Advice firm access fees work like a golf club membership.
Regardless of whether I play once or twenty times a year, I pay the same annual fee for access to the club.
This is an access fee.
This doesn’t cover lessons, fees, gear or drinks on the 19th – but it guarantees the course will be “in order” whenever I arrive. Greens mowed, bunkers raked, hazards marked, flags positioned, the only thing left to prepare is me.
When comprehensive advice clients pay access fees, they’re buying the same proposition: their financial life will be “in order.”
There are different access fees for different client complexities.
Just as golf clubs offer different membership categories, advice firms serve different client niches. Younger clients value different relationships than older clients. Small business owners need different ongoing advice than employed pre-retirees. Each niche values a different team capacity and expertise.
Most advice firms start with one or two niches, expanding as old niches pass, deeper niches appear, and advice expertise and enjoyment grow. The optimal number of advice niches, each with varying access pricing, must align with advice capacity.
Capacity-Based Pricing vs Service-Based Pricing
I wrote last week about traditional advice beliefs that price on a menu-like fee-for-service basis, i.e. service by service – e.g. financial planning $3,500, insurance review $1,200, investment advice $800. This educates clients and positions advisers as providers of expert services rather than as a team of experts, significantly impacting and supporting client value.
Access pricing prices team capacity (e.g. from, say $6,000-$15,000+ annually) to ensure clients’ financial lives are “in order” and are as valuable as possible for every client.
What does “In order” actually mean?
Access fees cover an advice team’s ongoing oversight and management of the technical issues affecting a client’s financial life—cash flows, taxation, risk, investments, superannuation, debt, business planning, structures, and estates, whether provided internally or via respected third parties.
More importantly, they also cover the behavioural and circumstantial non-technical issues affecting their financial paths.
Access fees acknowledge that maintaining financial order requires continuous team capacity, not just periodic service delivery.
Change is constant.
Products evolve, legislation shifts, markets fluctuate, client aspirations change, relationships alter, health issues emerge, and careers pivot. Some changes can be managed within the access fee. Others require additional capacity and additional service fees.
This is where traditional fee-for-service pricing breaks down with existing clients.
One of the industry’s most significant Achilles heels is its cross-subsidisation.
Due to loss-aversion fears, every adviser finds it challenging to hold the needed conversations about new fees with existing clients.
They prefer not to upset their existing clients with new fees, so they cross-subsidise a less profitable or loss-making advice year with a particular client, with the hope of more profitable years in the future. Even worse, as their firms grow, they continue to cross-subsidise their less profitable clients on too low an access fee with more profitable clients.
It is little wonder why most established advice firms inevitably lose control of their pricing, their growth and their time.
Why Access Pricing Matters
Access pricing shifts the focus from “what services do we provide?” to “what capacity do we maintain?”
The shift is important as it tilts a team’s daily focus to be less about the delivery of isolated technical services, which, though important, are not as valuable as the outcomes and confidence these services will provide for every client, as their financial lives are comprehensively kept “in order.”
The result is more controllable fees, deeper relationships with expert teams, and team members who understand their role is ensuring nothing falls through the cracks in their clients’ financial lives.
Access fees become the starting point for every comprehensive advice relationship.
They represent the minimum capacity required to maintain each advice niche effectively.
Individual clients may require additional capacity based on complexity, but the access fee establishes the baseline expectation.
Importantly, unlike product-focused models, value-based access pricing doesn’t always require financial products.
Sometimes the most valuable advice is helping clients avoid unnecessary products, services or behaviours. The fee reflects a team’s capacity to provide ongoing financial stewardship, not their ability to sell product-based solutions.
When clients understand they’re investing in an advice team’s capacity to ensure their financial life is “in order,” fee conversations shift from justifying individual services to demonstrating ongoing value.
Traditional pricing asks: “How much should we charge for this service?”
Access pricing asks: “How much capacity does this client require, and what’s that worth to our niche clients?”
One creates transactional relationships. The other creates ongoing stewardship.
Access fees acknowledge that comprehensive advice isn’t about delivering perfect services—it’s about maintaining the capacity to keep clients’ financial lives moving forward, regardless of what changes emerge.
What do you reckon?
Jim
PS – Need more clarity about access fees? Reply to this with ‘access fee’ and your issue, and I’ll get back to you.
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