Raymond James Fees 2026: Ambassador 2.25%, Freedom UMA 2.60%, RJCS 2.75% Maximums (Nov 2 Brochure)

Which Raymond James is yours

“Raymond James” on a statement can mean three SEC-registered names, and the brochures say which kind of adviser each one has. The wrap brochure of Raymond James & Associates states: “Registered representatives of RJA are employees of the Firm.” The Raymond James Financial Services Advisors brochure states: “Registered representatives of RJFS and investment adviser representatives of RJFSA are independent contractors for employment purposes.” An adviser who is an independent contractor can still sell the Raymond James & Associates programs: the Raymond James & Associates brochure says “Your financial advisor (or IAR) may be affiliated with RJA, RJFSA, or an independent registered investment adviser,” and that Raymond James & Associates administers the wrap billing for each program.

The practical test is the paperwork your adviser must give you. The RJFSA brochure says its advisers “are required to provide you with a current Form ADV Part 2B,” a supplement that names the adviser, and FINRA BrokerCheck lists each representative's current firm. RJFSA's own wrap brochure covers only two programs it sponsors itself, Ambassador and the Outside Manager platform, and sends clients to the Raymond James & Associates brochure for the rest. That is why this page reads both documents.

Every advisory program and its maximum fee

Each program is a wrap fee: one asset-based percentage that the brochure says covers the adviser, the firm, any manager, execution, custody and administration. The maximums run from 2.25% to 2.75% on the first $1 million. The Raymond James & Associates brochure prints the schedule below as a maximum. It adds that “When maximum fee rates are applied, your financial advisor receives the same fee rate regardless of which wrap fee program you select,” and also that “While Fees are negotiable, the client's Fee cannot exceed the fees outlined in the maximum fee schedule.”

What the programs are, in the brochures' words and our summary. In Ambassador, “your IAR advises you in either a discretionary or non-discretionary capacity on your account assets,” so the adviser picks the investments. In Freedom, “AMS develops the strategies, establishes the respective target allocations, and selects and monitors the Fund investments in the strategies”; AMS is the Asset Management Services division of Raymond James & Associates, and mutual funds in Freedom are bought and redeemed at net asset value without a sales charge or commission. The UMA, MDA, RJRP and RJCS programs put the investing with the firm or outside managers, and the brochure says the manager's pay comes out of the same wrap fee: 0.18% to 0.50% for RJCS equity and balanced strategies, 0.12% to 0.32% for RJCS fixed income, 0.30% for MDA and 0.20% to 0.35% for Freedom UMA and Portfolio Select UMA model managers. The Outside Manager platform is different: the 2.25% is only the Raymond James platform fee, and a separate manager fee applies on top.

The brochure also warns that “Fees for a strategy or discipline in a UMA Account can be higher than the fees you pay when you hold that same strategy or discipline in a separate advisory account.” Two other advisory services sit outside the wrap schedule. The firm brochures of both Raymond James & Associates and the Financial Services Advisors, dated September 14, 2026, put hourly planning and consulting fees at up to $400 per hour and percentage-of-assets consulting fees at no more than 2.25% a year of the assets under advisement.

What one account pays a year at the maximum

Dollar figures are our arithmetic on the Raymond James & Associates maximum schedule, with the whole-account rate for each balance. A balance exactly at a breakpoint is priced in the tier that ends there; the brochure prints the boundary in two columns and does not say which one applies. Negotiated rates, fund costs and the add-ons below are not included.

Why a dollar can change the bill by thousands

Most tiered schedules in the industry price each slice of an account at its own rate. Raymond James says it does not. The sentence appears in both brochures: “We calculate maximum Fees on a retroactive basis instead of on an incremental basis. As the aggregated Relationship Value (described in further detail on the following page) reaches each higher asset tier, or “breakpoint,” the applicable Fee is reduced and assessed retroactively to the first dollar of your account assets.” So the rate for the bracket you are in is applied to every dollar, and the maximum fee falls when the account crosses a line.

The fee is “typically payable quarterly in advance” and is “calculated as of the last business day of the previous calendar quarter,” so the balance on that one day sets the rate for three months. The brochure's special billing procedure for deposits or withdrawals applies at a $100,000 adjustment threshold, and it reserves the right not to process adjustments at all. Our earlier page on how much a financial advisor costs already carried this point for Ambassador; the other programs above follow the same rule because the sentence sits in the common fee section of the Raymond James & Associates brochure.

What is negotiable, and what each brochure says

The two brochures overlap on the main rules and differ on one sentence that matters to larger accounts.

On the factors, the Raymond James & Associates brochure says fees “may be negotiated with your financial advisor based on a variety of factors, including the nature and size of your overall relationship with your advisor, anticipated investment services to be provided, and use of a Manager.” Once you agree a rate, the brochure says “the total Fee percentage charged to your account will not increase above your agreed-to negotiated rate without your consent,” even though the split between the adviser, the firm and the manager can change.

Related accounts. Raymond James will combine related fee-based accounts for billing on request, and the brochure says “Combining related accounts effectively acts as a discount to the maximum program fee schedule.” The firm decides what counts as related, and the brochure notes that “IARs receive more compensation if the aggregation of related fee-based accounts is not applied.” In our arithmetic, two Ambassador accounts of $700,000 and $500,000 billed separately cost $27,000 a year at 2.25% each; combined as a $1,200,000 relationship at 2.00% they cost $24,000, a $3,000 difference.

Cash inside the account. In Ambassador accounts, if sweep cash exceeds 20% of the account value at two consecutive quarter ends, the excess over 20% is left out of the fee. The brochure's own example is a $100,000 account with $30,000 in cash, where $10,000 is excluded; at 2.25% that is $225 a year not charged (our arithmetic). The brochure adds that the adviser “may receive more compensation by not applying the Cash Rule at the household level.”

What sits on top of the wrap fee

The brochures list costs outside the program fee. Quoting the RJFSA brochure: “Advisory fees charged for the management of your account are in addition to annual management fees and other fees, including short-term redemption fees, operating expenses, and distribution fees assessed by Funds and other investments.”

One line matters for readers who hold non-traded funds. The RJFSA brochure says: “Alternative Investments that pay upfront and/or ongoing commissions or distribution/servicing fees are designated as non-billable assets for as long as the position is held in the advisory account.” A non-billable position is not charged the advisory fee, which also means the account's adviser is not paid that fee on it. The brochure itself says holding such an asset “introduces a conflict” that advice may be biased because the adviser is not compensated on it.

The commission account instead

The other way to hold money at Raymond James is a brokerage account, where the Form CRS dated September 22, 2025 says “you will incur transaction charges when you buy or sell securities, including: Commissions;” along with markups and markdowns, product-level fees paid in part to the firm, and “Handling fees on each securities transaction.” The same document says you may also incur “periodic account maintenance or IRA custodial fees.” The CRS states no dollar amounts. The RJFSA wrap brochure describes the trade-off plainly: “In a brokerage account, you are charged a commission for each transaction, and your registered representative has no duty to monitor your account or provide ongoing investment advice.” The Form CRS adds that “During periods of lower trading activity, the advisory fee may be higher than the transaction charges you would have paid in a brokerage account.”

Raymond James & Associates also disclosed a 2023 multistate settlement over a minimum commission charge on low principal trades: restitution of no less than $8,250,000, and the firm “has updated the equity commission schedule to ensure clients are not charged commissions in excess of 5% of the principal trade value.” Raymond James publishes its own dollar schedule of account fees (IRA annual fee, transfer and closing fees, wires) on a Client Account Fees and Charges page. We could not retrieve that page or its commission schedule on November 13, 2026, so no dollar amounts for them are in this page's data; the brochures point to the page, and your statement and account agreement show what applies to you.

Cash sweep: what the brochure says Raymond James earns

Uninvested cash goes to a sweep option, and the brochure says “The Cash Sweep Program is offered at no additional charge or cost to you.” Which option you can have depends on the account type, in the brochure's table:

The middle column, per footnote 3, covers ERISA plan accounts, SEP and SIMPLE IRAs, “and (iii) any other IRA account that is advised or sub-advised by Raymond James.” Read with the table, an IRA that Raymond James advises can sweep only to RJ Bank, an affiliate of the firm. The brochure says your rate “is based on the total of the cash balance in RJBDP and CIP” by tier and points to the firm's deposit-rate page for the tiers, and adds: “The interest rate or yield on our Cash Sweep Program may be higher or lower than the yield or interest rate available in other sweep programs at other institutions.” We did not retrieve that rate page, so no rate table is shown here.

What the firm receives is in the filings. For the participating banks other than the two affiliates, the brochure says the aggregate fee “will not exceed an annual rate equal to the Federal Funds Target Rate, upper limit, plus 75 basis points (0.75%),” and that those fees “will reduce the interest rate paid by a bank on your deposit accounts.” RJ Bank and TriState Capital Bank pay “an annual administrative fee of up to $100 per account.” For CIP, the firm retains “any additional benefit or remuneration” after paying clients interest. In investment advisory accounts, the brochure says, Raymond James does not share sweep revenue with your adviser. It also says: “Both the revenue and the other benefits to RJA and its affiliates increase when more client funds are held in the Cash Sweep Program.”

The parent company reports the scale in its October 28, 2026 earnings release (Form 8-K, accession 0000720005-26-000080):

The company defines the 2.81% as “annualized RJBDP fees - third-party banks, which are net of the interest expense paid to clients by the third-party banks,” divided by average daily balances. At that firm-wide average, $100,000 swept to third-party banks would produce $2,810 a year of fee income to the group (our arithmetic); the figure is not your account's, and balances at the two affiliated banks are earned differently.

The conflicts Raymond James lists itself

The brochures carry a long compensation section. Four passages, quoted from the RJFSA wrap brochure of October 19, 2026:

• “Depending on your IAR's annual revenue generation with the Firm, your IAR can receive a higher portion of the Fee (therefore, the Firm retains less of the Fee paid).”
• “An inherent conflict exists in how we handle billing variations from the applicable maximum fee schedule, as compensation arrangements can result in higher gross compensation to the IAR from one advisory program to another.”
• “Your IAR may have a financial incentive to recommend a wrap fee program, Dual Contract Platform, or services rather than recommending an alternative product, program, or service.”
• Affiliation incentives include “transition assistance, production awards, enhanced pay-outs, repayable business transition or working capital loans.”

The Form CRS says the same thing at summary level for advisory accounts: “we and your financial professional are incentivized to increase your assets,” and for product sales, “We therefore have a financial incentive to recommend proprietary products over third-party products.” These are the firm's own disclosures, and they describe incentives, not what any adviser does.

The firm in numbers: Form ADV Part 1 and BrokerCheck

The two sets of assets overlap and cannot be added: the Raymond James & Associates brochure says it “acts as subadviser to your primary adviser via a sub-advisory agreement for each AMS Managed Program,” and the brochures date the assets at September 30, 2025. The regulatory pages include events filed for individual advisory affiliates; we count them and do not describe them. BrokerCheck, on November 13, 2026, lists 182 regulatory event disclosures and 72 arbitrations for Raymond James & Associates and 128 regulatory events and 76 arbitrations for Raymond James Financial Services (CRD 6694).

SEC, FINRA and state orders

Each row is taken from the SEC order or from the disciplinary section of the firm's own brochure. The firms consented without admitting or denying the findings.

The September 2019 order is the one that touches advisory fees directly: the SEC found that RJA and RJFSA “overvalued certain assets that resulted in charging excess advisory fees,” though it put those at about $51,000 against $15 million in the whole settlement, most of it tied to unit investment trust sales. The RJFSA firm brochure also lists RJFS fines of $2,000,000 (December 21, 2017) and $800,000 (October 20, 2022).

What changed since our October 9 comparison

Our page on how much a financial advisor costs quotes Raymond James's Ambassador line as “Ambassador Wrap Fee Program 2.25%1 2.00% 1.75% 1.50% 1.25%” and the retroactive sentence, from the RJFSA brochure of September 21, 2026. The latest RJFSA filing on IAPD is dated October 19, 2026 (version 1061491), and both statements still hold: the five Ambassador rates and the retroactive sentence are the same, and the Raymond James & Associates brochure of November 2, 2026 prints the same line. What changed is the record: the October 19 brochure adds the August 18, 2026 FINRA settlement, and the November 2 brochure says the Tax Overlay Service “has been expanded to include two additional eligible advisory programs” and cuts the required Portfolio Select UMA allocation to RJCS managers “from two-thirds to fifty percent.” One nuance for that page: 2.25% is the top rate of Ambassador, Freedom and the model portfolios, not of Raymond James; RJCS Schedule A reaches 2.75%.

What a client can do with this

1. Find out which Raymond James you are with. Your adviser's Form ADV Part 2B supplement and the BrokerCheck page name the employing firm. Then read that firm's wrap brochure on adviserinfo.sec.gov (CRD 705 or 149018).
2. Ask for the fee in writing, as a percentage and in dollars, for each account, and compare it with the maximum for your balance and program in the tables above. A rate below the printed maximum is the negotiated result; the brochure says a rate above it is not allowed.
3. Ask which program you are in and why. Ambassador, Freedom and the UMA programs have different maximums, and the brochure says the same strategy can cost more inside a UMA.
4. Ask whether your related accounts are combined and which breakpoint your relationship value sits on, and how far you are from the next one.
5. Ask what else is charged: the Tax Overlay Service, the funds' own costs, IRA custodial and transfer fees, and whether any position is flagged non-billable.
6. Ask what your cash earns and where it sweeps, compared with a money market fund, and whether the 20% cash rule applies to your Ambassador account.
7. Compare the commission alternative only with your own trading history in front of you: the CRS says an advisory fee can be higher than commissions in periods of low trading.
8. Read Item 9 of the brochure and your adviser's BrokerCheck page and ask about anything you do not follow.

For the same reading of another large firm see our page on Merrill Lynch advisory fees, and for what “fee-only” does and does not mean, fee-only financial advisors.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

FAQ

Sources, all retrieved November 13, 2026: Form ADV Part 2A wrap fee program brochure of Raymond James & Associates, Inc. (CRD 705, SEC 801-10418), dated November 2, 2026, IAPD version 1062959; wrap fee program brochure of Raymond James Financial Services Advisors, Inc. (CRD 149018, SEC 801-69815), dated October 19, 2026, version 1061491, and the September 21, 2026 version 1058486; Form ADV Part 2A firm brochures of both firms dated September 14, 2026 (versions 1057715 and 1057717); Form CRS of both firms dated September 22, 2025; Form ADV Part 1 of Raymond James & Associates filed November 6, 2026 and of Raymond James Financial Services Advisors filed October 19, 2026; FINRA BrokerCheck firm records for CRD 705 and 6694; Raymond James Financial, Inc. Form 8-K of October 28, 2026 (accession 0000720005-26-000080) with its earnings release and supplement; SEC orders Securities Act Release 10689 (September 17, 2019), Exchange Act Release 95875 (September 22, 2022) and Exchange Act Release 100705 (August 14, 2024); and the Vanguard Digital Advisor and Vanguard Personal Advisor brochure dated September 24, 2026 (CRD 106715). Raymond James's own Client Account Fees and Charges page, commission schedule and deposit-rate page could not be retrieved, and no figures from them are used. Dollar figures marked as our arithmetic apply the printed maximum rates to the balances shown and exclude negotiated discounts, fund expenses and add-on fees. Item 11 answers and disclosure page counts are our reading and count of the filed forms. If a brochure has changed since November 13, 2026, the version on IAPD is the one that governs.

Last updated: November 13, 2026.