High Net Worth Wealth Management:
How to Choose a
Financial Advisor

The wealth management industry has a clear reason for keeping fees off its websites: transparency invites comparison. A firm charging 0.90% on a $3 million portfolio would rather you focus on their track record than on the fact that a comparable firm charges 0.65% for the same work. On a $3 million portfolio, that difference is $7,500 per year. Over ten years, assuming 7% annual returns on the fee savings, it compounds to over $103,000.

The SEC solved this problem decades ago. The Investment Advisers Act of 1940 requires all registered investment advisors to file Form ADV with the SEC or state regulators, disclosing their fee structure, client minimums, assets under management, and any conflicts of interest. The filing is public. The SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database lets anyone look up any registered firm in minutes. What the industry has not done is make this easy to find or interpret. That gap is exactly what Advisor Facts exists to close.

A 2017 Harris Poll survey conducted for Personal Capital found that 61% of Americans did not know how much they were paying in investment fees. For high net worth investors, the consequence of that gap is larger. A quarter-point fee difference on $500,000 is $1,250 per year. The same quarter-point on $5 million is $12,500 per year. Neither number is trivial, but the latter is the kind of figure most investors would want confirmed before signing an advisory agreement.

There are two legal standards for financial advisors in the United States. Registered investment advisors, who file with the SEC, are investment advisor fiduciaries: they are legally obligated to put your interests above their own at all times. A fiduciary financial advisor in this category cannot legally recommend a product simply because it pays them more. Broker-dealers, who register with FINRA, are held to the suitability standard: their recommendations must be suitable for you, but not necessarily the best option available to you. These are meaningfully different standards with meaningfully different cost implications.

The practical difference shows up most clearly in product selection. A commission-based advisor who recommends a mutual fund with a 1.0% annual expense ratio, when an equivalent index fund charges 0.05%, has made a recommendation that is defensible under the suitability standard. The advisor gets paid through the fund's distribution fee. You absorb the drag. Over a decade on a $3 million portfolio, the compounding cost of a 0.95% expense ratio spread is well into six figures.

Fee-only registered investment advisors eliminate this conflict entirely. They charge a stated fee, disclosed in their Form ADV, and collect no commissions from products they recommend. A fee based financial advisor, by contrast, may show a lower stated management rate but earn additional compensation through product sales. Fiduciary advisors who operate on a fee-only basis are the cleaner structure: you can see exactly what you pay and verify it against the SEC filing.

You can verify whether a firm is a registered investment advisor at the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database. If a firm is registered as an RIA, it is a fiduciary. If it appears only on FINRA's BrokerCheck, it is a broker-dealer operating under the suitability standard. Some firms maintain both registrations. If that is the case, ask explicitly which standard governs the advice they give you on each type of recommendation.

Form ADV is not designed for easy reading. It is a regulatory document, not a brochure. But for investors who know where to look, it contains the most useful unfiltered information available about any registered firm. Here is how to use it.

Advisor Facts pulls fee and minimum data from these filings for every RIA in its database and presents it in a readable format alongside each firm's profile. For investors who want to skip the research step or cross-check their own reading of an ADV, the Advisor Facts database surfaces Item 5.E minimums and Item 5.F AUM for thousands of registered advisors in a side-by-side format. Use it as your starting point or as a verification tool after reading the filing directly.

The term "wealth management" is used loosely in the industry. At its broadest, it describes a firm that manages investments, coordinates with your tax advisor, reviews your estate plan, and thinks about your financial picture across multiple dimensions at once. At its narrowest, it describes a firm that manages a portfolio and uses the phrase because the client has enough assets to qualify for the label.

For investors with $2 million or more, the distinction matters. At that asset level, the decision about how to title assets, how to position a retirement account relative to a taxable account, and how to structure charitable giving are all interconnected. An advisor who manages only the portfolio and leaves those other questions to separate professionals, without coordinating among them, is leaving value on the table.

When evaluating a firm, the services worth asking about specifically include:

• Tax-aware investment management, meaning the portfolio is managed with your specific tax situation in mind, not just optimized for pre-tax returns
• Active coordination with your CPA and estate attorney, not just referrals to them
• Estate planning review, including beneficiary designations and trust structures
• Cash flow and withdrawal planning for investors approaching or in retirement
• Business owner services, including pre-sale liquidity planning and concentrated equity management

None of these services are universally available at every RIA. Form ADV Part 2A, Item 4 lists the specific advisory services a firm actually provides. It is a useful cross-check against what the firm says on its website and in its initial meeting. The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors also maintains a resource on what a comprehensive fee only financial planner relationship should include.

The phrase "personal CFO" is used as marketing language by many firms and as an operational description by some. The difference is worth understanding before you commit. A firm that describes itself this way but cannot tell you specifically who calls your accountant when the tax code changes, or who is responsible for reviewing your estate plan when your family situation shifts, is offering the language without the service.

The practical test is what we call the three-call problem. Consider two situations that come up regularly for high net worth investors at the $2 million to $10 million level.

In both cases, a personal CFO model means a single professional who owns the coordination problem. They call the accountant and the estate attorney. They run the analysis on the concentrated position. They show up to the estate planning meeting with the investment context already prepared. Most investors do not discover that their advisor does not do this until they need it done.

Independent registered investment advisors in the $500 million to $5 billion AUM range tend to operate this model more consistently than large wirehouse platforms, where client relationships are often segmented by product type. Firms like Welch and Forbes and Bradley, Foster and Sargent, which serve high net worth families across New England, are built around this integrated structure. Their Form ADV filings confirm it: the listed services include financial planning, estate coordination, and tax-aware management alongside portfolio management.

The question to ask any prospective firm is direct: who on your team is responsible for ensuring my investment strategy, my tax plan, and my estate documents are aligned with each other? If the answer is a job title rather than a named person with a defined process, that is worth pressing on before you sign anything.

The "1% rule," the industry shorthand for what wealth management costs, is outdated for high net worth investors. Investors who ask how much do financial advisors charge at this asset level often discover the real answer is closer to 0.50% to 0.75% at a well-run independent RIA. Most fee schedules are tiered, meaning the marginal rate declines as assets increase. The effective rate on a $10 million portfolio is almost always meaningfully lower than the rate on a $2 million portfolio at the same firm. Paying attention to how the tiers are structured is one of the better ways to identify whether a firm is priced competitively for your specific asset level.

The table below shows representative financial advice charges by portfolio size, drawn from Advisor Facts' review of SEC ADV filings from fee-only registered investment advisors in New England. These are ranges, not guarantees. Actual fees depend on the specific firm, the services included, and whether fees are negotiated. At this asset level, they frequently are.

These figures reflect fee-only RIAs. A fee based financial advisor who also earns commissions may show a lower stated AUM rate, but the all-in cost, including fund expenses and product fees, can substantially exceed these figures. Reading the Form ADV before your first meeting is the only reliable way to calculate a true comparison before you sign anything.

Fees are also negotiable more often than most investors realize. A firm with a stated rate of 0.85% may offer 0.70% to a client who brings $3 million and indicates they may consolidate additional assets over time. The fee disclosed in the ADV is the ceiling. The actual fee is a conversation. Advisor Facts' guide on negotiating wealth management fees covers this in detail, including specific language and timing strategies.

Applying the framework in this guide to every firm you consider is the right approach. But if you want a research-backed starting point for finding the top wealth management firms in New England, Advisor Facts has done the ADV work on 15 independent firms across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island.

Every profile in the ranked guide includes the firm's actual Form ADV data: AUM, minimum account size, fee structure, and the specific services offered. The guide is built for investors at the $2 million and above level who want to compare the best financial advisors in the region on verified data rather than marketing copy.