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Live from IMPACT® 2011: What sets Schwab IMPACT Award winners apart?

Posted on November 3, 2011 by in Practice Management, Professional Development

Firms selected for growth, technology innovations, and dedication to the profession.

Bernie Clark, Executive Vice President of Schwab Advisor Services, greeted a crowd of nearly 4,000 in the Moscone Center this morning to announce the 2011 Schwab IMPACT Award winners.

Click here to view each video of award winners on the ImpactAwards website.

2011 Pacesetter Award

This year’s winner is Green Square Capital of Memphis, TN. They were cited for their 30%+ annual growth rate, successes in linking workflow to their service platform, and commitment to strategic planning

In a highlight video, Co-CEOs Steven Sansom and Darrell Horn discussed their use of employee scorecards, posted on each employee’s desk that can be reviewed anytime for progress and updates on personal and professional development.

In addition, Sansom and Horn talked about their “Client Delights” service, which represent a variety of non-financial “wow factors” the firm strives to deliver to clients to reach beyond traditional investment and financial planning services.

2011 Best-in-Business award

This year, there is no separated award given for technology innovation. Now, the award is wrapped inside the Best-in-Business award, and this year’s winner is Brudros, Ruhlin & Roe, Inc. of Columbus, OH. Peggy Ruhlin, James Budros, and Dan Roe offered one takeaway on what their firm is doing to manage its back office infrastructure and technology.

Brudros, Ruhlin & Roe decided to make technology a client, citing that technology previously didn’t get the attention it deserved. So treating technology as if it were a client of the firm, advisors treated every meeting, every dollar, and every idea as being just as important as the work the firm does for clients.

2011 Leadership award

This year’s Leadership award was presented to Richard Stone, CEO of Private Ocean. Stone was part of the first graduating class of CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER(TM) certificants in the early 70’s and authored the young organization’s first Code of Ethics.

Stone’s commitment to the education of young professionals and service on local education boards, including San Jose State University and UC Berkeley, exemplifies his dedication to the future of the profession and demonstrates his role as a leader in the industry.

Congratulations to all of this year’s award winners, and later on in the conference, I hope to deliver some of the best practices they highlight that helped each of them achieve such distinguished recognition.

BrightScope Launches Advisor Pages™, Aggregates SEC/FINRA Sources to Improve Adviser Search

Posted on April 26, 2011 by in Professional Development

BrightScopeOne innovative company is attempting to change the way consumers search for financial advisers.

BrightScope, the San Diego, Calif.-based provider of independent investment research and financial data, today announced the release of BrightScope Advisor Pages™.

Click here to read the press release at MarketWire.com

Changing Search

In the past, consumers searching for financial advisers faced an uphill battle of gathering information from multiple disparate sources, including information publicly available from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Often, consumers likely turned to search engines like Google and Bing to enter queries for advisers in their city, but the results offered no way to compare the basic information of one adviser to another.

Enter BrightScope Advisor Pages, where much of the public data is aggregated into one searchable database that supports filters to narrow search results. Adviser profiles include firm affiliation, contact information, registration type (Registered Representative of a Broker-Dealer, Registered Investment Adviser, or dually registered), and assets under management in addition to other information.

Adviser Search Legacy

Websites to search for financial advisers are not new. Roughly two years ago, a trio of sites were launched that provided a searchable database of financial professionals, including EvaluateMyAdvisor.com, FABeetle, and financeanswers.com. None of these sites are active today (hence the absence of hyperlinks). While we do not know the specifics of these sites’ reasons to shut down, we suspect that the controversial feature of allowing visitors to post ratings and reviews of advisers led to tricky compliance issues.

As many advisers subscribe to our blog, we recommend that you visit Advisor Pages and search for your own profile. If any data is incorrect, use the “Claim Your Profile” link to create a free account and contact BrightScope staff to correct the discrepancies.

 

NAPFA National 2011 Early Bird Deadline is April 20

Posted on April 13, 2011 by in Professional Development

Bill’s second conference appearance in May will be NAPFA National 2011 held May 18-20 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

He will appear as a panelist for Thursday’s Technology Panel at 11:20AM, featuring Jeffrey Daniher, co-owner of Ritter Daniher Financial Advisory, LLC, Frank Moore, founder of Vintage Financial Services, and moderated by Davis Janowski, technology reporter for InvestmentNews.

The early bird registration deadline is next Wednesday, April 20. If you register now, you’ll save $100 off the regular conference rate.

Click the banner below to view additional conference information.

FPA Retreat 2011 Early Bird Deadline is Friday, March 25

Posted on March 21, 2011 by in Professional Development

As we’ve said before, May is a busy month for conferences and events. Leading off the month is FPA Retreat 2011 held May 3-6 in Bonita Springs, Fla.

If you register for Retreat by Friday, March 25, you’ll save $100 off the regular conference registration.

Bill will be involved in two sessions at the event. First, he will moderate a session on Wednesday titled Social Media – It Isn’t About Where You Ate Last Night featuring panelists Rick Kahler, CFP®, Tim Maurer, CFP®, and Carl Richards, CFP®.

Then on Thursday, he’ll be introducing a new presentation titled Cultivating Clients in a Connected World where he will address the changes advisers must make to their financial planning services in response to today’s connected world. Here’s the description of his new presentation, for which 1.5 CFP® CE credits have been applied:

Your clients and prospects are communicating and connecting in new ways. Are you ready to engage them? The Information Age is evolving into an era where smart phones, cloud computing and social networks are transforming the way we live and work. But these new technologies can also reveal planning opportunities for your clients if you know where to look. Gain insight on cultivating client relationships in ways that never existed before.

Consider adding FPA Retreat 2011 to your schedule and plan to benefit from this one-of-a-kind advanced financial planning conference.

NAPFA Targets Young Fee-­Only Planners With Genesis Networking Group

Posted on January 20, 2011 by in Professional Development

It seems that the average age of financial planners in the industry moves in lock-step with the welcoming of a new year. Add one to the calendar year, add one to the average age.

Like the NexGen community of the Financial Planning Association, a new networking group introduced today by NAPFA aims to reduce the consistent increase in average age by supporting young financial planners. The new group, called NAPFA Genesis, and is focused on the growth and advancement of students, associates and planners under the age of 33.

“We are hopeful the creation of NAPFA Genesis will help younger planners in the industry learn what they have to do to be successful while making Fee-­Only financial planning stronger in the future,” said David Grant, CFP®, founder and volunteer leader of NAPFA Genesis. “Those providing financial planning services are getting older so there is a need to develop a strong presence of competent Fee-­Only professionals to help drive the industry forward. NAPFA Genesis will be a resource that has the potential to develop a future generation of Fee-­Only planners.”

For more about NAPFA Genesis, click here to read their press release (opens PDF in a new window).

NAPFA Genesis has a Twitter profile called @NAPFAGenesis. Below is their first official tweet (embedded by the Twitter Blackbird Pie plugin for WordPress)

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/NAPFAGenesis/status/27893383158566913″]

Get Prepared For FPA Denver 2010, The Annual Conference of the Financial Planning Community

Posted on August 14, 2010 by in Professional Development

FPA Denver 2010, “The Annual Conference of the Financial Planning Community” is less than two months away!

FPA Denver 2010 will be held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver from October 9 through 12. Register before August 27 to secure your spot and receive early-bird pricing, a $200 savings.

I will attend FPA Denver 2010 and will be presenting a session on Sunday, October 10 at 8:15AM. Bring your second cup of coffee and take in my session titled Emerging Trends in Financial Services Technology. My expectation is that advisors will take at least 3 ideas away on emerging technology to implement in their practice and enhance the way they engage clients.

Also, this past Friday the Financial Planning Association announced in a tweet that it will be using the hashtag #fpa2010 for information related to the annual conference in Denver.

So broadcast your impressions of sessions you attend during the conference and remember to tag them with the #fpa2010 hashtag.

FPA also created a group on LinkedIn that anyone can join to stay up to date on conference activities. Click here to join the FPA Denver 2010 LinkedIn Group.

I look forward to seeing you in Denver!

Upcoming Financial Adviser Webcast Series: Guide to Going Digital

Posted on May 10, 2010 by in Compliance, Professional Development

I joined a fantastic team at Revenue Architects to deliver a series of financial adviser webcasts to help advisers accelerate their online presence.

Revenue Architects is an expert network of independent marketing, sales, and technology professionals aligned to support the diverse needs for adviser revenue performance. All the details of Revenue Architects can be viewed on their website, http://www.revenuearchitects.com/

I’m presenting the Guide to Going Digital webcast with John Stone, CEO of Revenue Architects, on Tuesday, June 08, 2010 from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (ET). The webcast details can be viewed here: http://www.revenuearchitects.com/events-and-webcasts/

FPPad readers are eligible for a 10% discount off the webcast registration. Enter the code FPPadDigital to receive your discount. The code is valid for all four of the events in the Financial Adviser Webcast series.

I hope you consider joining the webcast if you’re serious about growing your presence in the rapidly evolving digital world.

Read My First Practices Column in the Journal of Financial Planning

Posted on May 3, 2010 by in Professional Development

I had the privilege of being asked to contribute to the Practices series of this month’s Journal of Financial Planning. The Journal of Financial Planning is the core publication of the Financial Planning Association with the mission to expand the body of knowledge of the financial planning profession.

For my first column, I described many of the best tools and techniques planners and advisers can use to roll out a successful social media strategy.

Click here to read Tools and Techniques to Leverage Social Media (link is good only for the month of May).

I always appreciate comments and feedback, so please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Forbes Advisor iConference Offers Compelling Look Into Future of Content Delivery

Posted on December 11, 2009 by in Professional Development, Technology

Update 12/22/2009: I uploaded a PDF of tweets containing the #FAiC09 hashtag, as they’re no longer available on the Twitter search site. Paragraphs below were updated.

Update 12/21/2009: Here’s an article from Davis Janowski at InvestmentNews discussing online conferences; No fuss, no muss, but forget about freebies. He highlights the Forbes iConference series among other events.

I attended the Forbes Advisor iConference Building a Rebound-Ready Game Plan on Wednesday of this week. I believe this is the second 100% web-based conference put on by Forbes. Note that InvestmentNews also recently held a 100% online event covering ETFs, but I don’t currently manage investments, so I skipped the event.

If you missed the event, replays are available for 90 days after the iConference. This FPPad post has details on how FPA members can attend for free.

Here’s my feedback on the Forbes event.

Format

Attending the iConference was easy; fire up an approved web browser (Internet Explorer 6 or higher or Firefox versions prior to 3.5), log in, and the iConference was underway. There were three main areas of the iConference:

  • Presentation Area
  • Networking Lounge
  • Exhibit Hall

Read More…