Succession planning

When speaking with small business owners, be prepared with specialized knowledge, willingness to coordinate, and the ability to handle emotions.

When it comes to handing off your firm, make sure you communicate clearly with your next-gen advisors.

Younger planners have their own priorities. If you're investing in their professional development, consider these ideas to ensure they will stick around.

See how one high-profile financial advisor is planning for his firm's future.

More than two-thirds of advisors (68%) have no formal succession plan for their businesses and among those who do, the plans are sketchy.

Call it a generation-skipping succession plan. When 62-year old industry veteran John LaPann decided it was time to hand over the reins of Federal Street Advisors, observers may have expected his successor would emerge from the ranks of firm veterans now in their 50s, but instead the firm chose some younger leaders.

Each firm’s succession plan and transition will be unique, but whether it’s an internal transition, merging and staying involved or selling and moving on, not enough advisors are planning for it.

Firms are partnering with their advisors to help mid-market business owner clients retire.

More than eight in 10 American millionaires believe that each generation should be responsible for creating its own wealth, up from 65% who said the same thing in 2007 when the survey was last conducted.

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.

What advisors can still do to protect business owners' assets even though last year is gone.

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.”

Advisors have been racing to finish what some say is an unprecedented transfer of wealth.

Financial advisors often handle getting their clients’ affairs in order in case they die, but when it comes to succession planning for their own practices, that is often another matter entirely.

The program, announced Wednesday, will provide financing for junior partners seeking equity in a firm. It's currently in a pilot phase for registered investment advisory firms with more than $400 million in assets under management and at least three existing senior principals.

Beacon Pointe Wealth Advisors announced the addition of its third advisor partner, $130 million AUM RIA Wealth Management Network of Newport Beach, Calif. today. This marks the third deal in the last year and a half for national advisory partnership firm BPWA.

The academic landscape for financial planning is shifting rapidly. Here's where to find the next generation of advisors.

Raymond James has expanded its practice acquisitions and succession planning department this year as it looks to open up more transition options for advisor force.

The advisory industry has been fretting about the impending tsunami of retiring advisors in the coming years for some time. As a result, firms are assembling succession programs as a way to ease the transition of client assets from older advisors to the much younger set.