Fee-Only Advisor
Also called: fee-only, fee-based vs fee-only, flat fee advisor
A fee-only advisor is paid solely by clients — hourly, flat fee, or a percentage of assets — and takes no commissions from product sales. The deliberately confusing near-synonym is fee-based, which means fees plus commissions. Fee-only removes product-sale conflicts; it does not remove all of them, since an asset-based fee still discourages advice to pay off a mortgage or buy an annuity.