How much does a financial planner cost in South Africa?
There is no single price — there are four structures, and every one of them must be disclosed before anything is signed: an upfront advice fee, an ongoing percentage of invested assets, an hourly or fixed planning fee, and regulated commission on insurance products.
The number itself varies by planner; the transparency does not. Asking "how are you paid?" is a normal question with a legally disclosable answer — and a planner confident in their value answers it plainly.
The four structures
- Upfront (initial) advice fee — a once-off amount for the analysis and plan, sometimes deducted from the first investment, sometimes invoiced directly
- Ongoing advice fee — a percentage of the assets under advice, deducted from the investment each year for as long as the relationship runs
- Hourly or fixed planning fee — paid for the planning work itself, like any other professional service, independent of whether any product is bought
- Commission on risk products — for life, disability and similar insurance, the product provider pays the adviser a commission that is regulated, with caps set in law
Where the fee hides in plain sight: the EAC
For investment products, the ongoing advice fee does not arrive as an invoice — it comes off the investment before returns are reported, which is why it can feel free while quietly compounding. The effective annual cost (EAC) disclosure standard exists precisely for this: it breaks a product's total cost into components, and the advice fee is one of the lines.
What a percentage taken every year does to a pot over decades is its own article: "What do investment fees really cost over 20 or 30 years?" The same arithmetic applies to the advice line as to every other line.
Asking is normal
Every one of the four structures is disclosable up front — clients are entitled to the answer before committing to anything. The question is not rude; it is the system working as designed.
And it doubles as a quality signal. A planner who explains their fee structure without flinching — this is what I charge, this is how it reaches me, this is what it pays for — is demonstrating the same transparency their advice will have. The full first-meeting list is in "What questions should you ask a planner in the first meeting?"
What "free" advice means
Advice that costs nothing at the point of delivery is still being paid for — by someone, from somewhere. Usually that somewhere is a product: commission or fees built into whatever gets sold fund the conversation that sold it.
That is not automatically sinister — regulated commission is a legitimate, capped structure, and many good advisers work within it. It is simply a fact worth having: "free" describes who sends the invoice, not whether one exists. The follow-up question is the useful one — *which product pays you, and how much of my money does it route back?*
The comparison that actually matters
Structures differ in what they reward. A percentage of assets pays the planner more as the pot grows; a fixed fee costs the same whether the pot is large or small; commission pays when a product is placed. None of these is inherently right — but each shapes incentives differently, and knowing which structure is in play is how the incentives become visible.
A financial needs analysis done properly — see "What is a financial needs analysis (FNA)?" — puts the fee conversation on solid ground: the cost of the advice can be weighed against gaps that have actually been measured.
Terms used on this page
- EAC (effective annual cost)
- South Africa’s standard for disclosing what an investment really costs: one comparable yearly percentage, split into fund management, administration, advice and other costs.
Reviewed July 2026