Hopefully your wealth management contracts and agreements are not the places where you skip the fine print, because if so, you could be getting hosed. Between initial charges, annual charges, transaction charges and performance charges, if you don’t pay close attention, your wealth management firm could be making close to the same amount of money from your portfolio as you are. Even if you do read the fine print, banks are still making more than they disclose when selling third party funds, as the charges are not passed onto the client at cost. When a financial institution sells a product to a wealth management firm, the product comes with a certain charge, usually somewhere around 2 percent, which is split between the two. However, the wealth management firm will then agree with the seller to charge, for example, 3 percent and pocket the extra percentage. Essentially funds and products from
