Fintech · Wealth & robo
Free planning support cost more than small accounts earned.
This marketing & margin audit surfaced $61k in recurring annual margin in a Fintech business, evidenced, senior reviewed, and delivered in 6 days.
The business
A wealth and robo advice platform offered access to human financial planners as a differentiator, available across its account base. Assets under management were growing and the service was popular, so the cost of providing that human support was never weighed against the AUM based fee each account actually generated, particularly at the smaller end of the base.
What triggered the audit
Margin was thinner than AUM growth implied, pointing at cost to serve rather than revenue. The audit modeled the cost of human planning support against the AUM fee each account tier produced, testing whether the service was economic across the whole base or only part of it.
What the audit found
The human planning support was running at a loss on the smaller accounts. For clients with modest balances, the AUM based fee generated only a small amount of revenue, yet those same clients could consume as much planner time as far larger accounts, so the fully loaded cost of the support exceeded the fee the account produced. The service was genuinely economic for larger balances but structurally unprofitable at the bottom of the base, and because cost to serve had never been set against per account revenue, the platform kept offering unlimited support to accounts that couldn’t fund it. As the small account segment grew, so did the drag. Reconciled by tier, the mismatch was costing roughly $61k a year in support delivered below its fee.
What we changed
Modeled fully loaded planning cost against the AUM fee by account tier, exposing exactly where human support was being delivered below the revenue it earned.
Restructured support so unlimited human planning is reserved for the tiers whose fee genuinely covers the cost of providing it.
Offered smaller accounts a scalable, digital first support model that fits their economics without stripping the service away entirely.
Made cost to serve by tier a monitored metric, so the small account drag can’t quietly expand again as that segment grows.
The result
The published chart shows support cost as a share of the fee on small accounts falling from 140% to 85%, a 55 percentage point decrease. The published material does not provide the cost allocation method or the retention assumptions used for the account tiers. $61k a year recovered by matching planning support to what each account tier actually pays, an annual figure equal to 10× the $5,950 Audit + Sprint fee. For any AUM fee business, the leak is at the bottom of the base: small accounts can consume as much planner time as large ones while paying a fraction of the fee. If you offer unlimited human support without modeling cost to serve by tier, the smallest accounts may be your biggest drag. A fixed fee audit models it in days and right sizes the service.
From kickoff to signed off findings: 6 days, inside our fixed 5–7 day window.
What the client said
$61k a year found in 6 days
Support cost vs fee on small accounts: 140% → 85%
“Small accounts used as much planner time as large ones for a fraction of the fee. David modeled cost to serve by tier: below a certain balance the support ran at a loss. Human planning now sits with the tiers whose fee covers it.”
David JacksonSenior Auditor · signed this audit off