I have my IRA and taxable investment accounts at Charles Schwab.
They do offer a number of mutual funds with no transaction fees, including low expense ratio index funds. There's some threads on Bogleheads about using Schwab and Schwab funds in place of Vanguard funds which I found helpful.
You can buy Vanguard mutual funds from Schwab but they do charge a significant fee to order them. I think it depends on the fund but for VFINX as an example, it was about $50 a pop. Not cheap.
You can also buy the Vanguard ETFs, which should only cost you the regular transaction fee (which is around $9 for me). Cheaper, but they'll still add up if you are contributing to your accounts regularly.
So the concerns for your friend will probably be, will the financial planner be steering your friend towards funds that have high expense ratios and transaction fees? That Frontline program that came around recently also pointed out that some funds include kickbacks (essentially) to financial planners that sell them to their clients, so that might be a concern as well. This financial planner may only charge your friend $60 directly, but if he steers your friend towards funds that have higher expense ratios that will then feed some of that money back to him, he would make considerably more that way.
Will your friend be in a position to say, "no, I don't want those funds, I want to buy these other funds instead," and will the planner go along with that? If so, he can put together a pretty bogleheaded portfolio with the Schwab funds. But if he can do that, it becomes questionable if he needs a financial planner at all.
Edit: Actually, I don't think I was answering the question well.
I guess the point I was making is that Schwab does offer a number of no-load low-expense ratio funds, so it will come down to the specific recommendations the planner makes. Your friend should check out the recommendations by logging into the Schwab site and checking them out by going to Research -> Mutual Funds and searching for the funds recommended. That should list the expense ratios and there may be a section under Fees for "Schwab Transaction Fee" - if it is marked as "yes", click on it to find out what the fee is. I just looked up VFINX as an example and the Schwab fee is $76 to buy or sell it, plus another $25 if it's a "Broker Assisted Trade". That's some serious money there.
Also, what's the policy for firing the financial planner when/if your friend decides his services are no longer needed?