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financial advisors

Two Roads For Small B-Ds

17:20 03 June in In the News by rafferty

June 1, 2015 By Dan Jamieson, Financial Advisor Smaller broker-dealers are facing two divergent paths. One path leads to a dead end, a route being followed by aging B-D owners who, faced with expanding regulatory costs, are looking to get out of the business. The other road, traveled by B-Ds looking to survive, offers opportunities to acquire advisors and assets from firms that exit the business. “The sad fact is that a lot [of small B-Ds] won’t be around in a few years because they don’t have the money” to keep up with compliance costs, says Joel Blumenschein, president of Freedom Investors Corp. in Brookfield, Wis., which has about 75 reps. The latest statistics from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority show that the long-term decline among B-Ds continues. Through April, Finra had 4,040 member firms,...

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FINRA Floats ‘Watered Down’ BrokerCheck, Broker Bonus Rules

16:36 29 May in In the News by rafferty

May 29, 2015 By Melanie Waddell, ThinkAdvisor   Self-regulator seeks comments, SEC approval on new plans The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority just released two “watered down” proposals — one that requires firms to have a link on their websites to BrokerCheck and another that would require firms to provide an “educational communication” to former clients when a broker switches firms. FINRA sent its proposed rule regarding BrokerCheck to the Securities and Exchange Commission for approval, while its Regulatory Notice 15-19 regarding recruitment compensation is out for public comment until July 13. FINRA's revised proposal on member websites would amend FINRA Rule 2210 (Communications with the Public) to require each of a member’s websites to include a “readily apparent reference” and hyperlink to BrokerCheck on the initial webpage that the member intends to be viewed by retail investors and any other...

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How Super OSJs Bring Innovation to Broker-Dealers

23:50 28 May in Articles Written by Jon Henschen by rafferty

May 28, 2015 By Jon Henschen, as published on ThinkAdvisor   In an article published in the January 2006 issue of Investment Advisor Magazine, I wrote about how a Producer Group can extend the reach and profitability of a rep’s practice. In the past two years, we’ve seen exciting new value propositions coming from these producer groups. For those not familiar with producer groups, they are a large grouping of financial advisors (also called Super OSJs) that joins together with either a single OSJ (Officer of Supervisory Jurisdiction) or multiple OSJs within the group, with all advisors in the group tied to a single broker-dealer. In my 2006 article, I pointed out that when advisors join together they reap benefits beyond what they can get from the broker dealer alone: Scale that will bring more...

LPL Pushes Upstream to Court HNW Clients

16:44 27 May in In the News by rafferty

May 27, 2015 By Danielle Verbrigghe, FUNDFfire  LPL Financial is arming its advisors to attract high-net-worth clients and hitting the road to promote its new private client program. LPL first started offering its new private client program, which includes consulting services, practice management, research and technology resources geared at helping advisors attract and serve high-net-worth clients, late last year to a selective group of advisors. Now the firm has opened the program up to its entire force of more than 14,000 advisors across its independent broker-dealer and registered investment advisor (RIA) channels. The firm has also stepped up efforts at promoting the new offering, hoping to drive growth in the high-net-worth segment. As part of its efforts, LPL is calling on its third-party asset management partners to play a role in helping educate advisors about tactics...