Why can't every American have a financial advisor?
Advisor minimums aren't gatekeeping. They reflect the fixed cost of serving an account, and lowering that cost is what moves the $250,000 floor.
Because most accounts below about $250,000 cost more to serve than they pay. It isn't that advisors don't want those clients.
Take John: an $85,000 salary, a kid on the way, maybe $20,000 invested. At a typical 1% fee, his account pays an advisor $150 to $200 a year. That doesn't cover the hour it takes to onboard him, let alone ongoing service, compliance documentation and the calls after a bad week in the market. So he hears "our minimum is $250,000," tries a robo app that gives him the same output it would give a 24-year-old with no kids, and ends up asking a coworker.
The minimum is a cost, not a preference
A $250,000 minimum prices in paperwork, follow-up and documentation that cost about the same whether the client has $20,000 or $2 million. Software made the client-facing screen faster. It hasn't made the relationship meaningfully cheaper to serve.
The lever is the cost to serve
Give an advisor tools that pre-fill forms, catch a wrong account number before it becomes a two-week delay and draft the documentation an exam will ask for, and you lower what it costs to open and keep an account. Every dollar taken out of that cost lets the floor move lower.
Where should the line sit?
Probably not at every American, and not this decade. The better question is how far the floor can move once paperwork stops being a tax on the relationship. Nobody in the industry has published that number yet, and it's the one worth working out.
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