Fee-based brokers and financial advisors are driven to execute transactions to maintain profitability.  This encourages them to recommend products and investments that will give them lucrative commissions while potentially omitting the client’s best interest.  As a result, these financial advisors experience conflicting motives when it comes to providing objective advice and obtaining profitable commissions.

Fee-only advisory firms diverge from fee-based advisors, in that they strive to focus on the client’s best interest.  This essentially reduces conflicts of interest and allows the advisor to provide true objective advice, portfolio management and wealth guidance.  Most fee-only advisors are fiduciaries that are bound by ethics to place the clients’ interest ahead of their own.