Wealth Think

Do you have any examples of when client feedback was significant, either in a good or bad way? Steve Wershing writes that client feedback is invaluable, but advisors need to use their best judgment.

Your IRA Expert examines life insurance benefits, the five-year rule, and required minimum distributions.

A better informed, better educated assistant, can help an advisor improve his practice exponentially.

As a new advisor, you have the luxury and ability to offer all your clients top notch service. It is easy to make everyone an “A” client when you have a small book to manage. But as the the team at Focus reminds us, as time goes on and your business grows, you start to realize pretty quickly that it is virtually impossible to offer the same type and level of services to every client in your book.

Legend Financial Advisors has found success through monthly webcasts, focusing either on a financial planning or investing topic, sometimes chosen based on demand from a client.

Consumerism has, for the most part, taught us that satisfaction is the standard. But Ron Carson writes that, in the financial advisory business, satisfaction is unacceptable. Satisfied clients are not loyal clients and loyal clients are the only good clients.

As many planners have discovered, unsettled markets mean many nervous phone calls and emails from clients. Investors want to know why their investments may be down and when the turmoil will stop. And advisors have nothing in their toolboxes to relieve that anxiety. Except, maybe there's a simple tool right at their fingertips.

Mitt Romney “has the momentum and nothing last night happened to change that,” said Charles Black, a Romney campaign advisor at the SIFMA annual meeting in New York.

Wall Street may still be in love with complex financial instruments, but more and more investors are choosing a simpler, more prudent way to invest, and Steve Atkinson explain that that is why the assets under management with independent wealth advisors continues to grow.

Though advisors are increasingly on social platforms, bringing financial goal setting to the social media sphere probably won’t change the way clients interact with their advisors. Will it instead help those who aren’t working with advisors start thinking about their finances?