When Citicorp and Travelers Group merged in 1998, the new firm hired designer Paula Scher to create its logo. She sketched it — the same logo used today — during the first meeting, on a napkin, in a few minutes. The bill was $1.5 million.
Asked how a doodle could be worth a fortune, Scher gave an answer that became famous in design circles: it took a few seconds to draw, but more than thirty years to learn how to draw it that fast. The client wasn’t paying for the minutes. It was paying for everything that made those minutes possible.
A version of that argument is brewing in financial advice. Technology is making the information you once got from a professional easy to find, and much of a financial adviser’s workload faster to do.
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A 2025 Intuit Credit Karma survey found that 66% of people who use generative AI have turned to it for financial guidance, rising to 82% among millennial and Gen Z users.
Most advisers charge an annual fee equal to a percentage of the assets they manage for you. Roughly 92% use that assets-under-management, or AUM, model in some form, according to 2024 Kitces Research. And an Envestnet survey shows the average AUM fee is 0.96%, which works out to about $960 a year for every $100,000 in your portfolio.
With tools now available to help both investors and advisers handle the traditional money moves, retirees writing that quarterly check might be asking themselves:
Is a 1% fee still worth it?
What should you expect for 1% of your assets?
While an adviser fee comes out of your investment portfolio, what it buys usually goes well beyond investing. Kitces’ research finds that, on average, only 59% of an AUM fee pays for investment management. The rest covers financial planning and the work that goes into it.
Matt Chancey, CFP® and founder of Tax Alpha Companies, says that split is the whole point. “The fee was never really about investment management,” he said. “It was about the human across the table when things go wrong.”
The most valuable thing an adviser does, in his view, isn’t building a portfolio. It’s talking a client out of the worst move at the worst moment, like selling at the bottom of a market correction.
In fact, Vanguard’s Adviser’s Alpha (PDF) research tries to quantify that, estimating a skilled adviser can add roughly 3% a year in net returns, with behavioral coaching the largest piece at up to 1.5%.
Advisers note that the list of what a comprehensive fee covers is long, and most of it has nothing to do with picking funds. Depending on your situation, they say, it can run from proactive tax planning and Roth conversion timing to withdrawal strategies, Social Security and Medicare decisions, and estate and beneficiary coordination.
Cynthia Sforza, CFP® and founder of Lucidity Wealth Advisors, says she checks everything from whether beneficiaries are correct to whether a client has the umbrella insurance policy they probably need.
“If you’re paying 1% for investment management only, then you’re overpaying for sure,” she said. If it buys all the rest, “then yes, it’s worth it.”
Does AI mean cheaper, or just better?
Advisers are well aware that AI could reshape pricing in their industry. Morningstar data show 56% now expect generative AI to have a meaningful impact on the business, and they rank free or low-cost alternatives like AI as the second-biggest threat to their revenue, behind only competition from other firms.
What the price should be, though, may come down to a gap between what advisers think their work is worth and what investors want to pay for it. When Morningstar asked people what they would pay an adviser by the hour, the figure dropped as soon as AI entered the picture. For personalized recommendations, investors said they would pay $102 for an adviser working alone, but only $68 for one who uses AI.
(Image credit: Adapted from Morningstar)
This chart highlights a classic psychological trap: investors often equate a professional’s literal time spent with value, demanding a discount for efficiency even if the actual advice is better.
Advisers counter that AI changes the work without lowering its value.
AI now does the research and analysis that used to take a junior planner three days,” Chancey said. “That doesn’t make the adviser cheaper. It frees the adviser to do more of the work that justified the fee in the first place.”
Sforza cautions against assuming anyone could just do the planning alone. She compares it to coding with an AI tool, where a professional and a novice get very different results from the same software because the professional knows what to ask.
“Many laypersons don’t know all of the context to include in the question,” she said, “and they may not even know the questions they should be asking.”
The risk shows up in the numbers: in the same Intuit Credit Karma survey, 80% of people who acted on AI financial advice said it improved their situation, but 52% also said it led them into a poor decision.
Mark Stancato, CFP® and founder of the flat-fee firm VIP Wealth Advisors, frames AI as a higher bar, not a discount. “It raises the standard,” he said. “If AI saves me two hours preparing for a meeting, those aren’t two hours I keep for myself. They’re two hours I reinvest into deeper planning.”
Most clients seem to want it that way. Only 38% of affluent investors are even somewhat comfortable with AI in a financial relationship, according to a February 2026 Cerulli report.
Does a 1% fee make sense for every portfolio?
A percentage of assets is the most common way advisers charge, but it’s far from the only one. Flat or subscription fees charge a set dollar amount regardless of portfolio size. Hourly and project fees work like a lawyer’s bill, useful for a one-time question or a single plan. Retainers bundle planning and management into an annual sum.
What matters is whether the structure fits the work you actually need. That’s the case Stancato makes for setting a flat fee.
A bigger portfolio, he argues, doesn’t automatically mean a more complicated life. “A retiree with a $5 million portfolio invested in three index funds may require less ongoing planning than someone with $1.5 million, stock options, rental properties, complex taxes and estate planning needs,” he said. “Yet under a traditional AUM model, the first client could easily pay three or four times as much.”
Advisers who charge on assets don’t entirely disagree. Chancey notes that larger households tend to bring more tax exposure and more coordination, so the work can quietly outrun the fee rather than fall short of it. And most AUM firms already use graduated schedules that lower the rate as the balance climbs, so a $4 million client might pay closer to 0.8% than 1%, according to Kitces.
Either way, it pays to compare costs against your own situation rather than settle for an average.
How to tell if you’re getting your money’s worth
Chancey offers a single diagnostic question: ask what your adviser actually does in October. The fall is when proactive tax work happens, when Roth conversions get sized and gains and losses get managed before the year closes. An adviser with a detailed answer is doing the work. One who isn’t is mostly rebalancing and taking a quarterly call, which AI can now replicate.
Sforza’s test is more personal, starting with access. “Can you reach your adviser in a reasonable time frame, one business day max?” she asks. Then it moves to trust. “Do you feel that they’re truly caring about you and about helping you manage your wealth, or are they just doing a job? Do they have integrity? Do you LIKE them?”
That brings it back to the napkin. Citi didn’t pay $1.5 million for five minutes of work. It paid for the thirty years that made those five minutes possible. An adviser fee, whether it’s 1% or less, can work the same way. If AI can run the numbers in seconds, the numbers were never the costly part.
What you’re paying for is the judgment to know what they mean for your life, and someone who understands you well enough to keep you steady when it counts. The question was never how long the work takes, but whether it gets you somewhere you couldn’t have reached on your own.
