The Challenges Of Integrating Advisory Fee Schedules And Billing During A Merger Or Acquisition

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#OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces Video Transcript

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to Office Hours with Michael Kitces.

For today's episode, I want to talk about what is kind of a rather mundane, but actually very crucial issue: When advisory firms are looking to merge or be acquired, how do you integrate billing and fee schedules?

Today's question comes from Dan, who asks:

"Much has been written about valuing advisory firms in M&A, but I haven't seen anything about how to handle differences in billing between the acquirer and the acquired. If A buys B but B charges 20% less than A on their fee schedule, do you value the firm based on the acquirer's fee schedule or the one that was already in place? What if the acquired firm charges more than the acquirer, do you have to cut the fees of the business that you just bought? And if so does that impact the price?"

These are great questions, Dan, because these are the real world messy conflicts that crop up when one advisory firm is actually looking at acquiring another. And, as you know, these differences and the potential conflicts in fee structure can really create challenges in potential deals. So let's dive in just a little bit further.

Merging Differences In Advisory Fee Schedules [Time - 1:16]

The first and biggest challenge when it comes to merging billing when an advisory firm is acquiring is reconciling those differences in fee schedules between the two firms. As you noted, the process and the implications are a bit different depending on whether the acquired firm was charging less or charging more than the acquirer than the buyer.

In situations where the buyer charges more than the firm being acquired, generally what I see most firms do is eventually pass on those new higher fee schedules to the clients of the acquired firm. And in fact, firms that have been able to successfully create a value proposition where they can charge something above average advisory fee and actually justify them, sometimes you can pay a bit of a premium for acquiring an advisory firm that charges slightly lower fees.

For instance, imagine a firm that charges 1.1% on the first million of assets and they're buying a firm that simply charges a flat 1%. So evaluation experts just kind of measure the value of the firm being acquired based on their revenue. They charge 1%, their evaluation is based on charging 1%. But if an acquirer charges 1.1%, it really expects that clients will transition to their higher fee. That acquirer can actually afford to pay a little bit more for the firm because they know there's the potential to make up the higher cost from being able to generate a little bit higher revenue after the acquisition.

Now, in practice, at least from the few deals that I've seen that went down this road, this usually isn't a really substantial impact because the acquiring firm also has additional risk in the transition. That they have to successfully communicate and retain the clients, and persuade them to the new higher fee schedule.

And in fact, most firms that I've seen that actually do these kinds of transitions tend to keep the original fee schedule in place for a year or two just to give clients some stability in the transition and ensure they stick around, and then adjust the fees a little later once they've had an opportunity to build a real relationship with the newly acquired clients and to show real value before breaking the news about the fee increase.

Now, where the acquirer charges less than the firm being acquired, it gets messier. Virtually all the acquirers I've seen that charge less than the firm that they buy ultimately bring down the fee schedule to their fee schedule, which means you're buying a revenue stream based on a certain pricing, but also pricing your own revenue stream.

Sometimes this works out fine because, in general, larger advisory firms tend to acquire smaller firms, and if the larger firm is much more efficient than the smaller firm, they may more than make up the loss of revenue with cost savings. For example, suppose a firm being acquired was part of a partnership with $120 million in management that generates about $1.5 million dollars of revenue, and had a 20% profit margin (so $300,000 in profits) and the acquiring firm is able to cut $100,000 or $200,000 in staffing cost by merging the new firm on their existing infrastructure. In this case, it might fine with dropping the fee schedule a little bit because the revenue will go down a little, but the cost will go down a little, and they'll end up with the same profits and the same cash flow anyways. And the good news, at least, is that it's much easier to communicate to new clients that you're cutting their fees as the acquirer than when you're raising them.

But the key point here is that it means one of the big steps of due diligence when you're looking at a potential acquisition or a merger of an advisory firm, is comparing those fee schedules. Now, the good news, ironically, is so many advisors all charge approximately the same fee (around 1% on a million dollar client) that often these days advisory fee schedules line up pretty well, but it's not just about whether you charge the same 1% on a million, it's the advisory fee all the way up and down the line, and do you have clients that are materially higher or lower at different rates that don't line up to the new firm? Identifying those gaps is really crucial because it will have an impact on revenue of the new firm if the acquired firm gets blended into the acquirer's fee schedule. And so, as the buyer that's writing the check, you need to know if this is going to impact your revenue.

Billing In Advance Vs Arrears (and on Daily Balance vs End-Of-Quarter Values) [Time - 5:07]

Now, the second area that advisors need to watch when it comes to merging advisory fee schedules is the actual billing process. Because there are two issues that can crop here, one big and one a little bit smaller. The really big one is whether you bill in advance or in arrears. In other words, when a client starts with you, is their first quarterly billing for the prior partial quarter that they were with you or is their first billing in advance for the upcoming quarter, and if they decide to terminate the next quarter, do you refund them a pro rata portion of their fees?

Now, some firms just prefer to bill in arrears and they have a philosophy, "We're not going to bill our clients until we've started doing the work," other firms I know say, "I have a strong preference for billing in advance, that way I never have any accounts receivable, and I never have to collect from clients. I just refund pro rata if someone terminates, and not many people do because I've got a good retention." On an ongoing basis, most firms don't even think about this. You just bill your clients quarterly, whether it's in arrears or in advance. After the first billing, no one really cares unless they're going to terminate you and then you have to figure out if you will pro rata portion the last fee back if you billed them in advance.

But in a merger or an acquisition, this matters a lot, because if you bill in arrears and you acquire a firm that bills in advance, then when you buy them, you immediately take on the liability of refunding any clients who terminate in the quarter right after you've billed them. Unless you immediately convert the clients to arrears billing, you also have this potential liability in the future. But if you want to convert the clients, this gets even messier.

Imagine I bill in arrears and I acquire a firm that bills in advance. We're in negotiations now, the deal closes in October, shortly after fourth quarter billing has happened at the end of September 30th. So the clients of the firm I just bought have already paid for Q4, they paid it in advance, which means if I want to bill them in arrears, my next billing isn't going to happen for five months, until the end of Q1, March 31st, when I can bill them in arrears for the first billing as the acquired firm.

If I bought the firm in October, I don't get any revenue at the end of the fourth quarter. There's no Q4 billing in arrears because the firm already billed Q4 before they sold it to me. That seller has that money gone with it. And if I don't bill in advance, I can't bill them for Q1 at the end of the year. Instead, I have to wait three months into Q1. So you have to be cognizant of whether there were gaps between the firms billing in advance and in arrears.

And unfortunately, it's not much better going the other direction. If the acquiring firm bills in advance and the firm being acquired bills in arrears, then the only way to true-up clients is that as the acquirer, you have to double-bill them. So in my earlier example, if you buy a firm in October that bills in arrears when you bill in advance, and at the end of Q4, on December 31st, you're going to bill Q4 in arrears, because the clients haven't paid for that yet, and you're going to bill Q1 in advance because that's what you do on an ongoing basis. And so the clients are going to get hit with two bills to get them on track the first time you do billing with them as the acquirer.

Now, it's worth noting that you're not cheating them or anything here. You're not like literally double-charging them. They're paying the Q4 fees because services were rendered in Q4, and you're billing them in advance for Q1 because that's what you do with all of all your clients, and if they terminate you you partially refund. But it does mean you have to be prepared to communicate that to transition them from arrears into an advance, there has to be a double-billing that occurs. You have to go two-quarters of fees to get an arrears closed out and an advance set up going forward. And so that's a real risk, a real transition risk if you're an acquirer, and you have to convince clients to stick around when the first thing you're going to do is bill them for two-quarters when they're still getting to know you. Now, it can be done. I know firms that have done it and they were able to get through it, and they were able to have retention. But at a minimum, it's a really sensitive issue.

The other piece that goes along with these sort of mundane billing processes is you need to be aware of whether there's alignment in how the fees are calculated. Specifically, when you do that billing, whether it's in advance or in arrears, do you calculate based on end of quarter balance, or do you calculate based on average daily balance? Now, in theory, on average, these things average out, but not always. If your clients are net savers, end of quarter balances tend to be higher than average daily balances within the quarter because clients keep contributing lifting up the balance so that the end of quarter tends to be the highest one because it's got all the contributions.

But if you're mostly working with retirees, it may be the other way around. Average daily balances tend to be higher than end of quarter balances because at the end of the quarter all the withdrawals have occurred. And then, of course, in any particular quarter, you can get big gaps if the market moved sharply in the last couple of weeks in either direction and the end of quarter balance is very different than the average daily balance. In general, this adjustment tends to be more administrative (particularly in the quarter where the transition is occurring), but you need to know that the billing process is going to change. First, because you have to communicate it, second, because you probably need to reflect it in an updated advisory agreement, but you also need to consider whether there's a risk that it may distort revenue in the first billing period after you acquire.

The Acquisition Problem With Retainer Fees In Lieu Of AUM Fees [Time - 10:10]

Before I wrap up, there's actually one other important dynamic I want to note here as well, and it's the unique challenges that crop up when you're trying to merge advisory firms where their fee schedule isn't AUM fees in the first place, it's retainer fees. Now, we know from industry research that the overall majority of advisory firms are still AUM-centric. And in fact, that the larger the advisory firm, the more affluent their clients, the more likely they are to charge AUM fees. Which means, on average, most buyers of retainer firms are still going to be AUM firms. And AUM firms acquire other firms to get more AUM. That's what they do.

But what that means is that when an AUM acquires a retainer firm of clients who actually have assets, there's usually a plan to convert those retainer clients over to an AUM fee structure. Except, unfortunately, that's often very difficult because the firms that use retainer fees, particularly for affluent clients, tend to aggressively sell against AUM fees to convince their clients that the retainer model is superior, which means you effectively poison the well for most of your acquirers.

And this is one of the major drawbacks to pivoting from AUM to retainer fees that I find very rarely ever comes up in conversation (although I know a number of advisors who switched to retainer fees years ago and now want to retire and can't find anyone to buy their firm because most firms charging retainer fees are relatively small, don't have great margins, and don't have the size and scale and cash flow to buy...while the AUM firms who've got dollars to buy, don't want to buy retainer fee firms where the clients have been told that the AUM model is bad).

This isn't necessarily an issue for those who are doing retainer fees for younger clients who don't have assets, because the truth is, no AUM buyer is going to be acquiring a practice of clients who don't have assets (or if they do, they're going to acquire because they want to actually do the retainer model the way the retainer model is being executed). But if you're a firm that works with affluent clients who have assets and simply charges retainer fees, this gets a lot harder to find prospective buyers because the AUM buyers want to convert but are afraid of the risk, and there aren't very many non-AUM buyers. You risk drastically reducing the appeal for the bulk of prospective buyers.

And in fact, even other retainer firms often have trouble acquiring those who do complexity-based retainer fees because different firms characterize complexity differently. And so, even two firms doing annual retainer fees for affluent clients might charge very differently for some of those clients. Which means if you're the acquirer, this is a really messy, one-client-at-a-time process of figuring out what each acquired client would be charged under the new firm's model, and whether it's more or less than what the old firm was charging.

Indirectly, this is actually one of the reasons why the AUM model happens to work so well because, by its nature, it's actually a really systematized billing model. At worse, you have to change a few rates or break points on your AUM fee schedule, but there's a standard fee structure for all clients. And that's often not the case with retainer firms. And so, it can make the billing process much harder to reconcile for an acquiring firm. Sometimes so difficult that it may narrow the number of buyers, which means you have to spend more time trying to sell your firm and have fewer bidders competing and hopefully bidding up your price, which is not good news if you hope to be a seller some day. So do understand that most firms tend to get acquired by those who have comparable billing styles or business models, and make sure you know that you're going to have buyers if you're making business model decisions.

But anyway, the bottom line is just to recognize how important it is when you're looking at a potential merger or an acquisition to do this kind of detailed due diligence on the advisory fee schedules and the billing processes. Do the firms have the same fee schedule? If not, who's higher and lower all the way up and down the spectrum? Do they both bill in arrears or in advance, or is there a gap? Do they both bill on quarter and/or average daily balance or is there another gap? And if the firm charges retainer fees or separate planning fees (or a blended AUM plus retainer), are those fee structures and the way the fees are set consistent across the firms? Because, if they're not, those kind of manually assigned retainer fees and planning fees are often the hardest parts to line up.

So be aware of that, and particularly if you're thinking about moving away from AUM fees and towards the emerging range of "non-traditional" fee structures, as you may limit the potential market for buyers. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing to do if you think you can grow the business well enough in that direction. You may grow up on more than enough to make up for the fact that you've got a smaller market, but it's really hard to find firms that will want to acquire you because of all these challenges in integrating fee schedules and billing if you use a substantially different fee model than everybody else.

I hope that's helpful as some food for thought. This is Office Hours with Michael Kitces, normally 1 p.m. East Coast time on Tuesdays. Unfortunately, I was a little bit late today, but thanks for joining us and hanging out. And have a great day everyone.

So what do you think? Are differences in fee schedules a potential problem when looking at mergers and acquisitions? Have you been in a similar situation? How did you manage the transition from one fee schedule to another? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!