Why report fees slow down financial planning firms

You don’t need a minimum report fee. You need confidence.

Let’s talk about the rise of “report fees”, or its fancy cousin, the “financial planning fee” which is then waived upon implementation of the advice.

You’ll hear all kinds of reasons for it:

“We need to cover our time.”
“We want to qualify clients.”
“What if they take the report and just do it themselves?”

Here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud:
Report/financial planning fees are unnecessary and add friction to the client journey.

Most firms aren’t getting burned by clients walking away with a plan and doing it themselves. In fact, the firms we work with at Melo (across a wide range of models) typically convert 99%+ of clients who receive a report onto ongoing service.

Why? Because clients don’t actually want the document.

They want the outcome.

• The clarity on their goals.
• A plan.
• The coaching.
• The sense that someone else is doing this bit for them so they don’t need to think about it.

They’re not buying your report. They’re buying YOU, someone to sort out their financial life.

So where does this fear come from?

It comes from a scarcity mindset.  There are stories of clients stealing advice being passed around the profession like urban legends.

Most of the time, a firm has had one or two clients, out of hundreds, who have taken the report and implemented the advice themselves, but we’re talking less than 1%.

The result?

Firms build clunky, transactional fee structures that are hard to explain, slow down trust and add unnecessary friction to the onboarding process.

As a result they end up :

• Having awkward conversations about “what the fee includes” and “when it doesn’t apply”.
• Creating a weird dynamic of making the client “prove they’re serious before trusting them”.
• And worst of all, turning a values-based process into a sales transaction.

Our advice?

• Drop the minimum fee.
• Back your value.
• Trust your process.

If your discovery phase is clear, intentional and built on alignment, you don’t need a £2,000 safety net, that’s only going to get used once in a blue moon.

Instead, show the client what their life could look like with you in it.

Paint the picture. Be bold about your value. Then ask for the real commitment. No games. No reports-as-ransom.

Just a cleaner, faster path to meaningful, long-term client relationships.

If more than 1% of your clients are taking the advice and running, your qualification stage isn’t working.

Focus on making this better, not making the onboarding journey for 99% of your clients harder.

Still charging a report fee? It might be costing you more than it’s protecting.

We help financial planning firms simplify their onboarding, build trust faster and grow more profitable client relationships, without clunky fees or awkward conversations.

Get in Touch

📩 If you want a cleaner, smarter way to turn prospects into lifelong clients, let’s talk.