Wealth Think

Bill Dwyer, the independent giant’s president of sales and national marketing, talks about his firm’s progress.

In the past 11 years, we’ve had two major bear markets and experienced the near collapse of the world financial system. Not surprisingly, many advisors lost revenue, lost clients and some even lost confidence in their ability to protect their clients’ assets during times of turmoil. Yet during this 11-year period of global upheaval, a select group of advisors prospered.

It seems we have reached the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of regulatory efficiency. If the SEC is spending weeks on trivial issues and completely missing Bernie Madoff then it is clear that something is seriously broken.

I’m all for the notion of having options, but if you look at just the ETF universe there are more than 1,000 on offer

Customer relationship management is more than just an industry buzzword. In fact, for advisors it can be the difference between a profitable business and a really profitable business.

Just as the market volatility of the last few years has been challenging for investors, it’s also been challenging for advisors. In addition to the higher level of effort required to keep nervous and frustrated clients on the books, high volatility in client accounts makes it harder to be confident of fee-based revenue and therefore confident of a practice’s overall financial health.

Funding consideration were part of the reason that the SEC decided to shift oversight of smaller advisors to states. With soaring deficits, how will the states handle the added responsibility of supervising financial advisors?

Whose needs come first?

Most people don’t think about it, but there is a liquidity premium on publicly traded securities just as there is a risk premium, yet most only think about it in the case of extremely illiquid assets such as private equity.

When it comes to web marketing, independent advisors are different from everyone else. Which means there is a good chance you have been getting bad advice. Bad advice about using the web to grow your practice.