Financial Advisory Firms
Your clients can get portfolio management for a third of your fee.
The relationship is still yours. Unbundle planning and sell it as a flat subscription, priced on judgment instead of assets. Facet and Domain Money already do.
The pressure financial advisory firms are facing right now.
Fee Compression
AUM-based fees are under pressure as robo-advisors and direct indexing platforms deliver portfolio management at a fraction of the cost.
Planning Commoditization
Free AI tools now draft the baseline financial plan. Inside a bundled AUM fee, you have no way to show clients what your planning is worth.
Client Consolidation
Clients are consolidating advisors and comparing fees as aggregation platforms make switching easy.
82%
of Gen Z and millennial AI users have sought AI financial advice.
Intuit Credit Karma, 2025
1 in 10
advisory firms have taken AI into their business strategy. 63% use it for admin work.
Schwab / Logica, 2026
2×
faster revenue growth at top-performing RIAs, which run written plans and stated value propositions.
Schwab Benchmarking, 2025
Assessment
See how your firm compares.
Eight minutes. You get an assessment showing where your firm has real commercial gaps, how you compare to other financial advisory firms, and a report you can take to your next partner meeting.
What firms like yours are designing in the Workshop.
Most firms feel the itch and start experimenting: a few tools, a pilot, a project that looked promising on paper. The expensive version is finding out a year in that clients won’t pay for it. Whether you’re still deciding where to start or already two pilots in, the Workshop narrows what you take to your clients before you commit more budget to building it.
Every engagement is different. Your team’s domain expertise is the input. These are the kinds of offerings financial advisory firms leave with, specified and priced. Your team tests them with named clients, then builds what earns it.
Subscription comprehensive planning
A flat monthly or annual fee for comprehensive planning with AI in the workflow, sold separately from portfolio management.
Tax-aware investment management
Direct indexing plus a structured annual tax-planning cycle, priced as a discrete service tied to client-realized tax outcomes rather than bundled into the investment management fee.
AI-augmented estate planning advisory
Document intake and AI summarization, advisor-led strategy and beneficiary review, attorney coordination, priced per engagement or as a planning retainer.
Related reading
The Blockers Aren’t Budget, People, or Technology
Most mid-market firms that adopted AI say they were only somewhat prepared for it. The barriers they name have nothing to do with tools.
The Cut Your Clients Already Planned
Deloitte surveyed 121 corporate legal leaders, the clients who hire outside firms. They expect hourly billing to fall from 72 to 44 percent of work.
Questions
No, but it has already unbundled part of the job. Robo-advisors run portfolio management at 0.20–0.30% against the industry’s roughly 1% AUM fee (Vanguard/NerdWallet), so the piece of the bundle AI does well is the cheapest to buy elsewhere. An advisor who keeps planning tucked inside that AUM fee is charging for the part clients can increasingly get for free. The planning and the judgment are what clients still pay a premium for, once they can see them on the invoice.
Not yet. Cerulli’s 2Q 2025 U.S. Advisor Edition attributes current fee compression to client demographics and expanded service expectations, and expects 83% of advisors to charge less than 1% for $5M+ clients in 2026. The AI pressure hasn’t reached the fee data yet: clients can already generate a first-pass plan at no cost, and when that shows up in fee negotiations the pressure will land on planning, the half of the bundle that was never priced separately.
Subscription comprehensive planning, priced separately from AUM. Facet and Domain Money already sell this directly to consumers. Tax-aware wealth transition for multi-generational families. Business-owner liquidity event advisory priced on complexity, not assets. Executive compensation optimization on a subscription. Niche advisors earn $660,000 versus $395,000 for generalists at the 90th percentile (Kitces Research).
Robo-advisors unbundled portfolio management at 0.20–0.30%. Most RIAs still charge ~1% AUM for a bundle of portfolio management and planning. Firms that have unbundled and priced planning as a standalone offering generate 40% more revenue at the 90th percentile (Kitces). The bundle is the constraint.
82% of Gen Z and millennial GenAI users have already sought AI financial advice (Intuit Credit Karma, September 2025). Vanguard moved 0.30% advisory to scale. Facet and Domain Money sell flat-fee subscription planning directly to consumers. Relationships stay; portfolios move to whoever charges less for the same thing.
322 RIA M&A deals closed in 2025, a record. 49% of acquirers are PE-backed consolidators, up from 39% in 2024 (DeVoe & Company). Acquirers are buying for AUM, not advisory relationships. Firms that have productized advisory have a story acquirers don’t yet know how to price.
Only 38% of legal, financial, and tax/accounting professionals use specialized GenAI tools; 60%+ don’t (BCG, 2025). 54% of financial services respondents expect to use GenAI for quantitative analysis, three times the cross-industry average. Adoption has moved on the analysis side; repricing hasn’t followed.
$15,000
Two days from start to delivery, one on site with your senior team, then 2–3 offering briefs, specified and priced.
Book a conversation30 minutes with Shawn Yeager. No pitch.