SCF Tag

The Big Blur

21:20 06 April in In the News by rafferty

April 1, 2022 By Eric Rasmussen, FinancialAdvisor To view FA's 2022 broker-dealer ranking, Click here . To view FA's 2022 extended broker-dealer ranking, Click here. As Jodi Perry, president of Raymond James’s independent contractor division sees it, the history of the broker-dealer industry is only half-written. In the last decade, the business has seen a wave of consolidation as firms with huge capital resources gobble each other up, leaving smaller firms to try navigating a rocky course of fee compression, regulation and a brutal war for talent—(especially talents with the biggest books of business). According to Cerulli Associates, the top 25 firms control 68% of the assets under management and 58% of all industry advisor affiliations. If the advisory world were seen as a tableau on the wall of a museum, the lines would increasingly seem meshed as the...

Midsize wealth manager allegedly missed assistant’s fraud for 7 years

16:25 16 December in In the News by rafferty

December 15, 2021 By Tobias Salinger, FinancialPlanning.com One wealth manager had a financial advisor and a sales assistant who defrauded their clients in separate schemes while operating out of the same office, according to investigators. Midsize independent broker-dealer American Portfolios Financial Services agreed to pay $225,000 under a Dec. 10 settlement with FINRA about its supervision of the office. The Holbrook, New York-based brokerage with 892 registered representatives has paid restitution of $383,000 to clients who lost money through the conversions of the former assistant, Kimberly Sredich, as well as settlements totaling $575,000 to ex-customers of barred rep Mark L. Hopkins, according to FINRA BrokerCheck and documents filed in Michigan’s Eastern District. Sredich began her two-year federal prison sentence in late September after pleading guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. Read...

IBDs Navigate The Pandemic

15:35 13 April in In the News by rafferty

April 1, 2021 By Eric Rasmussen, FinancialAdvisor The Covid-19 pandemic frayed the social and economic bonds that the world takes for granted, shone a light on vast inequality, revealed who had the resources to carry economic burdens and who were the most vulnerable to depredation. And that’s just the independent broker-dealers (IBDs). Here, as in many areas, the virus exacerbated trends already in place—it gave a boost to big firms already armed with resources, that were diversified enough to shelter precarious income streams, and that had the capital wall to withstand the onslaught of competition (and protect debt service). The pandemic also hastened the tech arms race among IBDs, since the hearts and minds of clients and rep recruits were now being won through the internet, not in hotel lobbies. Just as teachers had...