Why the Fee Schedule Is the Most Important Document You'll Skip
Every new account holder receives a link to the terms and fee schedule during registration. Almost nobody reads it. That's not laziness — it's that fee schedules are often formatted to discourage reading, with dense tables, undefined abbreviations, and footnotes that modify the headline figure. The practical cost of skipping it is discovering a withdrawal fee, an inactivity charge, or a currency conversion cost after it's already been applied. Reading the fee schedule before you fund isn't financial expertise; it's basic self-protection.
What to Look For in the Kestrel Fundast Fee Structure
The Kestrel Fundast platform publishes its fee schedule as part of its account terms. Key items to locate include: the trading fee per transaction (usually expressed as a fixed amount or a percentage of position size), any spread markup on market price, withdrawal fees by method (bank transfer, card, etc.), and inactivity fees if the account is dormant for a set period. Some of these will be zero — but you need to confirm that explicitly rather than assume. Look also for how bonus funds interact with withdrawal conditions, since many platforms require a minimum trading volume before bonus-originated funds can be withdrawn.
A Simple Checklist Before You Deposit
Before funding any trading account, answer these five questions from the fee schedule: What is the cost of placing one standard trade? What does a withdrawal to my bank account cost and how long does it take? Is there a minimum withdrawal amount? What triggers an inactivity fee and how large is it? Are there currency conversion charges if my account currency differs from the instrument's base currency? If any of these is answered with "I'm not sure," go back to the fee document or contact the platform's support before depositing. A CAD account trading instruments priced in USD will incur conversion costs on nearly every transaction — that's a meaningful ongoing expense the headline fee doesn't capture.