Fee-Only, Fiduciary, and Independent: What It Means and Why We Chose the Fee-Only Model 

There’s a lot of noise in the financial industry around terms like fee-only, fiduciary, and independent. For people outside the profession, it’s easy to assume they all mean the same thing, or to wonder if they matter at all. 

The truth is, they do matter. Not because they make for good marketing, but because they impact how advice is delivered, how advisors are paid, and who’s really in control behind the scenes. At BentOak Capital, we recently made a structural change to align more fully with the model we’ve always believed in. During this process, we’ve had even more reason to reflect on why these distinctions matter. 

Compensation: Not All Advice is Created Equal 

There are several ways financial advisors are compensated, and each structure comes with its own set of incentives (and potential conflicts). 

• Broker-dealer model: Advisors can earn commissions for selling products like mutual funds, annuities, and insurance. Often, the more they sell, the more they make. This doesn’t automatically mean bad advice, but it does create incentive misalignment. 

• Hybrid model: Advisors are dually registered, meaning they can wear two hats, sometimes acting as a fiduciary, other times as a broker. This can still be done with a best-interest mindset, but most clients don’t realize when that shift happens unless explicitly stated. 

• Fee-only model: Advisors are paid directly by clients and do not receive commissions or product-based compensation. This structure removes a major source of conflict and makes it clear who the advisor works for. 

Ownership: Who Really Owns the Firm You’re Working With? 

Ownership structure in financial advisory firms isn’t just a behind-the-scenes technicality. It shapes the firm’s decision-making, its priorities, and ultimately client advice. 

In many firms, even senior advisors and leadership teams operate within systems they didn’t create and can’t meaningfully change. The result? Limited flexibility, slow innovation, and firm-wide priorities that may not fully reflect what’s best for the families being served. 

Here’s how the landscape typically breaks down: 

• Captive or Employee-Based Firms: These firms are often owned by a bank, insurance company, or national financial institution. Advisors in these settings are employees with little to no say in strategic direction. Products, platforms, pricing, and technology are dictated from the top. Advisors are often measured more by production than by long-term client outcomes. 

• Wirehouse or Large Corporate Models: Even experienced advisors at large firms typically have limited influence over broader firm strategy. The core infrastructure – compliance, investment offerings, service models – is controlled by centralized leadership focused on scale and efficiency. Advisors may advocate for their clients, but they rarely shape the direction of the business itself. In many cases, the advisor is simply selecting from pre-built portfolio models managed by analysts and investment teams they’ve never even met. I believe most people would prefer to know the people making the investment decisions that impact their future, or at the very least have access to them should questions arise. A stranger sitting at a cubicle in a skyscraper in Boston or New York doesn’t know your goals, or values, or what matters to your family, so why should they control the asset allocation and security selection of your portfolio? 

• Private Equity / Investor-Backed Firms: Many large advisory firms today are owned or funded by private equity or institutional investors. While this brings capital for expansion and presumably better client outcomes, it also introduces an inherent tension. The fiduciary duty to act in the client’s best interest versus the financial responsibility to deliver strong returns to investors. When a firm is backed by outside capital, there’s often a clear endgame, typically a future sale or liquidity event designed to maximize profit. That pressure can shape hiring decisions, fee structures, service models, growth strategies, and risk-taking in ways that prioritize scale and margin over long-term client outcomes. It’s not that advisors in these firms don’t care about their clients, they absolutely do. But when ownership is driven by outside investors, the firm’s strategic direction can be influenced more by financial engineering than by client experience. And that’s a fundamental disconnect from what it means to serve as a true fiduciary. 

• Independent, Privately Held Firms: In contrast, firms that are privately owned by founders, practicing advisors, and leadership teams tend to align more closely with the interests of their clients and the team serving them. Strategic decisions are made by people who work directly with clients, which should translate to greater responsiveness, flexibility, and intentionality in how the firm evolves. 

The bottom line? When evaluating a firm, don’t just ask what they offer. Ask who’s really making decisions and what drives those decisions. Because ownership shapes priorities, and priorities shape everything else. 

Where BentOak Falls – and Why 

BentOak Capital operates under a fiduciary standard as a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA). That means we’re legally and ethically required to act in the best interest of our clients. Not sometimes, always. 

We’re also independent, which means we’re not tied to any bank, wirehouse, insurance carrier, or brokerage firm. No sales quotas. No proprietary products. Just a team we’ve built to serve clients with excellence. We have no outside investors. Our firm is 100% family owned. 

And now, after years of intentional planning, we’ve completed our transition to becoming a fully fee-only firm. 

What This Means for Clients and Future Clients 

Nothing about your experience with us will change. The only difference now is that the structure behind our advice matches the integrity of our approach with fewer conflicts of interest. 

We don’t believe being fee-only makes us better than others. But we do believe clarity matters, and we want clients to know exactly how we’re compensated, and that our loyalty is 100% to them. 

This move reinforces what has always been true about BentOak Capital. We serve people, not products. And we’ll continue building a firm that reflects that commitment at every level.