Wealth Think

Industry influencers and independent investment advisors congregated in Palm Beach. Fla., last week for TD Ameritrade's Elite Advisor and Fiduciary Leadership summits to discuss how to strengthen advisor practices and navigate a turbulent regulatory environment.

Sessions at the 25th annual Morningstar Investment Conference covered a range of topics from actively managed ETFs, closed-end funds and alternatives to strategies to boost retirement income and solutions to the “yield conundrum.” Here is a baker's dozen of the smartest things we heard at the conference.

The movement to integrate previously disconnected applications used on the advisor desktop grabs the “low hanging fruit” opportunity for efficiency – eliminating repeated manual entry of data, but Neal Ringquist says advisors are barely scratching the surface of opportunity.

The most common question from advisors about social media used to be “Should I bother?” Now that regulators and compliance departments have provided at least some guidance, the more common questions from advisors involve how to use social media effectively without it becoming a huge time vortex.

Following lunch with a prospect, Dave Grant turns to an abundance of tech tools to turn the referral into a client.

In an exclusive interview, Skip Schweiss, managing director of advisor advocacy at TD Ameritrade Institutional, spoke about the tensions, dangers and future outlook of the fiduciary standard being debated in Washington -- and how the decision might drastically alter the advisory landscape.

A Connecticut advisory firm has developed a new approach to help financial planners solve client problems more quickly and efficiently. The activity is aimed at strengthening internal communications across service units, exchanging institutional knowledge, supporting business strategy and day-to-day management initiatives, and developing personnel skills.

Why do some wealth management firms experience explosive growth while others plod along at a more leisurely pace? To answer this question, Fidelity recently invited senior executives from nine firms that manage $1 billion or more to join us for a full-day discussion of what’s driving growth.

With the passing of Dodd-Frank, the SEC is paving the the way to adopt a uniform fiduciary standard for broker/dealers and investment advisors. Barry Glassman of Glassman Wealth says that there's no feasible way for brokers to uphold the same fiduciary standard to which RIA are held. He writes, "for them to come under the fiduciary standard as it currently exists, their businesses would have to split up into so many micro pieces that it would be disastrous for them." But the alternative, as it is being proposed, is for the very meaning of the fiduciary standard to change.

Happiness is a choice, according to Shawn Achor, author of "The Happiness Advantage", and for advisors, it may be a key to increased productivity and client satisfaction.