Updated August 1, 2026. Quick answer: the honest test is not whether a private bank is “good” — it is what you pay above a measured market median for the extra it provides. At $1 million the median advisory cost across 176 SEC-registered firms is $8,750–$10,000 a year; a large low-cost platform charging a published 0.30% would be $3,000. Private banking sits above both, and the surcharge buys credit, custody and access rather than better investing. Whether that is worth it is answerable — but only against a real baseline, which is the thing almost nobody publishes.
The baseline, measured
These are the medians from our own analysis of the fee schedules 176 registered investment advisers file in their Form ADV brochures. They are identification intervals, not point estimates — the low figure takes the bottom of every disclosed range and the high figure the top.
| Portfolio | Median advisory cost | Effective rate | At a published 0.30% | Difference per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000,000 | $8,750–$10,000 | 0.88%–1.00% | $3,000 | $5,750–$7,000 |
| $2,000,000 | $16,000–$19,375 | 0.80%–0.97% | $6,000 | $10,000–$13,375 |
| $3,000,000 | $24,000–$26,000 | 0.80%–0.87% | $9,000 | $15,000–$17,000 |
Medians: Clear Money Guide 2026 Advisor Fee Benchmark, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21741167 (CC BY 4.0). The 0.30% column applies Vanguard Personal Advisor’s published tier — “0.30% on Portfolio’s assets below $5 million”, from Vanguard Advisers, Inc.’s own Form CRS dated March 30, 2026, which also states a $500,000 minimum for Personal Advisor Select and that the fee excludes fund expense ratios. It is shown as a published low-cost reference point, not a recommendation.
At $750,000, a tenth of a percent is $750 a year.
That is the whole argument for getting more than one quote. Take the figures above into the conversation and ask each firm what they would charge on $750,000, all in, and what that buys beyond investment management.
Before you start, what actually happens. The matching service is run by WiserAdvisor, an independent advisor-matching company. It opens on their site, asks for your ZIP code and a few questions, and matches you with 2 to 3 vetted advisors. It is free to you.
WiserAdvisor states the service is built for portfolios of $250,000 and above. By submitting, you consent to emails, phone calls and text messages from WiserAdvisor and up to three advisors, so expect to be contacted. Clear Money Guide is paid when you complete the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone.
Compare fees, scope, conflicts, credentials and fiduciary duty before you hire anyone. This is not the only way to find an adviser.
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Is private banking worth it?
The honest test is not whether a private bank is good — it is what you pay above a measured market median for the extra it provides. At $1 million the median advisory cost across 176 SEC-registered firms is $8,750–$10,000 a year, while a large low-cost platform at a published 0.30% would be $3,000. Price the surcharge.
What the surcharge actually buys
This is where we will not give you a number, because we could not verify one. Private banks generally do not publish a fee schedule the way a registered adviser must publish its brochure; pricing is negotiated, relationship-wide and frequently bundled with lending. Any specific percentage you read for a named private bank should come with the institution’s own current document behind it, and we are not going to invent one to fill the gap.
What the model does provide is reasonably consistent across institutions, and it is genuinely valuable to some people: credit (securities-based lending, jumbo and bridge mortgages, lending against concentrated or illiquid positions), custody and administration at scale, trustee services, access to private markets and structured products, and a single relationship covering banking, borrowing and investing. If you are borrowing against a portfolio or need a corporate trustee, that bundle is hard to replicate.
What it does not reliably buy is better investment returns, and that is the claim to be most sceptical about. The measured difference above is a certainty; the outperformance is not.
How to run the comparison properly
- Get the all-in number in dollars per year. Advisory fee, platform or wrap fee, and underlying fund expense ratios. Vanguard’s own disclosure makes the point explicitly — its advisory fee excludes expense ratios, so “your combined fees for advice and investments will vary”. Every provider has that gap; make them close it in writing.
- Put it against the median for your balance from the table above.
- Price the extras you would actually use. If the answer is a mortgage you would take anyway, compare the rate you are being offered against a standalone lender rather than treating the credit access as free.
- Ask what happens if you move the deposits but not the portfolio — the answer tells you how much of the pricing was really about the lending relationship.
Then judge the gap. A difference of a few thousand a year against a service you use constantly is a different decision from the same gap against a service you use twice.
The comparison most people should run first
Before comparing a private bank against a platform, check whether your current fee is competitive at all — a large share of the value in this exercise is discovered in the first five minutes. Check your fee against the measured medians, and if it is high, the negotiation scripts are the cheapest possible fix. The full report behind these medians, including how many firms will not quote a price at all: State of Advisor Fees 2026.
Related: what advice costs at $3 million · whether 1% is worth it · advisor versus wealth manager.
Comparing offers at this level
At $1 million and above the spread between the cheapest and dearest quartile is wide enough that a single comparison conversation is usually worth more than a year of fee negotiation. If you want competing proposals to put against the medians above, an introduction is a reasonable place to start.
Disclosure: the button above routes to our referral partner, WiserAdvisor. Clear Money Guide participates in the WiserAdvisor referral program and may earn compensation when a reader submits a form, at no extra cost to you. Partner compensation does not change our benchmark figures or editorial standards. No institution named on this page paid for placement. See our Affiliate Disclosure.
General information, not investment advice. Figures are dated inline; the benchmark medians are pre-final at 176 sampled firms and are documented in the report linked above.
One rung further up: is a family office worth it — the answer turns on complexity rather than the size of the balance sheet — and at what net worth a family office makes sense, where the published thresholds disagree because they are measuring different things.