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Articles Written by Jon Henschen

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4 Factors That May Cause a Flood of Broker-Dealer Sales

17:40 07 December in Articles Written by Jon Henschen by rafferty

December 4, 2015 By Jon Henschen, as featured on ThinkAdvisor   With 9,500 Cetera Financial Group reps, 470 NEXT Financial Group reps and 4,925 AIG Advisor Group reps looking to “get bought,” we may be headed for a floodtide of broker-dealer sales as prospects for their future profitability fade. The current motives to sell are unique to these particular firms, with Cetera needing to either partially or fully sell its broker-dealers to generate revenue to cover its debt load, activist investor Carl Icahn wanting AIG to split up into three entities and focus on core business while NEXT Financial, a rep-owned broker-dealer, is looking for a liquidity event. When firms look out over the next five years, many may determine that the risk-reward model has the risks pulling ahead, with the question becoming not whether they...

Stock Jocks Get Their Knocks at BDs

19:20 12 November in Articles Written by Jon Henschen by rafferty

November 12, 2015 By Jon Henschen, as featured on ThinkAdvisor   While reminiscing about the early 1990s and my brokering days at Prudential Securities, I was reminded how much has changed in our industry. Back in the day, my branch manager in Pasadena, California was a wealth of wisdom. I took advantage of his open door policy, frequenting his office with the many questions that come with being a newer representative. By today’s standards some of what he shared would be shocking, such as, “If a rep doesn’t have a couple of dings on his compliance record he’s probably not aggressive enough,” or “Reps that have cocaine problems are usually substantial producers because they are insecure and driven,” or one of my favorites, “You want to pass your Series 7, but not score too high.”...

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The Dumbing Down of the Financial Services Industry’s Future

16:15 14 September in Articles Written by Jon Henschen by rafferty

September 11, 2015 By Jon Henschen, as published on ThinkAdvisor   To listen to the Department of Education and the laments of public school system officials you may be left with the impression that our schools are impoverished and can only survive by cutting arts and sports programs in order to stay within budget. Statistics point out a different reality: while we now spend private-school amounts on public school students, performance results are getting worse, not better. As I’ll argue later on, this decreasing performance has big implications for our industry. For now, let’s start by addressing the overall performance issue using the chart below: Spending More and Getting Less Since 1970, K-12 spending has gone up astronomically (from approximately $55,000 per student to $165,000) while test scores have remained flat or gone down.The author of the Cato...