible as a fiduciary and not likely to raise any client eyebrows. With that said, raising client fees during or soon after tough markets does not seem to sit well with clients (while during a big bull market, most clients wouldn’t bat an eye). Probably better to simply raise fees for new clients. While that can make things around the office a bit complicated, it’s not really different from charging larger accounts less.