The headline rate is not the number. Neither is the number your prospective provider is comparing themselves to.
Platform pricing is layered. There can be a platform fee, a strategist fee for the models, the expense ratios of any underlying funds, custodial charges, and trading costs.
Two providers quoting the same headline rate may be including different layers. That is not usually deception. It is an industry that never standardised how it quotes.
Everything the client pays, all in, expressed as a single percentage. Ask each provider for that figure in writing for a representative account, including which components are inside it.
Anyone who cannot produce that is telling you something.
Not zero. The work does not stop existing if you do not outsource it.
Add up what you spend today on rebalancing and trading tools, reporting, billing, the staff time that touches those, and the founder hours that go into portfolio operations. That is the real comparison.
A platform fee replaces a cost you are already paying. The question is whether it replaces more than it costs.
Most advisers leave their own time out of the calculation, which guarantees the wrong answer. If outsourcing the operation returns eight hours a week and you use those hours on clients, that is the whole business case and it does not appear in any fee schedule.
If you would use them on something else, be honest about that too.
A firm whose value proposition is bespoke security selection. A firm small enough that the percentage is meaningful and simple enough that the operation is genuinely light. A firm that enjoys the operational work and is good at it.
Those are real cases, and a platform is the wrong answer for all three.
Whether accounts can be transitioned off, how long it takes, and what happens to the models in client accounts. Ask before signing, when you have leverage.
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