Fee Disclosure Statement Pages That Build Trust Instead of Scaring Prospects Off

27 August 2026·5 min read

Quick answer: Most fee disclosure pages read like a wall of legal text nobody was ever meant to enjoy, which quietly tells prospects you'd rather they didn't look too closely. The fix isn't hiding the legal content, it's still required and still your compliance team's call, it's wrapping it in plain-English framing that explains why you charge what you charge before the legal wording takes over. Done well, your fee page becomes one of the more trust-building pages on your site instead of the one prospects skim past. 📈

Please note: general information, not financial or legal advice, check current ASIC and FSC guidance and have your compliance team approve all Fee Disclosure Statement and Financial Services Guide content before publishing.

Here's the pattern we see on almost every financial planning website: gorgeous homepage, warm about page, genuinely nice team photos, and then the fee disclosure page reads like it was pasted straight from a compliance manual, because it was. We get why that happens 💖, the FDS and FSG requirements exist for good reason and nobody wants to be the practice that got the wording wrong. But there's a real difference between meeting the legal requirement and using that same page to build trust, and most practices leave the second half on the table entirely.

What most firms get wrong

The usual approach treats the fee disclosure page as a legal obligation to tick off, built once by whoever drafted the compliance documents and never touched again, dense paragraphs, no framing, no explanation of why the fee structure looks the way it does. Prospects land on it during due diligence, understand maybe half of it, and leave with a vaguer sense of trust than when they arrived. The page that should reassure them they're dealing with a properly run, transparent practice instead reads like the fine print on a phone contract.

The asset: a plain-English content outline for your fee page

This is a structure to brief your compliance team with, not wording to publish as-is, every line still needs their sign-off.

1. "How we charge, in plain terms", a short, warm paragraph before any legal content, explaining your fee model in one or two sentences a non-planner would understand.
2. "Why we structure it this way", one paragraph on what the fee actually covers, so prospects see the value, not just the cost.
3. Your Financial Services Guide, the required legal content, compliance-approved, presented with proper headings rather than one dense block.
4. Your Fee Disclosure Statement content, same treatment, compliance-approved, broken into scannable sections.
5. "Questions about fees we get a lot", two or three genuine FAQs in plain language, still reviewed by compliance, pre-empting what prospects actually wonder.
6. A clear next step, an invitation to ask questions before committing, not just a document dump and a dead end.

The solo planner on a flat fee-for-service model: His old fee page was two paragraphs of legal text and nothing else. Rewritten, it opened with "I charge a flat fee agreed upfront before any work begins, no percentage of your portfolio, no surprises," then moved into the compliance-approved content underneath. Prospects stopped emailing to ask how he actually charged.

The boutique practice charging on funds under management: Percentage-based fees worry prospects most, since the figure attached to their own balance can look large in isolation. The rewritten intro explained what the percentage covers across a full year, ongoing reviews, strategy adjustments, market monitoring, before the legal disclosure content took over, so the number arrived with context.

The practice with two fee types, one-off advice and ongoing service: Prospects kept confusing which fee applied to them. The plain-English section split into two short blocks, "if you want a one-off plan" and "if you want ongoing management," each pointing to the relevant part of the compliance-approved content below.

The how: plain English on top, compliance underneath, nothing removed

The structure matters more than the wording here. Nothing in the required FSG or FDS content gets simplified, shortened or reworded without your compliance team's approval, that content exists in a specific form for a reason. What changes is what surrounds it: a plain-English introduction, clear headings breaking up dense paragraphs, and a logical order from "here's the simple version" to "here's the full legal detail," rather than dropping a prospect straight into clause five of a document they haven't been prepared for.

💡 Send the plain-English sections to compliance too, not just the legal ones. A friendly framing paragraph can accidentally misstate how fees work if it's written without reference to the actual FDS, get every word checked, not just the parts that look legal.

Mistakes to avoid

Publishing legal fee content with zero plain-English framing around it
Rewording FSG or FDS content without compliance sign-off to make it "friendlier"
Burying the fee page in the site footer where due-diligence prospects have to hunt for it
Treating the fee page as a one-time build instead of updating it as your fee model changes
Assuming a percentage-based fee doesn't need any context to look reasonable

Frequently asked questions

Can we just simplify the legal wording ourselves to make it friendlier?

No, that's exactly the line not to cross. The FSG and FDS wording needs to stay compliance-approved; what you're adding is plain-English framing around it, not a rewrite of the legal content itself.

Will a better fee page stop price-sensitive prospects from leaving?

Not entirely, and it shouldn't try to. Some prospects want the cheapest option regardless of how clearly you explain fees, and that's a fit issue, not a copywriting one. A clearer page mainly stops good-fit prospects bouncing out of confusion or distrust.

Where should the fee page sit in our site navigation?

Somewhere genuinely findable, many practices bury it under a generic "resources" menu. Prospects doing due diligence go looking for it specifically, so it deserves its own clear link, not a hunt.

Does this apply to both our FSG and our FDS, or just one?

Both, they usually live on the same page or close together, and both benefit from the same plain-English-on-top structure, provided your compliance team signs off on each separately.

Keep reading 🤍

Written by

Kate, founder of Chronically Online

I help Gold Coast and Brisbane businesses grow with branding, websites and marketing that actually works.

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