A delay at launch is not lost at the launch run rate. It is lost at the mature one, and it stays in the AUM long after the platform is live.
A six-month delay in going live on a wealth platform costs roughly six months of the platform's mature sales, not six months of launch sales, and that gap stays in the fund's AUM for years. On an illustrative platform with 1,500 in-scope advisors, a fund that goes live six months late is 34,277,303 smaller after five years and earns 1,253,179 less in net management fees over the period, almost five times the 267,750 that a launch-rate estimate suggests.
Worked in full in The Private Wealth Fundraiser by Julian R. Sterling, with every figure reproduced in a free workbook.See the book on Amazon →
Platform onboarding slips: due diligence questionnaires, legal review of the feeder or share class, operational set-up, the platform's own product committee. When it does, the usual estimate of the damage looks at the first six months the fund would have had on the shelf. Sales in those months are small, because advisors take time to start using a new product, so the cost looks small. But a delay does not remove the first six months of the sales curve. It shifts the whole curve to the right, and the six months that are really lost are the last six of the plan, when sales are running at their mature rate.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| In-scope advisors on the platform | 1,500 |
| Share of advisors producing at maturity | 10% |
| Months to reach it, linear ramp from go-live | 24 |
| Tickets per producing advisor per month | 0.4 |
| Average ticket | 120,000 |
| Redemptions, share of AUM a year | 6% |
| Management fee | 1.25% |
| Servicing fee or retrocession paid to the distributor | 0.40% |
| Net fee kept by the manager | 0.85% |
| Plan horizon from the planned go-live, months | 60 |
| Discount rate for fee revenue | 8% |
Step 1: the sales curve. In month m after go-live, sales are advisors × producing share × tickets × ticket size, with the producing share rising in a straight line to 10 per cent at month 24.
Sales(m) = 1,500 × 10% × min(m ÷ 24, 1) × 0.4 × 120,000
At maturity: 150 producing advisors, 7,200,000 a month, 86,400,000 a year
In Excel: =$B$1*$B$2*MIN(A5/$B$3,1)*$B$4*$B$5
Step 2: AUM and fees. Each month AUM loses 0.514 per cent to redemptions, the monthly equivalent of 6 per cent a year, and gains that month's sales. The manager earns 0.85 per cent a year on the AUM, one twelfth each month.
Step 3: run it twice. Once with go-live in month 1 of the plan, once with go-live six months later, and compare at month 60.
| On time | Six months late | Gap | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross sales over five years | 349,200,000 | 306,000,000 | 43,200,000 |
| AUM at month 60 | 309,061,908 | 274,784,605 | 34,277,303 |
| Net management fees, months 1 to 60 | 5,747,030 | 4,493,852 | 1,253,179 |
| Present value of those fees at 8% | 4,370,842 | 3,372,135 | 998,707 |
The gross sales gap is exactly six months of mature sales: 6 × 7,200,000 = 43,200,000. After redemptions, 34,277,303 of it is still missing from AUM at month 60, and it keeps costing 291,357 a year in net fees after the plan ends. The gap does not close once the late fund is fully ramped, because from then on both versions sell at the same rate. It only shrinks as redemptions wear down the assets the on-time launch gathered: at month 120 it is still 25,156,250.
The fund's AUM path makes the shift visible: 22,964,351 against 6,246,275 at month 12, 86,549,569 against 49,835,214 at month 24, and 165,354,052 against 126,561,270 at month 36.
| Delay, months | AUM at month 60 | AUM gap | Fee gap | Present value of fee gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 292,055,811 | 17,006,096 | 644,752 | 516,479 |
| 6 | 274,784,605 | 34,277,303 | 1,253,179 | 998,707 |
| 9 | 257,244,156 | 51,817,752 | 1,824,714 | 1,446,957 |
| 12 | 239,430,266 | 69,631,641 | 2,358,783 | 1,861,490 |
The cost is close to linear: about 166,451 of present value per month of delay. That is the figure to hold up when deciding whether to pay for faster legal work, a dedicated onboarding resource, or a structure the platform already knows.
Pricing the delay off the launch months. On time, the fund would have sold only 6,300,000 in its first six months on the platform, since barely any advisors are producing yet. A net fee of 0.85 per cent on that is 53,550 a year, or 267,750 over five years, and the delay looks like a rounding error. The real cost is the 43,200,000 of mature sales that fall off the end of the plan, and the fee on the AUM they would have become.
The same logic applies to every input that moves the curve sideways rather than down: a late product committee, a feeder that is not ready, a key wholesaler hired three months after go-live. Each is a horizontal shift, and each costs mature-rate sales.
Treat platform onboarding as a critical path item with a price on it: roughly one month of mature sales per month of delay, held as a smaller AUM for years. On this platform that is 34,277,303 of AUM and 998,707 of fee value for six months. The free forecast workbook for the book runs the same mechanics over eighty-four months and four platforms. For the advisor arithmetic behind the sales curve, see how many financial advisors it takes to raise 100 million.
Usually several months of due diligence, legal and operational onboarding, and it often slips. The cost of a slip is roughly one month of mature sales per month of delay, held as a smaller AUM for years. On the illustrative platform here each month of delay costs about 166,451 of net fee revenue in present value over five years.
No. Once both are fully ramped they sell at the same rate, so the gap stops growing but does not close. It only shrinks as redemptions run off the assets the earlier launch gathered: in the example the AUM gap is 34,277,303 at month 60 and still 25,156,250 at month 120 with 6 per cent annual redemptions.
Multiply in-scope advisors by the share that produce, which ramps up over the months after launch, by tickets per producing advisor and the average ticket, then net off redemptions on the accumulated AUM. Here 1,500 advisors, 10 per cent producing after 24 months, 0.4 tickets a month and a 120,000 ticket give 7,200,000 of sales a month at maturity.
The forecast method used here, in-scope advisors, a conversion curve by month since launch, tickets and redemptions, is the one chapter 15 of The Private Wealth Fundraiser describes. The book takes the same case from first principles to the decision, chapter by chapter, and every figure it prints is a live formula in the free companion workbooks.
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