RIAs

“To have a national brand, you have to have a client experience that can be duplicated in every location, like Starbucks," says Rudy Adolf, CEO of Focus Financial Partners. "No advisory firm has the ability to deliver this kind of promise," he says.

The expansion-focused $6 billion wealth manager has added Santa Barbara-based Pacific Pointe to its roster, making it the fifth firm in Beacon Pointe’s growing stable, and the fourth in California.

Senior executives with leadership experience and strong sales skills in high demand as current advisors look to retire.

Amid growing industry debate over compensation disclosure, the FPA has changed the compensation disclosure options on its website.

Now that profits are at record highs, financial advisors' next priority should be better people management, according to the 2013 FA Insight Study of Advisory Firms: People and Pay. Cost control, solid productivity and soaring client profitability helped the typical advisory firm reach a profit margin in excess of 20% in 2012, the highest margin in the survey's five-year history.

After Sheryl Garrett said an ideal partner would be a group like NAPFA, Pinnacle Advisory Group’s Michael Kitces responede skeptically.

Huntington announced today that Gregory A. Smith was named president of Cincinnati-based Haberer Registered Investment Advisor, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Huntington National Bank.

As summer comes to a close, we're taking a look back at some of the hottest stories this season. Whether you were on vacation or busy working -- maybe you just finally have time to catch up on reading over the long weekend -- we've gathered the summer's top stories all in one place.

Beginning next month, a number of tech firms that are also RIAs are poised to enter the red-hot online advisory space, offering consumers not only financial guidance but specific buy/sell/hold recommendations for mutual funds and ETFs, based on algorithms and aggregation of clients’ accounts.

The advisory industry is already locked in fierce competition to recruit new advisors. Now TD Ameritrade Institutional is ratcheting up its efforts to attract talent.