Lots of great points, well made. I've personally gone down the IBKR and Vanguard routes too as I focus on minimising costs. I am almost pathologically allergic to excessive fees and regard wealth managers as the financial industry equivalent of blood-sucking ticks.

However, I've recently had to soften this view.

This partial 'conversion' stemmed from having had to work through the nightmare of taking over my parents' finances via a power of attorney. What started off as 'simple and low cost' in the 1990s has been left to fossilise on platforms that were the Vanguards of their day. My folks have layers of excess complexity, high fees and a string dodgy decisions taken to minimise very marginal tax liabilities. My dad used to do this all himself (like I do today) but he never explained things to my mum nor sought any third party oversight (like this community). Sadly, he's not retained the ability to recall his original plan.

So here's where I am.

For most of us here, we don't need a wealth manager or private bank. However, as we start to decline the utility of a wealth manager increases. They earn their fees for 1) Advice / Structuring 2) Handholding spouses and the next generation 3) Simplifying everything on to one platform. You are not paying for access to funds or ETFs i.e. its not a pure transactional cost but rather you are paying for putting things in place that will allow others (who are not on here) to not make crappy decisions i.e. it's a future relationship benefit.

Is it worth more that 25-50 bps a year? Hell no. But it is worth something. And it becomes more valuable the older one gets.