Displaying items by tag: wealth management

A bad ending can ruin a movie or a TV series, just ask any Game of Thrones viewer. The same applies to any business including financial advisory practices. A great run can be marred by a messy and unorganized ending.

However, it’s easy to understand why an advisor laser-focused on building and operating a business may not put the same intensity or focus into succession planning. After all, there are many heavy decisions that have to be made, and each decision has major implications. So, it’s understandable why succession planning can be neglected.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that succession planning is essential. In the same way that financial planning increases the odds that someone can reach their retirement goals, succession planning can help you maximize the value of a practice, smooth the transition for clients, and give employees peace of mind.

While there are many elements to effective succession planning, the biggest ingredient is transparency throughout the process with clients, employees, and other stakeholders. This will prevent anyone from being surprised by the outcome and will also lead to more understanding especially as it’s likely that the succession plan could have multiple iterations depending on circumstances and developments. 

Finsum: Succession planning is essential for an advisor but an important key is transparency during the process.

The last decade has seen an intense war in the wealth management space with an assortment of winners and losers. While advisors are the biggest winners due to generous compensation packages, another big winner has been LPL which is now the largest independent broker-dealer with 21,000 advisors.

Part of LPL’s success has been its variety of offerings for advisors given that it has numerous options for incoming talent. This ranges from more structure to giving advisors independence and latitude to run their businesses as they see fit. 

Maybe the best example of this is LPL’s Linsco channel which is designed for younger advisors. It was founded in 2019 and was seeded by the purchase of Allen & Co. which gave it assets under management (AUM) of $3 billion. Remarkably, Linsco now has an AUM of $21 billion and has recruited 49 teams to the group.

Its latest success is recruiting Raanan Pritzker who has been the top-ranked financial advisor at Fifth Third Private Bank over the last 12 years. This marks the first $1 billion+ team to join Linsco. Despite Priztker’s success, he chose to leave Fifth Third as he believes Linsco is better able to provide top-tier services and products to his wealthy clients. 

Finsum: LPL Financial’s Linsco has been a massive success story as it’s gone from $3 billion in assets under management to $21 billion as of October 2023. 

A financial advisors’ long-term success is closely connected to their ability to consistently land new clients. In order to do this, they must build a pipeline of prospects. 

The key to a robust pipeline is consistent effort to make connections and build relationships. It can be challenging in the near-term as results may be inconsistent. The first step is to come up with a repeatable and sustainable prospecting strategy. The goal of your strategy is to simply create interest in your services and offerings. Part of this is to define your niche and target client. The strategy should also be something that you could do on a regular basis and ideally enjoy, since this a long-term game. 

The next step is to get clear on what value you can provide. This requires some introspection about your core beliefs, convictions, and values. It can be helpful to step in your prospect’s shoes to understand their thoughts and emotions in order to figure out what would compel them to take action. 

Finally, the best source of new prospects is through your existing, satisfied clients. Personal referrals remain the most effective form of prospecting and have the highest odds of turning into clients. There are many ways to ask for referrals. Some are direct and transparent, while some advisors prefer a more indirect approach.

Finsum: Building an effective pipeline of prospects is integral to success for every financial advisor. Here are some tips.

For advisors, there are many benefits to working with high net worth clients. They have more investable assets and also tend to have a better grasp of what constitutes a fruitful advisor-client dynamic. Of course, there is intense competition to land these clients. Here are some tips to increase your chances of success.

The first step is to understand their needs and goals. It’s also important to be aware that these prospects have seen many sales pitches and tend to be quite savvy. Therefore, any approach should be transparent in terms of purpose and intentions. Instead of being vague, it’s more helpful to focus on a specific topic like retirement planning, charitable giving, tax strategies, succession planning, etc, where you can demonstrate your expertise. 

The second step is to remember what makes you and your practice unique and to focus on these differentiators. Having a specialization can help you stand out especially if the client is looking for that particular service. This can also help you come up with a message around your brand which communicates your value. 

The final step is to spend time and energy into making sure that your prospects are aware of your practice whether this is digital or analog. This means defining your ideal prospect and figuring out where they spend time and attention, physically and virtually.. 

Finsum: Getting a high net worth client has many benefits for advisors, but the landscape is quite competitive. Here are some tips to increase your chances of success.

Bringing home the bacon.

Before taking their talent to UBS Wealth Management, a five person Connecticut team was grinding, managing $700 million in Greenwich, according to a recent announcement, reported advisorhub.com. The team had been at Merrill Lynch.

Also bidding Merrill adieu was John Foley, who managed $340 million in client assets. He landed at RBC Wealth Management, the announcement indicated.

In terms of recruitment, it seems Merrill’s been a favorite target of UBS. That includes a group of 18 in Columbia, South Carolia. A total of $2.6 million was managed by the team. 

In other industry activity, LPL Financial scored a group of finance advisors with $260 million in client assets, according to investmentnews.com. Specializing in retirement programs for schools, universities and hospitals, known as 403(b) plans, the group had previously been at Valic Financial Advisors Inc.

“We specialize in financial education and breaking down complex financial situations to a place where clients can better understand and be more comfortable with their decisions,” said financial advisor Angelo Burns in a statement. He’d been at Valic since 2011.