Fee-Only Fiduciary Financial Advisor
What fee-only and fiduciary mean, and how to check whether your advisor is either.
Shetland Financial is a fee-only, flat-fee registered investment advisor and CPA firm in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, serving the Lehigh Valley and Upper Bucks. You work directly with Kevin Dodgson, CPA, CFA, CFP®.
Almost every firm in this industry describes itself as client-focused, and most of them mean it. The differences that actually matter are structural: how the firm is paid, and what legal duty it owes you. Those are checkable facts rather than statements of intent, and they are worth checking.
Fee-only is not the same as fee-based
The two terms are one syllable apart and mean quite different things.
Fee-only means the firm is compensated solely by its clients. No commissions, no trail payments from fund companies, no insurance or annuity sales, no revenue sharing, no payment from any third party for directing your business anywhere.
Fee-based means the firm charges fees and may also earn commissions. It is a legitimate model and plenty of good advisors work within it, but the name is close enough to fee-only that people routinely believe they are getting one when they have the other.
The distinction matters because commissions create a reason to prefer one recommendation over another that has nothing to do with you. Removing that does not make anyone virtuous. It simply removes the conflict.
Fiduciary is a duty, not a description
A registered investment advisor owes a fiduciary duty to its clients: an obligation to act in your best interest, disclose material conflicts, and continue doing so throughout the relationship rather than only at the point of a transaction.
That is a genuinely higher bar than the standard applied to brokers, who have historically been held to a suitability test and more recently to a best-interest standard at the moment of a recommendation. The gap between those regimes is not academic. It shows up in which products get recommended and how much they cost.
How to check any advisor, including us
You do not have to take a firm at its word about any of this. Three checks take about ten minutes:
Read the Form ADV. Every registered investment advisor files one, and it is public. Part 2A sets out how the firm is compensated, what conflicts it has, and what it does. Look specifically at the compensation and conflicts sections rather than the marketing language at the front.
Ask the direct question and listen for hedging. “Are you compensated in any way other than the fee I pay you?” A fee-only firm answers no in one word. Anything longer is worth following up.
Ask how the fee changes. A percentage of assets rises every year the market does, for work that has not necessarily changed. A flat fee does not. Over a long relationship the difference compounds into real money.
Where we stand
Fee-only. Flat fee, quoted before we start. Registered investment advisor, so the fiduciary duty applies continuously. No products, no commissions, no third party paying us for anything. And because we are also a CPA firm, the person managing your portfolio has seen your tax return, which is unusual and matters more than it sounds.
Our wealth management page covers how the portfolio is actually built, and our regulatory disclosures page has the formal filings.
What you get
Fee-only, verifiably. Client compensation only. No commissions, no product sales, no third-party payments.
Fiduciary duty at all times. Not a standard that applies only at the moment of a transaction.
A flat fee that does not climb on its own. You know the number before you start, and a rising market does not silently raise it.