RIAs

Here’s an interactive slide show featuring the six firms that scored above the national average in J.D. Power and Associates’ 2012 U.S. Financial Advisor Satisfaction Study.

Here’s an interactive slide show featuring the six firms that scored above the national average of 774 points in J.D. Power and Associates’ 2012 U.S. Financial Advisor Satisfaction Study.

A typical fee-based advisor undercharges clients by about $20,000 each year, according to a presentation on the PriceMetrix site.

The advantages of having both an RIA and broker-dealer relationship include ownership of the business while having the support of a full service broker-dealer.

Running a planning practice takes you into a lot of chicken-and-egg situations, such as needing to have scale before you can get the tools you need to grow. Bob Veres has answers for RIAs starting out or struggling to grow their firms.

The founder of Veritable, the country’s third-largest RIA, says his firm’s new partnership with wealth management giant Affiliated Managers Group is part of a broader effort to build a business that can last for generations.

Affiliated Managers Group acquires the nation’s third-largest RIA and CEO Sean Healey says the Boston-based firm will be looking to make more deals down the road to bulk up its wealth management business.

The uncertainty is ‘unbelievably disruptive’ for advisors at a time when clients are beginning to have more confidence in the markets and investing. Likely candidates to buy could include Cetera and Lincoln Financial, observers say.

Kitces is co-author of The Annuity Advisor, and is a contributor to Financial Planning magazine, as well as a string of major consumer publications.

If an industry-wide fiduciary standard is adopted, what might the practicalities of meeting that standard be? Citi’s financial services unit has some possible technology-based answers to this question.