Guest Columnist Timothy D. Welsh

I am glad that Robo Advice is finally being viewed as an adjunct in rendering advice essential to providing continuous comprehensive counsel required for professional (fiduciary ) standing. Advanced technology and a more modern approach to portfolio construction is required to manage a broad range of investment and administrative values (risk, return, cost structure, tax efficiency, liquidity, time, etc.) in real time (continuous comprehensive counsel), that enables the diagnostics that accord and reward professional standing. This is the difference between disjointed unrelated transactions and the rendering of advice or the difference in managing money which is client agnostic and client specific advisory services.

TDA is to be congratulated in advancing this message, lost in a brokerage culture. Embrace innovation in the client’s and advisor’s best interest, don’t fight it.

SCW

New marching orders issued at TD Ameritrade's conference in San Diego: Don't join'em, beat'em! 

Advisors found ample room to spread out at a packed event.

Jemstep

Trizic

Sterling Shea Barron's

Tom Nally

Tom Bradley

Tim Welsh

Fred Tomczyk

Joel Bruckenstein

Eric Clarke

Josh Brown

Barry Ritholtz

Marcel Tsai

Simon Roy

This section contains news and coverage about the dozens of conferences held in the advisory industry every year. Those conferences range from annual events put on by the big custodians to small hands-on workshops hosted by law firms, consultants and tech companies, among others. RIABiz can't cover all the conferences, but this page includes our stories about those we have written about.

We hope that getting a flavor of the different gatherings helps you decide which are worthwhile attending and &mdash; if you're in the conference business yourself &mdash; what clicks with attendees and what doesn't. Have a suggestion for a conference we should cover? Email me, Brooke Southall at <a href="mailto:brooke@riabiz.com">brooke@riabiz.com</a>.

Conferences

Asset custodians are the central players in the RIA business and choosing one is the biggest decision most financial advisors will make to build their business. As the place where RIAs park their assets (the same way a captive broker would park assets at Merrill Lynch or UBS), custodians serve hundreds or thousands of these registered investment advisors and make big investments in technology and service on their clients' behalf.

This section features a series of articles under the “Asset Custody Project” label that cover these companies in a way that keeps advisors abreast of their progress – both with journalistic commentary and a common set of data so that advisors can easily compare them. The articles look at the strengths, weaknesses and niche capabilities of these companies.

&mdash; Brooke Southall

Here are links to the profiles of custodians:

 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/11942001/">Equity Advisor Solutions</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/4977738934910976/with-robo-advisors-on-the-rise-robo-custodian-apex-is-rising-them-a-diamond-mined-from-the-rubble-of-the-penson-worldwide-debacle">Apex Clearing</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/11320001">Raymond James</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/10207085">State Street</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/1812010">Ceros Financial</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/9033656">Fidelity</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/7435709">Pershing</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/1212007">Royal Bank of Canada</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/133138">Scottrade</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/8101589">Schwab</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/8788433">TD Ameritrade</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/124061">Trade-PMR</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/1161005">Trust Company of America</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/1490002">BNY Mellon</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/5385142">Folio Institutional</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/108011">Shareholders Service Group</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/5933001">National Advisors Trust</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.riabiz.com/a/22600260/how-us-bank-appeared-on-the-scene-as-an-ria-custodian-and-where-it-might-find-love">US Bank</a></li>
</ul>

If you want a more chronological look at news about the custodians, just scroll down.

RIA Custodians

Stripped down to its essentials, financial advice is a fairly straightforward proposition. Done well, a highly ethical individual stewards the assets and actions of an investor in a personal and professional interchange.
 
But now a vibrant new class of entrepreneurs is staking their fates and their fortunes on the premise that financial advice can be delivered in a better, cheaper, easier, more ethical, more transparent manner and, as a bonus, in a way more devoid of human annoyance on both ends of the transaction.
 
Cue the robo-advisors, arguably a callous misnomer for automated asset management. 
 
The prototypical robo-advisory entrepreneur has more brands on his or her resume than NASCAR. The bona fides of these industry upstarts often include Ivy-level colleges and MBA programs at Harvard or Stanford. They are often flush with IPO dollars realized at concerns like LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay, Amazon  and Microsoft. 
 
Robo-folk believe that technology is not an enabler of advice but rather, if engineered correctly, advice itself in digital form. 
 
And, they believe the best solutions originate in Silicon Valley or academia, not Wall Street. Robo-entrepreneurs are white-boarding the whole business model, culture and technology from scratch in the conviction that little can be learned from a legacy advice system still rooted in an investment banking culture acting under the core premise that if stockbrokers get rich some of the good effects will trickle down to clients – with the clients none the wiser. 
 
Robo-advisors are a scintillating topic for students of the advice game as they grow by hundreds of millions in assets every month, constantly evolve their business models and receive cash infusions from ever-larger swaths of venture capitals.
 
Throw in the fact that robo-advisors have yet to see a dime in profits -- and won’t in the foreseeable future -- and you have real intrigue. 
 
RIABiz has avidly covered the fast-evolving robo-advice phenomenon and will continue to do so. We present the growing body of articles here.

Robo-Advisors

TD touted its robo hookups and Tom Nally proclaimed RIAs are thisclose to overtaking wirehouses at the standing-room-only, come-as-you-are confab

New marching orders issued at TD Ameritrade's conference in San Diego: Don't join'em, beat'em!

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Stephen Winks

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