Hourly-Fee Financial Planners & Registered Investment Advisers
United States:
Note: Awaiting the consent of one more person to list them
United Kingdom:
Most likely there are none
India:
Sriram Jayaraman
Basavaraj Tonagatti
Canada:
Most likely there are none (particularly that meet criterion #5 mentioned below)
Australia:
If you are an Hourly-Fee Financial Planner & Investment Adviser in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Canada, Australia (Top-5 English-speaking countries based on GDP) who:
(1) charges only an Hourly-Fee and publicly discloses your Hourly-Fee purely as an illustration: in the US, a fee of USD 400 per hour of effort because a Fixed-Fee e.g. USD 4,000 without disclosing the Hourly-Fee is not as transparent and
(2) does not directly / indirectly charge a percentage of Assets Under Management and
(3) does not directly / indirectly earn any commission and
(4) does not directly / indirectly earn any referral fee from 'Percentage of AUM Financial Planners' nor Distributors that earn a commission and
(5) is registered with the appropriate regulator in your country that requires you to have a fiduciary duty to your client (e.g. a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) in the US & India) and you are completely compliant with all regulations and
(6) does not directly / indirectly offer other higher-fee services including but not limited to managing a portfolio of stocks and
(7) does not recommend Active Investing e.g. Active Mutual Funds (including Factor Funds) so as to push clients to renew the engagement each year and
(8) does not execute Mutual Fund investments for clients so as to push clients to renew the engagement each year and
(9) if the RIA has a junior team member, then it is clear to the client what portion of the work is being done by the junior team member (so that the client can guesstimate the real hourly fee of the RIA) and
(10) does not pay any referral fee or at least does not pay any referral fee above a trivial amount (trivial amount is defined here as for each referral, equal to fees for 15 minutes of the RIAs time),
then please send me an email with an explicit confirmation on each of these criterion at avinash@fiduciaries.in
Notes / Disclaimers:
(1) This list excludes several people who claim to be Hourly-Fee Financial Planners but do not meet the definition mentioned on this site. For example, it excludes several people who recommend Active Mutual Funds so as to push clients to renew the engagement each year. This is because, such RIAs are not fiduciaries, in spirit.
(2) Hourly-Fee does not mean that a client can request for an engagement of just one hour of effort (including back-end effort). Also Hourly-Fee here, does not refer to a definition by any regulator.
(3) There is some subjectivity involved in whether or not to (proactively) include a Financial Planner in this list. One example is that some RIAs (not myself) who prefer to recommend passive index funds but make an exception for a few such clients. They make an exception for a few clients who are unable to understand that active mutual funds are harmful, even after the RIA tries to convince the client about the same. Another important example is that for other RIAs in India (not myself) the list includes RIAs who do not disclose their fee per hour of effort but disclose both (a) their fee per hour of calls and also (b) total fee during optional subsequent years of the engagement. Only in the case of India where I know significant details about each relevant RIA, I am able to validate that the RIA is not using this approach of fees to (a) minimize the number of hours of back-end effort and (b) avoid a disclosure of fee per hour of effort so as to prevent the client from comparing their fee with other Hourly-Fee RIAs.
(4) While I have checked the information on this site at the time of my adding a name on this list, users of this list should do their own diligence.
(5) I am trying to locate at least one such person in each of the UK & Canada but I have not yet been able to locate one.
(6) This site is completely free. I do not receive any referral fee from the RIAs listed on this site (this will continue to be true forever)
(7) The site was last updated on 8th April 2023
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William Sharpe, Nobel Prize-winner for the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM):
"It is all too easy for a client to underestimate the impact of financial advisory fees on expendable retirement income. A fee of 1% of total assets each year may seem small, but this can reduce spendable lifetime retirement income by as much as 20%."