Ann Marsh

Continuing its rapid expansion, CapTrust Financial Advisors, a large Raleigh, S.C. registered that serves private and institutional investors, acquired Freedom One Financial Group. Freedom One provides retirement plan and investment advisory services to companies in emerging markets.

Advisors continue to flock to the RIA business model, making it the fastest-growing corner of the financial services industry. However, even as they do, more than ever are hanging onto commission income, despite the risks it poses to acting as full fiduciaries.

For RIAs who want to ensure clients that their firm will endure to serve their children and grandchildren, a robust internal succession plan is critical. One way to do that is to eliminate outside ownership conflicts, argues the founder and CEO of one leading RIA firm.

In the most recent move by a large firm to help planners solve pressing succession issues, Cetera Advisor Networks is now offering its regional directors, s well as other small- to mid-sized broker dealers, the opportunity to sell their businesses to Cetera.

After a wild ride toward the fiscal cliff, many financial advisors now say the frenzy was worth it -- even if clients' worst fears failed to materialize.

“It has been a good niche for us,” says Russ Crosson, the president and CEO of RIA Ronald Blue & Co. “Clients come to us because they want to be good stewards.”

More than 100 women advisors are gathering Monday in downtown Boston for SourceMedia's Women Advisors Forum to network with successful peers and learn leading strategies for attracting female clients, practice management, rethinking retirement and more.

Grabbing a top executive from one of the world's premier technology companies, LPL Financial has nabbed a top technology officer from Dell Inc. to help lead the independent broker-dealer's technology effort.

When Atlanta-based Ronald Blue & Co., one of the country's largest RIAs, was building its internal succession plan, the company’s CEO hit upon a necessary precondition. “You have to have a mission that’s compelling enough to make sure that your clients are taken care of after you are gone,” says Russ Crosson, the company’s president and CEO. “The firm is bigger than any one individual.”

Five years ago, only about 15% of new clients came in over the transom, says the chief executive of one leading RIA. Today, that number has grown to 25% to 35% -- with many of those prospects specifically looking for independent advice.

In the RIA space, rapid consolidation is driving firms to merge, acquire and seek larger partners. In 10 to 20 years, many predict a series of giant $100 billion-AUM firms will emerge to dominate the market. So what does the future hold for smaller firms?

Brinton Eaton, a Madison, N.J., based wealth manager with $700 million in assets under management, has joined Chicago-based Mariner Wealth Advisors, bringing the latter’s AUM to $6.3 billion.

With RIA balance sheets healthier, banks once again are taking an interest in RIAs, which are growing as much as 50% more rapidly than wirehouses.

To foster the evolution of financial planning as a widely accepted and understood profession, NAPFA announced that, starting Jan. 1, it will only accept the CFP designation for anyone applying to become NAPFA-registered planners

“[A] segment of wealth managers appear to live in denial, clinging to investment methodologies that have patently failed twice over the past decade and are likely to fall short again,” the authors of a white paper accompanying the survey results wrote.

The SEC has accused a Chicago advisor and his firm of defrauding clients and others by promising them a private equity fund the firm managed would “beat the market."

These record levels are expected to continue through the end of the year as individuals and their advisors seek to meet charitable giving priorities while also navigating the uncertain outlook for taxes given the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts at year’s end, according to Schwab.

To help its advisors grow their businesses, Cetera Financial Group is bringing on a fleet of new advisory and product sales consultants. The added manpower is intended to give each consultant and sales manager more time to provide in-person and virtual support to advisors as the firm re-engineers its advisor support regions, according to Cetera.

Across the asset class of emerging market debt, upgrades are far outpacing downgrades. As a result, more than 50% of emerging market fixed income investments have become investment grade, says Luz Padilla, senior portfolio manager of the emerging markets fixed income strategy at DoubleLine Capital in Los Angeles.

Part of the steady uptick in investment in emerging market fixed income is due to the appearance of new players from the emerging markets themselves.