August 11th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
Today I learned from Financial Advisor Magazine’s breaking news email that Morningstar announced an agreement to buy FCSI, the makers of dbCAMS+ software. This is important news to me as my firm is a current user of dbCAMS as mentioned here, here, and here at FPPad.com
Click here to see the article on Financial Advisor Magazine.
Click here to see a similar article on Business Week.
We also received an email from Chris Boruff at Morningstar’s advisor channel that provided more specific details on the timetable of the acquisition and what it might mean to current dbCAMS users.
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Posted in Portfolio Management Software | 2 Comments »
August 7th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
Earlier this summer I traveled to Los Angeles to attend Ken Zahn’s Live Review course to prepare for the July 2008 CFP® Certification Exam. As luck would have it, Ken Zahn himself was the instructor for my four-day review course.
Ken Zahn’s “territory” mainly consists of southeastern United States locations, but each exam cycle Ken flies out to Los Angeles to instruct those of us on the west coast. In other words, he’s well known east of the Mississippi as one of the best exam review course providers, but he’s still competing with Kaplan, Dalton, Keir, and the College for Financial Planning on the west coast. Zahn’s review course fee is $925 plus $8 for miscellaneous fees, which I believe is close to what most of the other live review programs charge. Internet-based classes are cheaper, but they’re not in-person classes.
So how good was the review course?
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Posted in Professional Development | 8 Comments »
August 6th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
Back in May I wrote an initial review of David Drucker and Kristopher Behn’s Succession Registry website here on FPPad. My firm signed in as a Rainmaker and posted an offering for a new position. What were the results of using Succession Registry?
Unfortunately, Succession Registry added nothing to our firm’s search for its next employee. We filled the position through other channels. In addition, I have no idea where we went wrong with our offer. Did our offer ever show up in search results or consolidated listings? How many views did our offer have? Did anyone revisit our offer multiple times?
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Posted in Practice Management | 1 Comment »
August 5th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
The portfolio management software (PMS) currently used in my firm is dbCAMS+. While many advisers and back-office support staff that I talk to feel dbCAMS+ lacks powerful features, I find that there are hidden gems in the software if you know where to find them.
dbCAMS Command Window
For example, I discovered the Command Window buried in dbCAMS’ Tools menu not too long ago. The Command Window allows scripts, both basic and complex, to be executed in order to modify database information. One example where the Command Window has proved to be very powerful is when I need to change non-managed assets of a client to managed assets as they increase their level of service with the firm.
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Posted in Efficiency, Portfolio Management Software | 3 Comments »
August 4th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
During the FPA NexGen conference, I had the privilege of meeting Gabrielle Whelan from SourceMedia, Inc. Stacy Schultz of Financial Planning Magazine also attended the conference, but I didn’t have the opportunity to speak with her.
Gabrielle recently posted her review of the FPA NexGen conference on Financial Planning’s website. Click here to read her article titled Notes on NexGen. I’m very thankful that she included a link to FPPad.com in her review.
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Posted in General | 1 Comment »
August 4th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
Back in April, NAPFA announced that its membership passed 2,000 for the first time. Click the links for coverage from Investment News and Financial Advisor Magazine.
However, the figure of 2,000 isn’t made up by just financial advisers.
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August 2nd, 2008 Bill Winterberg
One piece of new information I picked up at the NexGen 2008 Conference is the presence of new financial planning channels on YouTube.
First on the YouTube bandwagon was NAPFA as they launched a channel, NAPFAVideos, in April. A few months later in June, FPA launched their channel, FPATelevision.
In addition to the launch of the new channel, FPA has announced a video submission contest. Video entries should address the contest theme How NOT to do Financial Planning.
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Posted in Professional Development | 1 Comment »
August 1st, 2008 Bill Winterberg
I just learned through a message from Bob Veres that David Drucker’s wife Susan died unexpectedly. A community blog has been set up at the following site where you can communicate your thoughts and compassion to David and his family.
http://virtualofficenews.blogspot.com
David is an incredibly influential figure in the financial planning community, and it’s a privilege to be a part of that community which can offer support in this tragic time.
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