A first-pass review answers one question with numbers: what did this trust or account actually pay, and how does that compare to what similar arrangements pay? Not "is your trustee a bad person," not "should you sue" - those are questions for professionals you choose, and our report is built to be useful to them. The first pass establishes the facts that every later conversation stands on.
Documents you already have or can lawfully obtain yourself: account statements, the trust instrument or plan documents, fee disclosures, and - where the arrangement is a retirement plan - its public government filings. We never contact your trustee, your family, or your institution. If the documents in hand cannot support a conclusion, the report says so and names the specific missing document rather than guessing.
We rebuild the fee and cost picture year by year from the records - management fees, administrative charges, fund-level expenses, commissions, and the indirect compensation that never appears as a line item on a bill (revenue sharing, embedded product costs). Where two records should agree, we tie them to the dollar; where they will not tie, the gap itself is a finding. Anything estimated is labeled as an estimate, with the reason and with the document that would replace it named.
A number means nothing without a fair comparison. Our benchmarks are adjusted for what the account actually buys - service scope, asset mix, account size - because comparing a full-service arrangement against a bare-bones average is how careless analysis manufactures findings. Where possible we benchmark against live peers: real, comparable arrangements with costs on the public record, which beat any survey average. The benchmark and its justification appear in the report, because the benchmark is where a weak review hides its thumb on the scale.
Costs and conduct vary over time, and so does the strength of the evidence. The report computes its findings across explicit time windows and says which periods carry the conclusion firmly and which are thinner - including how the numbers move under alternative benchmark assumptions. A finding that survives only under the friendliest assumptions is reported as exactly that.
Every report includes an alternative-explanations section, checked against a standing library of ways healthy accounts look unhealthy - for example, a trust instrument that requires holding a concentrated legacy position, or embedded tax costs that make an apparently overpriced arrangement the cheaper choice, among others in a library that grows with every review. A flag that has a legitimate explanation is documented as explained - with the same specificity as any adverse finding.
Every review is examined by an experienced professional before it is delivered - not as a formality, but as the step where judgment calls are judged: the benchmark's fairness, the estimate's reasonableness, the line between "high" and "high for a documented reason."
A written report in plain English: the numbers, the comparison, the time-window analysis, the innocent explanations checked and their outcomes, the clean findings stated as plainly as the concerning ones, the specific documents that would close any gaps, and organized workpapers behind every figure. If everything checks out, the report says so in numbers - for many families, that is the most valuable outcome available.
We do not provide legal, investment, tax, accounting, or insurance advice. We do not decide whether conduct was legal, evaluate or recommend investments, or tell you what to do next. We describe, compute, compare, and document. When findings warrant professional judgment, that judgment belongs to independent licensed professionals - who, in our process, are paid identically whether they confirm a concern or clear it, and we expect to publish how often they clear them. We accept no referral fees from anyone, in either direction.
Every element above - the labeled estimates, the justified benchmarks, the windows, the innocent-explanation library, the clean-bill discipline - exists so the report survives the hardest reader it might ever meet: an opposing expert, a court, or a regulator. A review built to survive that reader is also, not coincidentally, one worth trusting when it tells you everything is fine.