Berkeley professor challenges United Capital directors to act more like managers and less like entrepreneurs

United Capital has always impressed me and I continue to be impressed with their vision & actions. It’s all too common for successful firms to rest on their laurels rather than seek out new ways to improve on what they have achieved. Kudos to Duran and his whole team for achieving success and recognizing the opportunity to take it even further as well as investing in themselves by holding this conference.

I’ve seen articles like this before and always have a lingering question about advisors publishing numbers of assets under management – generally just wonder about the accuracy of them and verifying their truth… What’s to stop someone from saying “we manage a billion dollars” or otherwise inflate their numbers for publications sake?

Each advisor has to file form ADV with the SEC disclosing assets under management. We trust advisors will be truthful in the information they provide to us because they are accountable for accuracy to this regulator.

Right – I am aware of ADV’s – I guess the question is more how an individual advisor’s assets under management is derived or verifiable from a consolidated firm wide filed ADV – as a single advisor wouldn’t have filed a separate ADV, right?

We ask advisors the assets under management for their firm. We generally don’t ask for their personal book of business. An exception might be if a breakaway broker joined an existing firm and they were willing to divulge the size of their book of business that they brought with them. Again, I’ve made a practice of taking advisors at their word. Knock on wood, I’ve never known of a case where I was misled. And, I’m no expert, but I don’t believe there’s a separate, personal ADV.