Should I do business with a full-service or a fee-based advisor?

Warren Baldwin, vice-president of T.E. Financial Consultants, has the answer.

Warren Baldwin 5 October, 2005 | 1:00PM
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Dear Expert,

My portfolio is currently split between a discount brokerage account and a full-service account, and I would like to know if there are any advantages to going with a fee-based financial advisor versus a full-service broker? My preliminary investigation seems to indicate that there are no real savings involved when dealing with a fee-based advisor. On the other hand, I find that my current broker simply pushes whatever funds pay her the highest trailer fees, which is why I prefer to make my own investment decisions.

Expert Answer:

Full-service and trailer or other typical commission structures is one way to pay for your advice. You state your advisor chooses only funds that pay the highest trailers. The reality is trailer commissions are pretty similar across the retail fund industry, and generally come in at 0.50% annually. The commissions paid up-front to the broker on the various versions of the deferred-sales-charge (DSC) funds do indeed vary a bit, depending on the structure chosen.

Why not simply ask your broker to provide you with only front -end-load funds on which the up-front charge is negotiated to zero? This would give her a 1% trailer. Then ask her to mix in a few strong no-load, low-MER funds. This would allow you to avoid the constant exposure to deferred sales charges, and also average-down your overall MER costs.

On the other hand, you could take the fee-based route, where the advisor charges a fee (normally based on assets under management) and uses lower-load mutual funds or even F-class funds (which are no-load and pay no trailers). However, you are right: you still may have to pay a similar amount for this service.

Another alternative would be to use a fee-only advisor, who would charge a fee for the service performed and use only F-class funds, no-load funds or institutional pooled funds.

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Warren Baldwin

Warren Baldwin  

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