Platform and Investment Fees vs Advice Fees: The Content Gap on Most Financial Planning Websites

29 September 2026·7 min read

Quick answer: Platform and investment fees are the ongoing costs charged by the super fund, platform, or investment manager for holding and running the money — advice fees are what the client pays the planner for the strategy, ongoing service, and relationship. Most financial planning websites explain neither clearly, which leaves prospective clients doing their own (often wrong) maths on what advice actually costs them. Closing that content gap is one of the fastest ways to build trust before the first meeting even happens. 💡

Please note: general information, not financial advice — check current official guidance before relying on it.

Ask ten people what their financial adviser "costs" and most will give you one number — usually the advice fee, because that's the line item they see on their statement most clearly. Platform fees, investment management fees, and any underlying fund costs quietly sit underneath, doing just as much (sometimes more) to their overall return, and almost nobody outside the industry can explain the difference. 💖 That's not a client education failure. It's a content failure — and it's sitting right there on most financial planning websites, completely unaddressed, page after page of "our process" and "our values" with not one plain-English paragraph on how the actual cost stack works.

What most financial planners get wrong on fee content

The instinct is to avoid the topic entirely, or to bury it in a PDF fee schedule that nobody reads until well into the onboarding process. The logic is understandable — fees feel like a sensitive, even slightly defensive topic, and it's tempting to let the value conversation happen first, in person, where you can control the framing.

But that approach backfires in a specific way: prospective clients don't stop thinking about cost just because your website doesn't mention it. They go and Google "how much does a financial planner cost," land on a generic industry article with a headline percentage, and arrive at your discovery call already anchored to a number that has nothing to do with your actual fee structure or the platform and investment costs layered underneath it.

The second common mistake is the opposite problem: practices that do publish fee information, but only the advice fee — leaving platform and investment fees completely unmentioned, as if they're someone else's problem. They're not. A client comparing two practices on "the fee" alone, without understanding the full stack, is comparing apples to a completely different fruit, and that comparison rarely favours the practice with better underlying value but a higher headline advice fee.

The usable asset: a fee-stack explainer template

The Three-Layer Fee Explainer — a simple structure you can adapt into a dedicated page or a section of your "how we work" page:

Layer 1 — Platform fee. "This is what the platform provider charges to administer your account — hold your investments, process transactions, and provide reporting. It's usually a percentage of your balance, sometimes with a cap. We don't set this fee, but we do help you compare platforms so you're not paying more than you need to."

Layer 2 — Investment / fund fee. "If your money is invested in managed funds, ETFs, or model portfolios, each of those has its own ongoing fee for managing the investments themselves. This varies depending on the investment approach — passive index options are typically lower cost than actively managed ones, and there are trade-offs either way worth discussing."

Layer 3 — Advice fee. "This is what you pay us directly, for the strategy, the ongoing reviews, and the relationship. It's the one fee entirely within our control, and the one we'll always walk you through line by line before you commit to anything."

Close with a single sentence that ties it together: "When people ask 'how much does a financial planner cost,' the honest answer is: it depends on all three layers together, not just the one with our name on it — and part of our job is making sure that total stack is working hard for you, not just affordable to look at."

Worked examples from real practice types

Fee-for-service practice, no commissions: Their website now has a standalone "Understanding the true cost of advice" page, linked from both the homepage and every service page. It walks through the three-layer structure above using a simple table, with real (ranged, not exact) figures for their typical client portfolio size. Prospective clients arrive at the first meeting already understanding the structure, which means the actual meeting is spent on strategy, not fee literacy.

Practice specialising in pre-retiree consolidation: A huge share of their new clients arrive holding multiple old super accounts on legacy platforms with high fees they don't understand. Their content leans into this directly: a short explainer titled "Why consolidating platforms can matter as much as your investment choice," with a worked (illustrative, clearly labelled as an example, not a promise) comparison of two hypothetical platform fee structures side by side. It reframes the adviser's value as fee literacy, not just strategy.

Boutique practice serving business owners and SMSF clients: Because SMSF cost structures are genuinely more complex (accounting, audit, platform, investment, advice all separately billed), they built a simple annotated diagram showing where each fee sits in an SMSF versus a retail platform structure — with an honest note that SMSFs aren't automatically cheaper, and sometimes cost more once every layer is counted. That honesty is doing real work for their credibility with a sceptical, financially literate audience.

How to actually write and structure this content

Give it its own page, not a buried paragraph. "Understanding our fees" or "How advice fees work" deserves its own URL — it's a page people specifically search for and want to send to a partner before deciding.
Use ranges, not promises. Real dollar figures vary by client, balance, and platform. Illustrative ranges or a worked hypothetical example (clearly labelled as an example) keep you accurate without overcommitting.
Show the total, not just your slice. Even a simple stacked bar visual — platform, investment, advice — does more to build trust than three paragraphs of text, because it visibly proves you're not hiding anything.
Link out to where clients can check current platform and fund fees themselves. Directing people to check the actual PDS or platform disclosure signals confidence, not evasion.
Update it when structures change. Fee content goes stale fast. Treat this page like a living document, reviewed at least annually.

💡 The practices winning the "cost" conversation aren't the cheapest ones. They're the ones who explain the full fee stack clearly enough that prospective clients stop comparing headline numbers and start comparing total value — which is a comparison good advice usually wins.

Mistakes to avoid

Only publishing the advice fee. It leaves the biggest part of the cost conversation to guesswork, and guesswork rarely favours you.
Quoting exact percentages that change by product or provider. Use ranges and worked examples, and always point to the primary disclosure documents for exact current figures.
Writing it in jargon. "MER," "ICR," and "platform administration fee" mean nothing to most prospective clients — define every term the first time you use it.
Framing fees only as a cost, never as a comparison tool. Explaining the stack also helps clients see where an adviser is actively managing cost on their behalf, not just charging one.
Letting the sales team and the website say different things. If your fee page and your discovery-call script don't match, that mismatch gets noticed — and it undermines trust fast.

Frequently asked questions

Should we publish exact fee percentages on our website?

You can, but it depends on how your fees are structured and whether they vary meaningfully by client or portfolio size — a fixed fee schedule can be published confidently, while a percentage-based or tiered structure is usually better explained with ranges and a worked example, with an invitation to get an exact quote.

Do we need compliance sign-off on this kind of content?

Yes — any content describing fees, costs, or the advice process should go through the same review as any other client-facing material, even though it's general information rather than personal advice.

Won't explaining platform fees just confuse people more?

It can, if it's written densely. The fix is structure, not omission — a simple three-layer breakdown with plain language and one visual usually clarifies rather than confuses, but it does take more editing effort than most practices expect to get that plain-language version right.

How specific should the worked examples be?

Specific enough to feel real, general enough to be honestly labelled as illustrative — a hypothetical client with a stated (invented) balance and stated (invented) fee percentages, clearly marked as an example, works well without implying it's a guarantee for any real client's situation.

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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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