Our Process
Our Process
Our Process
Our Pricing
The true value of independent advice is the comfort and peace of mind you get, knowing that you’ve got a professional in your corner, and that you’ll get to see your wealth managed in a way that’s suited to your needs. We provide independent advice, integration of all wealth management areas and we ensure that all the strategies required for an effective wealth plan are implemented. Many people have plans. Few get implemented.
Our office has two primary options in providing advise.
Planning Only Clients
Built for do it yourself investors who do not require investment recommendations or portfolio management. Clients which select this option are seeking a Certified Financial Planner to create and update their financial/estate planning. Our annual planning cost is $10,000.00 for the structure and implementation of your wealth plan.
This includes ongoing review of all applicable documentation, ownership structures, cash flow analysis, insurance analysis, applicable tax planning strategies and estate planning. It involves making recommendations that fit into your overall planning and ensuring that they get done. It includes the coordination of all meetings with internal and external professionals including meetings with lawyers, accountants, and insurance agents. External professionals may also have their own pricing schedules.
Taking an integrated comprehensive approach means that we need to coordinate and oversee all activities from start to finish. The typically there are meetings once a quarter, however the volume of meetings could range depending on personal life events. Between internal consolidations, preparation, meetings, and follow up inquiries, the time taken is between 40 and 60 hours annually.
Our portfolio management costs cover all of our investment recommendations, including due diligence of managers, custody of assets, setting and maintaining a target asset mix, rebalancing, tax loss selling, regular reviews and enhanced portfolio and performance reporting.
Providing independent advice means that we are not tied to any firm’s products or research or strategies. We employ third party independent world class managers to make specific security selection based on the investment policy statement that we have provided to them. Our portfolio management costs are based on a fee base platform where a percentage is charged based on assets under management.
By employing a fee base platform, our team ensure we are transparent and minimize the conflict of interest that exists within the investment industry. This conflict typically has resulted in advisors being trained as sales representatives that are paid embedded commission to push investment products.
The pricing schedule only applies to fee based assets and does not apply to the any investment holdings which have embedded commissions, GICs, or cash holdings.
Portfolio Management
Our pricing schedule is as follows:
The Steele Group Flat Fee
Under $2,000,000
$2,000,000 - $3,999,999
$4,000,000 - $5,999,999
$6,000,000 - $9,999,999
Over $10,000,000 is negotiable
Fee
1.00%
0.85%
0.80%
0.75%
0.50%
Understanding MERs
The MER is expressed as a percentage of the average dollar amount of a fund investment. For example if an investor holds assets of $100,000 and the fund (ETF or Mutual Fund) incurs annual costs of $850, the MER is 0.89%.
Fee-based Series
Series F mutual funds are available in fee-based accounts and their MER is comprised of investment management fees, operating expenses and taxes. In fee-based accounts there is no trailing commission. Instead, the fee for advice follows the pricing schedule in the above table. Access and service is charged directly to the investor by the firm the advisor works for.
Embedded Advice Series (Series A)
Many retail firms use Series A mutual fund MERs include, management fee (which is a combination of investment managemetn expenses and trailing commissions), plus operating expenses. These firms will not charge a fee for service but instead is paid by the fund company to sell their products to investors.
What are the benefits of fee-based investing?
Transparency of fees and costs: Costs are visible and reported to investors so they can compare mutual fund performance across funds as only the investment management fee, operating expenses and taxes are embedded.
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Personalized pricing: As the account fee is typically tiered based on an investor’s account size, fee-based accounts recognize larger relationships with lower pricing.
Fee grouping: Many fee-based accounts allow investors to group assets across members of a household or family, leading to further fee reductions.