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Author: rafferty

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Strength in Numbers

00:00 01 January in Articles Written by Jon Henschen by rafferty

by Jonathan Henschen, CFS and featured in Investment Advisor January, 2006: In your search to find business approaches that can make your practice stand out, you may have found that real value is more elusive than ever as our industry becomes increasingly commoditized. There are exceptions to every rule, however, and while our recruiting firm places advisors with over 50 broker/dealers nationwide, some of the real jewels we contract with are a dozen or so producer groups. What are producer groups, you ask? Simply put, producer groups are likeminded advisors doing business through carefully selected independent broker/ dealers. Though producer groups grew out of several different models, the two most common types are: Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction ( OSJ) groups, in which the principals of several advisory firms band together under the premise they’ll have...

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Balancing Act

00:00 01 January in In the News by rafferty

by Kathleen M. McBride and featured in Investment Advisor January, 2006: What a remarkable time these last few years have been for independent broker/dealers.The markets have recovered from a bubble, a crash, a grinding bear market, investment industry scandals, and corporate debacles. An aging population has realized that big corporate—or public—pension plans are, in many cases, gone or at least eviscerated, and that they generally are on their own, saving and investing for a long retirement. Tremendous wealth has been created. Scads of investors have realized that they want need—advice about managing their money, whether from a local independent advisor or a representative of a wirehouse, bank, or insurance company. Many of the challenges broker/dealers face are client-driven. Even many of the regulatory issues are, in a roundabout way, the result of client...

When Your Broker-Dealer Relationship Goes Bad

00:00 01 November in Articles Written by Jon Henschen by rafferty

by Jonathan Henschen, CFS and featured in Broker World Magazine November, 2005: As part of a high school science experiment, a teacher dropped a frog into a pot of hot water. It jumped right out. Then the frog was put into a pot of room-temperature water on the stove and the teacher slowly turned up the heat. The frog swam around normally--until it suddenly died. Advisors are often like that frog, swimming around in ill-suited broker/dealer relationships until they reach a breaking point. This is especially true during acquisitions, where a new B/D takes over and makes lots of small operational changes. Because those changes are gradually phased in, the reps don’t notice them as much, whereas if the B/D had come in making wholesale changes all at once, the reps would have...