Class T converting at the 8.75% cap: is the cap measured on gross offering price or on NAV?

The part I'd chase first is what Class I costs to buy directly. In the programs I've looked at the Class I minimum sits somewhere around a million dollars unless you're coming through a wrap account, which means for a retail buyer the conversion is the only door into that share class at all. So you're paying 8.75% over some number of years for entry to a class you couldn't purchase on day one. Whether that's a fair toll depends entirely on how long you hold, and the repurchase plan is what decides whether you get to.

Simple arithmetic on your numbers: 3.5% goes in the door, leaving 5.25% of headroom, and at 0.85% a year that's about six years and two months to conversion. Six years of trail before the fee switches off. That was longer than I expected when I first did the multiplication.

Yes, it's normally tracked per share, so every subscription you make starts its own clock and a monthly purchase plan gives you shares converting on a rolling basis for years. The transfer agent handles it and your statement may or may not break it out by tranche, so ask.

On the reset question, look for language saying the servicing fee is calculated on the gross offering price of the applicable share rather than on then-current NAV. Some sponsors use the fixed original price as the accrual base too, which kills your whole up-or-down asymmetry. Others accrue on NAV against a fixed ceiling exactly as you described. The two produce meaningfully different conversion dates and both drafting styles are in circulation.

What conversion does not touch is the management fee or the performance participation. Those keep running in Class I at the same rate. The 8.75% is only the distribution channel's cut.

Daily accrual on NAV against a ceiling fixed at the offering price also means a sponsor markup pulls your conversion date forward, which is a strange incentive to have sitting in a fee schedule. Ask the sponsor in writing which base they use and whether the accrual is per share or per account, and get the answer from investor relations rather than the selling agent.

Worth remembering who receives that 0.85%. It's a trail paid to the broker-dealer and the representative, and at conversion it stops. Six years in, the person who sold you Class T has no ongoing economics in the position, which is exactly when a suggestion to move into the sponsor's newer offering tends to appear.