View White Paper: The Fee Opacity Thesis

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The Fee Opacity Thesis White Paper Overview

The AUM fee model has succeeded for so long in large part because it made costs invisible to clients.

Now, the model many advisors have relied on is cracking under the weight of transparency, which is largely fueled by AI. The cracks are not due to clients suddenly hating their advisors or the markets collapsing, but because technology and increased information are exposing what was always there: a widening gap between what clients pay and what it actually costs to deliver increasingly commoditized services.

That’s not hype. It’s the structural shift outlined in a new white paper co-authored by Mike Garrison, a business coach and best-selling author, and Jon Robinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Blueprint Investment Partners. In “The Fee Opacity Thesis,” we outline our thoughts about:

The advisory industry isn’t facing generic disruption

Instead, it is splitting in two: Scale Practices (tech-forward firms serving hundreds of households efficiently with transparent, lower-margin pricing) and Complexity Practices (relationship-first advisors tackling the high-stakes, multi-generational problems that AI can’t solve)

Too many good advisors currently sit in a dangerous middle ground: charging premium fees for services that technology and scale players are making cheaper and clearer by the day

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