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Custodians
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Schwab Gets Green Light To Handle Custody Of Alternative Assets For Advisor Affiliates |
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Thursday, March 08, 2012 16:27
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Tags: custodians Advisors looking for a place to park their clients' non-traditional assets without raising fiduciary concerns may find life getting a little easier now that Schwab is back at the table.
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Schwab initially supported alternative assets on its custody platform, then wavered, booting real estate, limited partnerships, hedge funds, and other types of investment to Millennium Trust.
But now, the firm has an SEC letter in hand stating that it's okay to validate "uncertified" asset custody via the National Securities Clearing Corporation's new alternative investment product service.
To cut through the boilerplate, as long as an entity signs up with the NSCC, its securities can show up in Schwab accounts.
Schwab will need to monitor the NSCC system for updates and do some extra bookkeeping, but otherwise that's it.
This is huge for Schwab and huge for advisors whose clients want to integrate their exotic holdings into their traditional securities accounts.
It's also a ray of sunshine in a market so crowded with sketchy non-traded and unregistered products that all the due diligence in the world can't stop huge firms from adding toxic securities to the shelf.
To show up in custody accounts, all alternative securities have to be registered with the NSCC. They now have a much clearer paper trail. They're on the books.
This can help prevent future Madoff-style situations where money disappears from unregistered vehicles outside public custody. Transparency is coming!
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LPL Names New Chief Of Independent Advisor Services |
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Wednesday, February 29, 2012 16:38
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Tags: LPL Mimi Bock has come to LPL to help them deepen their focus on bringing independent advisor firms to their traditionally broker-driven platform.
If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
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Bock used to run Morgan Stanley's southeast region and was at Bear Stearns before that.
This is not just another executive move. By installing Bock as head of the independent advisor services unit, LPL is announcing that it wants to be yet another in the growing list of firms that cater to RIA clients.
It's not just a world dominated by Fidelity, Schwab, Pershing, and TDA -- and a crowd of specialized vendors -- any more.
Raymond James and other broker-dealers are getting into the act. The question is whether LPL's famous self-clearing platform will help it or hurt it when going after RIAs who are used to working with broader vendors.
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Scottrade Giving Affiliated RIAs A Discount On MoneyGuidePro |
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Thursday, February 23, 2012 17:51
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Tags: financial planning To woo more advisory firms to its custody platform, Scottrade is offering what amounts to wholesale pricing on MoneyGuidePro software.
If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
- Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers
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Scottrade affiliates are now eligible for enterprise rates on the popular financial planning package -- a "substantial" discount for those who were previously paying retail price.
In return, MoneyGuidePro will be tightly integrated into the Scottrade custody platform, which seems to indicate that it is becoming the default planning software for the brokerage firm's roughly 1,000 RIA affiliates.
Since Scottrade touts this as the "first" such deal for MoneyGuidePro, other custodians may follow their lead.
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Raymond James Puts "Major Focus" On Building Its RIA Custody Business |
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012 15:30
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Tags: Raymond James Having established itself as a multi-channel force in the brokerage world, Raymond James is turning toward ways to bring RIAs into the fold.
If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
- Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers
- Reviews by advisors of practice management applications
- 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues
- 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE
Register Now | |
Raymond James currently has about 100 advisory firms on its books, accounting for $7 billion in custody.
Break the numbers down, and you'll see that the typical RJ RIA is mid-sized, with maybe $70 million in client accounts.
But now that Raymond James is segmenting the custody business into its own business unit, new chief William Van Law promises that he'll leverage the firm's famous technology to win more -- and presumably bigger -- advisors from leaders like Schwab, TDA, and Fidelity.
As he says, this may only be a 3% piece of the Raymond James operation now, but growing it is now a "major" focus for management.
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Is Tom Bradley's Promotion To Run Retail Distribution At TD Ameritrade Good For RIAs? |
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Tuesday, February 07, 2012 22:15
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Tags: competitors | custodians | RIAs After running TD Ameritrade’s RIA custody business for over a decade, Tom Bradley is being promoted to run retail distribution at the giant discount brokerage, and that could be good news for RIAs.
If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
- Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers
- Reviews by advisors of practice management applications
- 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues
- 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE
Register Now | |
Bradley is well-liked by RIAs. He’s a New York kind of guy, a street-fighter, and very down to earth. He will be missed by investment advisors. But he may actually wind up helping RIAs quite a bit while running TD's retail business.
Having spent a big part of his career working with RIAs, my guess is that Bradley is likely to find ways to find ways to help advisors in his new position.
Bradley, in running the retail business, is going to make a lot o decisions that affect advisors.
Should TD’s retail division start offering private client services, providing advice to high-net-worth individuals, as Schwab does?
How can the retail branches offer a better referral program for advisors?
Should TDAI start an advisor franchise business?
What advice will TD online retail apps provide and will TD's online retail investors be pitched on meeting with an RIA?
Maybe I’m being naïve. Bradley could turn out to run retail ruthlessly without any care for advisors. But I’ve been impressed by the corporate culture at TD Ameritrade.
Culture differentiates TDAI from the other custodians. TD is less corporate and more open than other custodians. TDAI opening its application program interface to RIA vendors is an example of how this cultural value manifests itself. (Tell me if you think I’m wrong.) As a result, Bradley in his new post could find new opportunities where TD’s retail and institutional businesses both win.
Discount brokerages like TD Ameritrade, Schwab, and Fidelity are increasingly going to compete for the mass-affluent and high-net-worth investment clients targeted by RIAs.
Bradley, who has been trained to think like an investment advisor for the last two decades and who has deep roots in this segment of the financial advice business, can be an advocate for RIAs even as he seeks to grow TD's retail discount brokerage services with the same intensity he devoted to TDAI.
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