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Articles published 10/2014


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Jon Stein: It's thousands and thousands of dollars instead of $8.

Betterment's bad-news play at getting in good with RIAs and investors

The NYC-based auto-advisor will flash tax ramifications at investors as they test drive trades

October 30, 2014 at 11:44 PM

Bob Reynolds: Empower was clearly the one the first time we heard it.

The second-largest 401(k) provider drops 'Great-West' for 'Empower'

The name chosen for the second-largest retirement firm hits a mark but may face the challenge of seeming jargony

October 30, 2014 at 6:44 PM

Ten-foot-tall sculptures inside the Grand Hyatt's lobby lent a tone.

Grand thoughts at the NYC Grand Central Hyatt from Fidelity Investments and RIAs

Part rally, part book launch, the Boston-based custodian rolled into NYC for the last gig of a whistle-stop tour

October 30, 2014 at 6:11 PM

Simon Roy: It's a classic attempt to freeze the market.

Can Schwab, six years late to the robo party, 'freeze the market', catch up and blow doors?

The potential is awesome but the San Francisco giant is currently generating PR for an offering that does not yet have a launch date

October 29, 2014 at 8:22 PM

Adam Nash: Having $100 million in the bank allows us to retain independence from Wall Street.

Wealthfront responds with force to Schwab CEO's robo announcement

The Silicon Valley-based auto-advice leader stokes its aura of invincibility by raising $64-million that it won't need anytime soon

October 28, 2014 at 7:49 PM

Lou Harvey: It does mean that annuity sales will no longer be a 'caveat emptor' type of transaction.

'Paradigm shift' in 401(k) flows opens the DOL door for annuities in 401(k) plans and RIAs are split

In the wake of DOL and Treasury rulings, some fiduciaries, certainly not all, seem willing to give the oft-reviled instruments a chance

October 28, 2014 at 6:27 PM

David Zier apparently was questioned about money managed for friends and relatives outside the RIA he managed.

Barron's: David Zier's death takes another tragic twist

The Convergent executive's death was likely a suicide related to non-Convergent money managed for family and friends by Zier in a 'personal account'

October 25, 2014 at 9:58 PM

David Zier was a successful and beloved financial advisor.

The RIA business mourns the death of David Zier

The chief executive of Convergent Wealth Advisors was only 44

October 25, 2014 at 1:52 AM

Charles Goldman: These are folks I knew from the past that I knew and liked.
October 24, 2014 at 1:03 PM

Stephen Brown: The 'big box' firms -- Morgan and Wells -- couldn't get their heads around the U-5 language.

The backstory of how a Merrill UHNW team found love in the time of U-5 -- but not with an RIA

Recruiters are still a little baffled as to why the $2.5-billion firm skipped a chance to go independent with a 'compelling story' but chose the comfort of the familiar business model -- and an office of their own

October 23, 2014 at 6:53 PM

Robert Moore: Today, our independent RIA business accounts for approximately 65% of our new business development.

LPL Financial shares hit rough patch on $18-million surprise as RIAs now represent the vast majority of the firm's business development

Wall Street dings the IBD for spiralling compliance costs but hybrid RIA assets are serious bright spot

October 23, 2014 at 3:44 AM

Trisa Summers: The more I understood the level of transparency ... you have to be really comfortable.

Zero Alpha Group fraternity adds a sister to its elite $14-billion DFA RIA club

The esteemed study contingent tapped Trisa Summers, an elementary school teacher by training who now leads a $1.7-billion RIA

October 22, 2014 at 1:05 PM

David Stofer: At SageView I had to sell and service clients....I want to be a consultant.

How Mariner Holdings is angling to become a $3-billion 401(k) company overnight by co-opting a local SageView office

The $40-billion RIA/asset manager plans to combine $2 billion from Randy Long's RIA to $1 billion of existing 401(k) assets

October 21, 2014 at 11:39 PM

'Chuck' is advising a move to lower-expense ratio funds and stable management teams.

Schwab phones (at least some) Private Client customers to advise dumping PIMCO Total Return fund

Funds under Schwab discretion exited the Bill Gross fund three weeks ago

October 21, 2014 at 12:07 AM

Abby Johnson's smarts and fierce work ethic are a given but some wonder if she can match her father's force of personality.

How Abby Johnson won the hearts of mega-RIA clients in advance of taking the CEO spot at Fidelity Investments

It wasn't what Ned Johnson's daughter said; she mostly let her ears do the talking

October 20, 2014 at 5:52 PM

Brent Burns: A bond fund is simply a mutual fund that happens to own bonds (or in many cases derivatives) with no obligation to pay back anything.

Why unconstrained bond fund skepticism is justified (think 2008, not 2013) and why RIAs should say: None of the above

Brent Burns counter-dissects the Sanders Wommack vivisection of an article written by experts from LPL and Google

October 17, 2014 at 5:44 PM

Walt Bettinger: Against a backdrop of heightened market volatility during the quarter, we saw increased utilization of the help and advice available through Schwab.

Top 7 RIA takeaways, including some ouches, from Charles Schwab's earnings commentary

Windhaven's reverses are official, Schwab is minting advisors at its 'Wealth Academy' and the ETF 401(k) plan found just one taker but Schwab's asset growth is stellar

October 17, 2014 at 5:27 PM

Rodney O. Martin Jr.: I have decided to directly oversee the next phase of the businesses' growth and expansion.

What's behind the sudden exit of Voya's top 401(k) exec, Maliz Beams, and her replacement by the firm's CEO, Rod Martin

In post-IPO, post-rebranding mode, the No. 2 defined contribution company is open to big change in the face of 401(k) hyper-competition

October 16, 2014 at 3:10 AM

Jon Stein: We've been working on it for the last six months. We wanted to wait until tax loss harvesting and trust account support was in place.

Fidelity and Betterment sign a deal with Steve Lockshin and Marty Bicknell as groomsmen at the altar

The RIA principals are distributing the online asset manager service to fellow RIAs, and Fidelity is quelling an uproar of demand from RIA clients for robo answers for the mass affluent

October 15, 2014 at 1:00 PM

The forecast for the 401(k) business is bright and foggy.

What exactly is doable for an RIA in the 401(k) business?

Conflicting forces of change have made the question harder to answer but has sweetened the pot

October 15, 2014 at 3:45 AM

No rumor: Bill Van Law announces that Raymond James-affiliated RIAs will have access to Hearsay Social.

Ray-Jay RIA event produces how-I-did-it talks from four high-achieving RIAs

The confab also extruded real news on the St. Petersburg custodians' roll-out of an no-transaction-fee platform and its de-manualization of social media for RIAs

October 14, 2014 at 7:46 PM

Tom Lewis: That's how things are in a community like Rochester, where successful people know each other and all socialize.

After Merrill Lynch allegedly 'crippled' their careers, two advisors are prepping a big counterstroke, lawyer says

FINRA may decide whether the wirehouse pulled the trigger too whimsically on its PBIG stars

October 14, 2014 at 5:39 PM

Sanders Wommack: I took a close look at underlying data and came to significantly different -- in some instances polar opposite --  conclusions.

Why I respectfully reject the harsh take on unconstrained bond funds expressed by Google and LPL co-authors

An article by LPL's Adam Cohen and Google's Jingwei Lei in IMCA's publication flukily conicided with the revelation of Bill Gross's new job managing just such a fund

October 13, 2014 at 6:46 PM

David Armstrong: If the robo-advisor was truly the panacea of any service industry, WebMD would have put every single medical practice on the face of this earth out of business.

How RIAs can compete with super-RIAs, robo-RIAs and the 'phono'- and faux-RIA market of 2015 and beyond

A transcript of the recent webinar includes thoughts from an RIA owner, a top RIA lawyer and RIABiz reporter

October 10, 2014 at 3:55 AM

Brian Jacobs: It's a substantial portion of our management fee. It's not coming out of clients' pockets. There's no cost to the clients. They're getting a good deal.

Why ETF sponsors are ponying up big fees to get on Schwab's ETF OneSource in a bid for access to ticket-averse RIAs

Direxion hands over much of its management fee to Schwab, its CEO says, but the rewards are worth the sacrifice

October 9, 2014 at 6:25 PM

Bill Gross exudes personal accountability -- even amid a few eccentricities.

The very good news that RIAs can take away from the whole Bill Gross imbroglio

Without a say-what-he-wants-when-he-wants 70-year-old to hold to account, PIMCO is reduced to a robo status that makes many decisionmakers nervous

October 8, 2014 at 8:01 PM

Jon Jones: I'd gone full-force in terms of how to make myself replaceable; that was my goal in hiring a director of finance, hiring a director of marketing, hiring a director of technology, hiring a COO to basically take over the daily management.

How a Deloitte breakaway built a $3.8 billion RIA rapidly in Seattle -- and why those billions moved from Schwab to Fidelity as part of the story

Jon Jones took a year off to hike 35 countries with four kids but a vendor really made his patience run thin

October 7, 2014 at 11:52 PM

Gail Graham: We firmly believe that the Guidebook is to financial planning what the smartphone is to the telephone booth.

United Capital unveils its killer electronic app but boomer clients still say: Paper, please

The $10.5-billion RIA spent millions of technology but client habits may delay use of the electronic version

October 7, 2014 at 6:27 PM

Paul Orfalea founded West Coast Asset Management when he sold Kinko's but left two years ago.

Derek Bruton brings aboard two advisors seeking big back office after founder of their RIA, UHNW Kinko's founder, moves on

The former LPL executive's roll-up effort absorbs accounts of West Coast Asset Management, after it had challenges as a stand-alone RIA

October 6, 2014 at 8:59 PM

Josh Brown: We know the alternatives and we don't like them and we're really happy we have a suggestion.

Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz, masters of the financial Twitter/blogging universe, launch a robo effort to monetize their followers

The pair's modest RIA and immodest following could come catch fire with Upside as a partner

October 6, 2014 at 6:01 AM

Ali Rosenberg: I found myself evangelizing Wealthfront.

After bagging Google, Wealthfront hires a Facebook web-traffic pied piper to manage mega-prospects knocking at the door

With 'bigger' deals than Google in the works, Alison Rosenthal hits the ground running -- fast -- at the online RIA

October 2, 2014 at 11:31 PM

Paramus, NJ office building that Dragotta and his team of 30 advisors will soon occupy.

How a hybrid RIA with nearly $2 billion in assets claimed a 10,000 square-foot Smith Barney redoubt

Queasy about wirehouse practices, Rich Dragotta broke away to LPL 11 years ago but missed the old brass, glass, mahogany bullpen

October 2, 2014 at 5:33 PM

Cathy Curtis: I won't follow Bill Gross to Janus.

How RIAs are managing the Bill Gross problem -- from firing his old PIMCO fund, to detailed letters to clients to taking a good look at Janus

Like all matters related to advice, advisors are determined to be decisive and articulate to clients

October 1, 2014 at 11:02 PM

Dan Seivert says new math is needed to do credit to the number of deals going down.

Dan Seivert drops M&A data bombshell at his Dealmakers Summit to gasps

At his LA event, Dan Seivert revealed the thousands, yes, thousands of RIA deals going down this year despite limited activity from roll-ups

October 1, 2014 at 8:19 PM

Richard Weil has now completed the PIMCO trifecta with the Bill Gross hire.

How Janus CEO Richard Weil's Bill Gross hire completes the PIMCO-ization of the Denver equity shop

The Denver-based fund company now has its chairman, CEO and star manager seats filled by PIMCO alums

October 1, 2014 at 6:24 AM

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