The Fee Audit Checklist

The Fee Audit Checklist

Work top to bottom. Every item points at a document you already have or can request — nothing here requires special access, software, or expertise.

Gather the documents

1. Your most recent account statements — one for every account, including the ones nobody opens.
2. The prospectus for each fund you own — the fee table sits near the front.
3. Your advisory agreement or Form ADV Part 2A — it states the advisory fee and how it is billed.
4. Your retirement plan's annual fee disclosure — ask your plan administrator if you cannot find it.
5. Any annuity or insurance contracts — with their fee tables and surrender schedules.

Locate the fees

6. The advisory fee — percentage of assets, flat, or hourly; find the exact figure in the agreement, then find the deduction on your statement.
7. Expense ratios — one for every fund and ETF you own, from each prospectus fee table.
8. Sales charges (loads) — front-end charges on your trade confirmations; contingent deferred charges in the prospectus.
9. 12b-1 fees — inside the expense ratio; the fee table breaks them out as a separate row.
10. Transaction and account fees — commissions, maintenance charges, wire and transfer fees, on your statements.
11. Contract charges — M&E, rider charges, and the surrender schedule, in any annuity contract you hold.

Ask the questions

12. “What is my all-in annual cost, as one figure?” — ask for it in writing.
13. “How are you compensated — fees, commissions, or both?” — the answer belongs in the disclosure documents you gathered.
14. “Is a lower-cost share class of anything I own available to me?” — and if not, why not.
15. “What am I paying for that I do not use?” — riders, features, and services all have line items; match each one to something you actually rely on.

This checklist is educational only. It is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and it does not describe any specific product or account — refer to your own documents for their actual terms.

Three Questions to Ask Your Current Advisor

Good questions are not accusations. Each of these belongs in any working relationship with a financial professional, and each has an answer a well-run practice can produce without hesitation.

1. “What is my all-in cost, combined?”

Advisory fees, fund expense ratios, and trading costs are each disclosed in a different document, and no single statement adds them up for you. Until they are combined, you are comparing pieces, not the whole. A complete answer is one number — the advisory fee, the fund expenses, and the transaction costs, totaled as a single figure and provided in writing.

2. “When was my plan last reviewed against alternatives — and by whom?”

Plans age. Share classes, fund menus, and your own circumstances all change, and a plan built years ago deserves to be re-examined against what is available now. A complete answer includes a date, a name, and what was actually compared — with notes from the review you can see.

3. “If you retired tomorrow, what happens to my plan?”

A plan that lives in one person’s memory is a relationship, not a plan. Continuity means a named successor and documentation — the reasoning behind each holding, written down well enough that a new set of eyes could pick up the file. A complete answer names who steps in and shows where the record lives.

These three questions are the short version — an audit asks them, and the follow-ups they open, systematically, document by document, in writing.

This guide is educational only. It is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and it does not evaluate any specific advisor, firm, or account.