A Word About Fees

DeCilio Financial Advisors works as a fee-based firm. 

What is this?

In financial planning terminology, a “fee” is compensation typically derived from out-of-pocket charges incurred by the client through per-hour charges or through a percentage of assets under management.  In contrast, a “commission” typically refers to compensation provided to the advisor by a product sponsor for the sale of a product, such as a term life insurance policy, an annuity or a mutual fund with a sales charge.

A commission-driven financial professional might be an agent for a particular financial company (for example, an insurance agent) or simply an advisor who tends to be product and/or sales transaction oriented in his or her approach.  In contrast, a fee-only advisor is strictly non-commission, while a fee-based advisor can derive compensation from either fees or commissions.

So which is best?

Naturally, we have a bias towards fee-based because it is the least restrictive in terms of services that can be offered to our clients.  But truth be told, we know advisors who work under all three models who we would trust with our own money – or at least part of it – and advisors who work under all three models who we would not.  And while we believe that when it comes to the aspect of compensation the fee-based model allows the most flexibility in an advisor/client relationship – and that’s important – we believe what’s most important is that you trust that your advisor is making it clear to you how he or she is compensated, that you are comfortable with that compensation model and that you feel you are receiving fair value for that compensation.  We’ve bore witness to internal industry “holier than thou” wars over which model is supposedly best, and we don’t want to be part of it.

We believe that in order to be truly "independent" a financial advisor should be independent from any rigid ideology.