Today, I’m pleased to share that we're eliminating portfolio account software fees for Altruist brokerage accounts – a decision directly aligned with our mission to make independent financial advice better, more affordable, and accessible to everyone. Advisors who custody with Altruist accounts now get built-in portfolio accounting, performance reporting, fee billing, and a modern client portal at no additional cost.
Empowering RIAs drives better outcomes
With powerful technology and diligent services, we strive to help RIAs grow faster, reduce costs, streamline operations, and elevate the client experience. The broader implications of these outcomes are clear: when quality financial advice becomes accessible to a wider audience, more people can make better decisions with their money. This fosters better outcomes¹ and higher financial confidence² for individuals, families, businesses, and the economy.
Traditional models undercut newcomers and underserve the mass affluent
For decades, RIAs have dealt with pressures from forces outside their control. The combination of custodian-imposed minimums, platform fees, and expensive technology limited the clientele that RIAs could profitably serve.
Portfolio accounting software can be one of the costliest components in an advisor’s tech stack – Michael Kitces estimates that most PAS solutions cost somewhere between $40 and $70 per account per year³. A firm with 100 households and 400 accounts is looking at an annual expense in the neighborhood of $16,000 to $28,000.
Now, advisors using Altruist brokerage accounts can zero out that line item.
Helping more RIAs run better businesses
By lowering expenses, eliminating barriers to entry (Altruist has no platform fees), and providing various methods for revenue collection with integrated fee billing, RIAs using Altruist have significantly more flexibility in how they choose to run their businesses. This impacts the RIA market on two fronts:
- Advisors have more resources to invest into their business and client relationships, supporting firm growth and scale.
- Breaking away from a wirehouse or IBD is now easier, which leads to more advisors working independently to serve their clients.
While this is a major boon for advisors using Altruist accounts, advisors managing client wealth in non-Altruist accounts still get an industry low-cost PAS solution. The first 100 connected accounts remain free and there’s a nominal fee of $1 per account per month thereafter.
What's Next
Our decision to eliminate PAS fees on Altruist brokerage accounts accompanies the launch of new features and enhancements to our portfolio reporting solution. This includes holdings level analytics, additional rebalance insights, enhanced dividend reporting, and a cash clarity tooltip.
And there’s much more to come.
If you’re new to Altruist or would like to learn more about how we empower RIAs, please connect with our team.
¹Depending on the time period and how returns are calculated. Value of advice sources: Envestnet, Capital Sigma, The Advisor Advantage (estimates advisor value add at an average of 3% per year), 2019; Russell Investments 2019 Value of a Financial Advisor (estimates value add at more than 4% per year); and Vanguard, Putting a Value on Your Value: Quantifying Vanguard Advisor’s Alpha® 2019, (estimates lifetime value add at an average of 3%). The methodologies for these studies vary greatly. In the Envestnet and Russell studies, the paper sought to identify the absolute value of a set of services, while the Vanguard study compared the expected impact of advisor practices to a hypothetical base case scenario.
²2019 Northwestern Mutual Planning & Progress Study, The Advisor Asset
³https://www.kitces.com/blog/how-advisors-pay-for-fintech-cost-of-revenue-vs-overhead-vs-clients/
