Advisor news
Financial advisor career news from Willis Consulting
MSSB’s 3D Tech Platform Draws Complaints From Financial Advisors
The platform, called “3D” based on its “multidimensional design” is designed to let the firm’s 17,000 financial advisors do everything from trading stocks and picking fund managers to helping clients manage their risks. It's a supposedly state of the art system which...
Study Shows CFP Certification Generates More Revenue For Advisors
CFP Board of Standards commissioned Alite Group to conduct a “satisfaction” study to quantify the effect that the certification can have on an advisory practice and the quality of advice that clients receive.* Bottom line, the “satisfaction” level clients have with...
Financial Advisors Make Common Mistakes When Looking to Move
Over the eleven plus years of being in the finance recruiting business, I’ve observed a lot of financial advisors going through the recruiting process who have made two common mistakes which have jeopardized their placement opportunities. Number one is thinking they...
CPAs as Advisors
How often does a CPA offer tax-efficient investment strategies to their clients? Quite frequently, actually, and without asking for additional pay for this financial advice. John Azodi, a CPA and financial planner personally believes that “every CPA either needs to...
J.P. Morgan and LPL’s Morningstar Drops Minimum Investment
The nation’s largest independent broker-dealer, LPL Financial set out to improve their Model Wealth Portfolio platform, already highly successful. To become more efficient, the firm added more strategists to the platform, including their own research arm, Morningstar....
Crisis of Confidence on Wall Street?
During its third quarter of the last fiscal year, 120 brokers joined RIA TD Ameritrade, up 50% from a year earlier. For all of last year, TD Ameritrade attracted 348 breakaway brokers, a trend, which managing director of sales Pete Dorsey expects to continue, “because...
FINRA’s New Suitability Rules in Effect July 9
Rule 2111 expands broker-dealer suitability and “know your customer” obligations in three ways and it became effective on July 9. Is this just another bureaucratic initiative or does it really strive to provide uniformity and consistency to the old rule? And will it...
CEO of RBC Emphasizes Stewardship in New Book
John Taft, CEO of RBC Wealth Management and 2011 Chairman of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) has written a new book, “Stewardship: Lessons Learned from the Lost Culture of Wall Street.” Taft, who had a direct role in the financial...
RIA Firm Survey Shows Continued Growth
Financial Advisor Magazine’s July 2012 issue has the latest rankings and survey of the RIA firm arena. Reported by Eric Rasmussen, several trends are emerging in this year’s survey. Breakaway brokers have continued to enter the RIA space even more rapidly following...
Tippybob Financial Advisor Ranking Gathers Investor Feedback
As a follow up to previous blogs on financial advisor ranking sites, it was brought to my attention that another site, launched in February, connects investors to some 588,000 financial advisors, each with their own profile rating and reviews. Tippybob rankings are...
Financial Advisor Directories: To Join Or Not?
After the previous review of the emerging financial advisor directories, ranking and disclosure sites, confusion and indecision among advisors in the industry is to be expected. Should one take the bait and join some of the new services? Decisions will depend on...
More Online Financial Advisor Rankings
At AdviceIQ, financial advisors, whether from a wirehouse, IBD, RIA, bank brokerage or wherever, can only get listed in the directory if they have zero complaints on their records. Therefore, an investor cannot search for compliance issues about their advisors because...
Online Financial Advisors Rankings And Disclosures Emerge
BrightScope, a San Diego based financial information company, is just one of a number of startups to create online financial advisor directories and rankings, available to consumers in a more accessible way. The company collects public records from FINRA and the SEC...
Financial Advisors Need to Prepare to be in the Fishbowl
Online financial advisors' directories and rankings, including the advisor’s education background, assets under management and even disciplinary records are now easily available on the website to investors and potential clients. This is a growing trend, extending...
RBS Financial Advisors — Where Will They Go?
News flash of the week? RBS, the U.K.’s biggest taxpayer-controlled lender, is eliminating 618 branch-based financial advisors as new regulations force lenders to charge clients for the service. By the end of 2012, the Financial Services Authority’s Retail...
72 RIA Firms Express Interest In RIA Umbrella Group
A plan to consolidate independent registered investment advisors under one brand name to compete with the big Wall Street brokerage houses already has commitments of interest from 72 firms. Steve Lockshin and Charles Goldman have created Advizent headquartered in...
RIAs Validated As Compensation Gap Closes for Independent Financial Advisors
“Elite independent advisors are now earning close to the same compensation of top Wall Street brokers, with an average of $900,000 annually. Add falling Wall Street compensation and asset growth in the independent advisor channel and it becomes easier and more...
Commercial Banks Seek Acquisitions of Wealth Management Business
It is a known fact that the quickest route for commercial banks to achieve revenue growth and generate more fee income is to bulk up in their wealth management business through acquisitions. City National Bank (CYN) in Los Angeles recently struck a deal to buy...
We Want to Talk to You!
Talk about clever marketing ideas, I have to hand it to Roswell Wealth Management (RWM) of Bend, Oregon who targeted 125 preferred high-net worth clients on a marketing budget of $25,000 which resulted in 12 new clients and boosted the firms AUM by 60% over its 2010...
Raymond James Offers Flexible Environment for Financial Advisors
If you know Raymond James Financial Services structure, then you probably already know they support five different business models that their financial advisors within their Private Client Group can choose from in one combination or another to run their businesses....