(New York)

There are many reasons to change firms, whether that means going independent, jumping between brokers-dealers, or moving from RIA to RIA. In all the talk on recruiting one of the elements that often gets lost is how certain firms can or cannot help you grow, and this fact is doubly true in the RIA space. Most of the discussion around joining RIAs has to do with freedom, better income, and better services for clients, but one narrative advisors need to think more about is whether a firm actually has the power to help transform your growth. Most advisors don’t really think too much about an RIA’s brand power when moving because the main focus is on the freedom to run their own business. In reality though, some RIAs have much better capabilities for really boosting client acquisition and aum growth than others. For example, does an RIA have a particularly strong view on the markets, or a unique marketable approach to investing? Do they have a well-developed network/infrastructure for COI referrals? Other factors, like how strong their actual marketing support is, are all critical to whether joining that firm will help you win new clients and grow your business.

FINSUM: Whether you are already at an RIA or thinking of joining one from a B-D, advisors need to think carefully about how a particular RIA’s brand and offering may help them grow. It can be a major differentiator for success.

(New York)

If you are like most advisors, you probably have some difficulty in identifying which funds you want for your clients. Alongside the sheer proliferation of funds has been a massive near duplication of them. Dozens of funds now seemingly look exactly the same and it is very difficult to choose one from another—even asset managers create cheaper versions of their own funds. Between these incredibly overlapped offerings and thousands of new funds, it also becomes very challenging to find niche funds that exactly fulfill the role you’d like them to in client portfolios. Well, here is the good news—a new company with a hyper-useful tool is solving the issue. Check out Magnifi, they are bringing investment selection into the 21st century. Magnifi uses patented technology focused on natural language search to seek out exactly the funds you need. No more checking endless boxes and drop-down menus, just type exactly what you want and the perfectly matched funds appear. For example, imagine you wanted ESG funds that did not include oil and gas companies. Just search “ESG no oil” and bang, you have ten perfectly matched funds, including the stocks that comprise them, their fees, and performance against one another.

Magnifi also integrates FI360’s fiduciary risk score for every fund, allowing advisors peace-of-mind on the regulatory front when choosing client investments.

FINSUM: Magnifi is nothing short of a revolution for finding and choosing investments. They bring the easy exploration and selection of e-commerce to the world of investment management. Check them out, there is a reason they are being called the “Google for investors”.

(Washington)

The election is far from decided, but the outcome may very well fall into Biden’s favor. With that in mind, it is worth considering how the industry’s regulatory agenda would change were he to become president. He would almost surely replace Jay Clayton as head of the SEC, but the bigger questions are about Reg BI, the new DOL rule, and whether his administration would seek a strong fiduciary standard. Most industry lawyers think Biden would not seek to throw out existing rules and draft entirely new ones. That would take a great deal of work and time. Much more likely, it appears, would be amendments to Reg BI. The infrastructure of the rule is such that simple tweaks could make it much more robust. Chief among those changes would be defining what “best interest” means and changing the approach to enforcement.

FINSUM: If the SEC put a wide-ranging definition of “best interest” in place and changed to stricter enforcement, you would quickly have a much more robust rule.