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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Serie: Bloomberg Professional
- Sprache: Englisch
A guide for financial advisors who are ready to embrace new opportunities The Enduring Advisory Firm is a book for the forward-thinking financial advisor. Financial advisement is traditionally a hands-on field, so few in the industry feel threatened by the shifting social and technological landscape. In this book, Mark Tibergien--routinely named one of the most influential people in the financial services world--and Kim Dellarocca make a compelling case for taking a closer look at technology and other big-deal industry trends in order to move the business of financial advice into the next stage of its evolution. Combining a facts-based approach with case studies and examples from the field, The Enduring Advisory Firm will ignite your imagination by demonstrating practical strategies for attracting clients and streamlining operations. Today's smart practice managers are focusing on emerging topics like the needs and expectations of the Millennial generation, mobile and interactive technologies, and growth planning. Responding thoughtfully to these trends, with the help of this book, could propel your financial advising business toward a more successful future. * In-depth discussion of trends and forces that you can harness to reshape your financial advisement business * Case studies and examples showing how to navigate the most difficult business decisions * Innovative ideas for process improvement, more fruitful client interactions, and sustainable growth * Tips and insight for attracting Millennial clients and talent by leveraging new technologies The Enduring Advisory Firm will inspire financial advisors, managers, and executives to branch out in ways that will lead to measurable growth. With a newfound focus on the evolution of your business, you might be surprised at where change takes you. In addition to providing RIAs with guidelines to help them succeed, all of the proceeds from this book will support the CFP Board Center for Financial Planning, a national initiative to create a more diverse and financial planning profession so that every American has access to competent and ethical financial planning advice. The Center brings together CFP® professionals, firms, educators, researchers and experts to address profession-wide challenges in the areas of diversity and workforce development, and to build an academic home that offers opportunities for conducting and publishing new research that adds to the financial planning body of knowledge. Learn more at www.CenterforFinancialPlanning.org.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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THE ENDURING ADVISORY FIRM
How to Serve Your Clients More Effectively and Operate More Efficiently
Mark Tibergien
Kim Dellarocca
Cover image: Business graph © MF3d/iStockphoto; Wall Street Sign © kevinjeon00/iStockphoto Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2017 by Mark Tibergien and Kim Dellarocca. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.
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ISBN 978-1-119-10876-4 (Hardcover) ISBN 978-1-119-10881-8 (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-119-10879-5 (ePub)
To Arlene Tibergien, Mark's wife, companion, and rock forover 35 years.
To Nico Dellarocca, the best thing that has ever happened tohis mother, Kim.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I: The State of the Advisory Business
Chapter 1: Key Business Trends
Assumptions
What Should You Consider?
What the Assumptions Mean for You
Notes
Chapter 2: What Business Are You In?
Vision, Mission, Goals, Objectives
A Refresher
Where to Go from Here?
Zoom Out and Zoom In
Clients of the Future
Note
Part II: The Role of Demographics and the Ability to Grow
Chapter 3: A New Paradigm for Relating and Growing Relationships
Get to Know Your Ideal Client, Again
Seek First to Understand
Notes
Chapter 4: The Mature Client
Generation Smarts: Working with Mature Clients
Change the Conversation
Case Study: Connecting with Pre-Retirees and Retirees
Notes
Chapter 5: The Baby Boomers
Generation Smarts: Working with Baby Boomers
Notes
Chapter 6: The Generation X Client
Generation Smarts: Working with Gen X Clients
Notes
Chapter 7: Millennials
Generation Smarts: Working with Millennial Clients
Embrace the Paradox
Notes
Chapter 8: Generation Z and Beyond
Generation Smarts: Working with Gen Z Clients
Notes
Chapter 9: Investing Women
Working with Female Clients
The Most Important Question
What Advisors Can Do
Unique Planning Needs for Women
Notes
Part III: Bringing Change to Your Practice
Chapter 10: Transforming from Practice to Business
But Are You Scalable?
Risky Business
The Price of Independence
Are You Conflict-Free?
Notes
Chapter 11: Culture Wars
Nature of the Work
Nature of the Worker
Nature of the Workplace
Act Like an Owner
Bullies on the Job
The Benefits of Reverse Mentorship
Notes
Chapter 12: A Vision and Leader for the Future
Vision: It Begins with Your Guiding Principles
Our Leadership Vision
A Vision for Your Business
Ability to Translate Vision into Action
Ownership and Accountability
Empathy
A core belief that their very best employee is more important than their very best client
Notes
Index
EULA
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 3.1
Chapter 6
Table 6.1
Chapter 7
Table 7.1
List of Illustrations
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1
Crtical Mass
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1
Americans want a new kind of leader
Preface
Figure P.1
Number of SEC-registered investment advisors above and below $1 billion real assets under management in 2015
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Preface
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Acknowledgments
We consider ourselves fortunate to have found work that is fulfilling and challenging. Through our combined 60-plus-year journey we have learned a lot about the kinds of investments firms need to drive success. Above all we have learned that the most important investment one can make is in others. We have learned that the quality of our relationships is the biggest driver of our happiness and success. We have learned to slow down, to be present, to think win-win, and to do our best to build others up. We have learned that sharing our talents and wisdom matters, often most to those individuals whom we may never meet. We have learned to let go and laugh more. We have learned that friendship promotes the happiness of all.
We are grateful to include here a small list of those friends who have lent their wisdom and inspiration to the book, provided coaching and opportunities along our path, and been the people we most enjoy simply sharing a laugh over a bottle of wine. They are:
The members of the Pershing Executive Committee, especially Lisa Dolly, Jim Crowley, and Caroline O'Connell.
The members of the Pershing Advisor Solutions Executive Committee, in particular Karen Novak, Gabe Garcia, Ben Harrison, and Evan LaHuta, and the incredible team of professionals who make this company a great place to pursue our career objectives.
Our clients and friends, Gerry Tamburro, Jim Pratt-Heaney, Andy Reder, Ross Levin, and the Pershing Advisor Council, for opening their businesses to us to study and for sharing their experiences.
The provocative thinkers who inspire us: John Hagel, Cam Marston, and Philip Palaveev.
Our families, friends, teams, and colleagues who supported us in achieving this as well as so many other important goals.
John Wiley & Sons and our editor, Christina Verigan, for their help, focus, and flexibility.
We would also like to thank each other. We have had an enduring friendship for many years, and our efforts to put this book together did not compromise our relationship as some had predicted—rather they made it stronger.
Mark Tibergien and Kim Dellarocca
Preface
Financial services firms have long operated independently. The 1980s ushered in two variations on existing business models that accelerated the growth of the entrepreneurial mindset in which practitioners became owner/operators instead of working as employees of another firm: Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) and Independent Contractor Broker/Dealer (IBD) reps.
Now we are seeing a couple of new dynamics: first, the transformation from practice to business; second, the emergence of multi-owner/multi-employee advisory firms. In this light, the notion of independence becomes a bit murkier because there are more mouths to feed, more constituencies to please, and more competition for strategic direction from multiple points of view. While ownership may be independent, the notion of making decisions without the influence of others is less true.
That said, RIAs are the purest form of independence in that they are free of broker/dealer oversight and overrides on their compensation, whereas the IBD model is subject to supervision by the broker/dealers with whom they affiliate and they must share an override on their revenue production with the broker/dealers. There is also a difference in approach to business as recognized by their different regulatory structures, i.e., the SEC vs. FINRA: the RIA model is composed of professional buyers whereas the IBD model is composed mostly of professional sellers, meaning that in the former, they get paid directly by the clients and act as fiduciaries or client advocates on all accounts; whereas broker/dealer reps get paid on a grid for the products they sell and for the most part operate under a suitability standard, though a recent ruling by the Department of Labor will change that condition for retirement accounts.
There has been some morphing of these identities in the past decade, however, as many IBD reps have either formed their own RIAs or became Investment Advisor Representatives (IAR) of their broker/dealer’s corporate RIA. (Those who are registered reps and have their own RIA are known as Hybrid Advisors while those who operate under the supervision of their broker/dealer’s corporate RIA are known as Dually Registered).
This background is important for understanding the transformation of the retail financial advice business and the catalyst for growth. Not only is there a big shift from brokerage to advisory, from transactional to fee revenue, or suitability to fiduciary, but from single books of businesses managed by solo practitioners to larger, professionally managed practices, many operating in multiple locations.
Perhaps the biggest leap in the evolution of independent advisory businesses is the shift from small to medium-sized firms. Consider this: The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) regards Financial Investment firms (NAIS Code 523) such as securities brokerage, portfolio management, investment advice, or trust & fiduciary firms as small businesses when their annual revenue is below $38.5 million. An advisory firm with $1 billion of assets charging an average of 80 bps would be generating under $10 million of annual revenue, so to exceed the small business threshold, an advisory firm would need to be managing somewhere between $3 and $4 billion of assets. While there are few who fit into that mid-sized category of advisory firm today, it is clear it won’t be long before there is a meaningful cluster of such firms with more and more merging, acquiring, or growing organically to a new level of critical mass.
Just a decade ago, for example, it was a big deal for independent advisory firms to achieve $1 billion of assets under management (AUM). According to Evolution Revolution, produced by the Investment Advisor’s Association in March 2015, more than half of all SEC-registered advisors have AUM between $100 million and $1 billion. Today, there are more than 3,000 RIA firms that manage more than $1 billion of assets (Figure P.1). Even more significant is that according to the 2016 Investment News Study on Compensation & Staffing sponsored by Pershing Advisor Solutions, there are now more employees within advisory firms than there are owners. Few things mark the emergence of a real business than this dynamic.
Figure P.1 Number of SEC-registered investment advisors above and below $1 billion real assets under management in 2015
Source: Investment Advisors' Association, Evolution Revolution 2015
For many firms that have become bigger, it may feel like those of us over 35 who seem to add a pound for every year we are on the planet. It’s insidious, it’s persistent, and it’s maddening. Principals in larger advisory firms look around at their holiday parties and wonder how the guest list got so big! It is a management dilemma to experience challenges inherent in being a small practice but with the added complexity of a larger business.
Growth of these firms has come organically for the most part with the addition of new staff and new advisors. In other cases, growth came through mergers or acquisitions. Oftentimes, the growth was not conscious but merely reactive to the increasing demands for their services as their brands became stronger and their value became more appreciated.
Over the years, we’ve come to recognize that advisory firms hit a series a walls when they add more staff, almost in accordance with the Fibonacci sequence (a pattern of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers). They hit a wall at 5 people, 8, 13, 21, and so forth. By hitting a wall, I mean that quality control, staff supervision and management, and the client experience each get strained.
In this scenario, each advisor seems to have their own approach to working with clients, developing recommendations and in some cases, even in how they produce reports. But far worse than applying a different approach to clients is when teams of individuals form cliques to pursue and serve clients a specific way for a specific need that is different from the firm’s stated strategy. Often there is no consistent method of training, of quality control, or of staff development. The unevenness ultimately hurts the firm brand because clients are having distinctly different experiences depending on with whom they work. Even certain employees feel disadvantaged if they are on a team that is less productive or effective than another.
The good news is that the strain is caused by business growth and therefore the problem is eminently fixable. The bad news is that partners and employees often grow attached to their way of doing business so changing their behavior requires mutual sacrifice for the good of the enterprise.
When advisory firms evolve from small to medium size, relationships get strained and profitability suffers. But like adolescence when your clothes don’t fit and mood swings become more frequent, one must conquer the awkwardness that this brings. When you hit the wall, ask the right questions: Is my strategy still relevant? Am I structured right to achieve my strategic goals? Do I have the right people doing the right things? Am I clear on what success looks like? Are we all in agreement about the goal and how we get there?
With this book, we have attempted to take a fresh look at the business of financial advice. Clearly, much has happened since the pioneers in financial services climbed the mountains and swam the streams to find a new and effective way to help individuals achieve their financial goals. The early leaders in this movement had less of a desire to work with partners and employees than the people coming into this business today. But that leaves the next generation of leaders at a loss as to what successful business models look like.
In our opinion, there are five key characteristics that the best-performing advisory firms share:
Clear Positioning—they know who their optimal client is and create a client experience in alignment with this insight.
Structural Alignment—they design work flow, leverage technology, and build processes that allow them to serve their clients effectively while running their businesses efficiently.
People Planning—they strive to match the right people to the right jobs and create an environment where motivated people can flourish.
Actively Manage to Profitability—instead of viewing financial performance of their business as a consequence of their actions, they use the levers of financial management consciously to produce the right outcome.
Systematic Client Feedback—they incorporate a process that allows them to elicit from their clients insight into what’s on their minds—not just whether they are satisfied but whether they are fulfilled and at peace with the direction they are heading.
As you read this book, we hope you will be able to recognize the different ways we suggest for incorporating these five elements into your thinking so that you can build a business to last.
Mark Tibergien and Kim Dellarocca
Part IThe State of the Advisory Business
Chapter 1Key Business Trends
Assumptions
Back in the day when individual investors were buying stocks and bonds instead of packaged solutions like mutual funds and ETFs, there was an investment analyst Mark knew in Seattle who was locally famous for his contrarian bets. His inclination was to look at companies currently out of favor with the investing public; assess their management, their culture, and their market; then take a long view of their business to determine whether it was an opportunity worth owning.
The stockbrokers who worked for this particular firm adored the man, whom we will call “Conan the Contrarian,” because his reverse approach always made them look good with their clients. Today, whenever we hear some industry pundit spout conventional wisdom, we try to channel Conan. We find it helpful to ask, “What would Conan do?” whenever we see our profession fleeing from or toward an idea.
Among the beliefs most often repeated are:
Advisors are reducing their fees.
Young employees lack a work ethic.
Robos/digital platforms will make it difficult for advisors to compete.
The industry will benefit from a huge generational transfer of wealth.
There are many more, of course, but we examine these questions in light of the facts and the reality on the ground. No doubt, our opinions will stir the ire of some but that’s exactly what Conan would do—cause people to challenge convention, then act with the wisdom they’ve gained from the analysis.
Advisors Are Reducing Their Fees
While there are a number of advisors who claim to be experiencing some fee compression, we have found that the top-performing advisory firms have actually increased their fees in each bracket of client. Much has been written about fee compression in the industry but we struggle to find signs of such a trend. In fact, in 2010, the yield on AUM (revenue divided by AUM) was 78 basis points, compared to 77 in a 2014 study and 75 in the 2015 study.1
It appears those firms most under pressure are the ones whose value proposition is tied to investment performance. There are also some wealth management firms who have had more difficult conversations in the past year with clients who are experiencing percentage returns of less than 5 percent.
Those who have raised their fees claim they have had very little attrition because they have been able to demonstrate value beyond the investing relationship and even beyond the basics of financial planning. They may be giving their clients unique access to private banking or alternative investments, or they are creating a community of clients in which others want to be part.
As we have learned from observing other industries that have been commoditized (for example, coffee, retail grocery, medicine, tax accounting), those who can command a premium are those who can deliver a premium experience and who are perceived to be offering more value.
Young Employees Lack a Work Ethic
It is a curious claim among industry elders that it is a challenge to find young people who work as hard as they do. Having interacted with thousands of advisors over our careers, we would agree that advisors born in the Baby Boom era tend to value motion over movement and equate time in the office with hard work. But the amount one perspires is not a measure of perseverance.
Gen X, Y, and now Z employees seem to eschew the illusion of industriousness created by their forerunners as they seek more balance in their life to pursue other interests and devote time to their important relationships. They consistently ask their bosses to evaluate them on output, not input. This is a very difficult mindset for founders of advisory firms whose blood, sweat, and tears created their practices and resulted in the advisory business as we know it today.
Over the past couple of years, we have observed a number of advisory firms transferring to the next generation with little fanfare and minimal disruption. Firms that seem to be growing the fastest according to surveys done by Investment News2 and FA Insight3 have been investing in better hiring, retention, and development programs to ensure business continuity and stronger growth.
Fortunately, many business leaders in this industry will acknowledge that the old way of managing through carrot and stick may not be as effective as creating opportunities for personal growth, recognizing that the desire for employees to have a life outside work, investing in their career development, and rewarding fairly does pay off. The challenge is that such a systematic approach requires more disciplined management, which frankly, is not the job that most advisors aspired to when they formed their own practices.
Robos Will Make It Difficult to Compete
Every decade presents new obstacles and new challenges for financial services. Mark started in this business in the 1970s just before the disappearance of fixed rate commissions. Since then, we’ve also seen a number of other disruptors.
Off the top of our heads, we think of the RIA custody model, the self-directed platforms, the emergence of ETFs and index mutual funds, rebalancing software, and account aggregation as examples of ideas that caused disruption to different segments of the business. At Pershing alone, which is the largest securities clearing firm in the United States and a division of the largest custodian in the world (BNY Mellon), we have seen advisory assets grow from 5 percent of our total in 2007 to more than 50 percent today.
Furthermore, we have seen regulatory reform influence how many conduct business in the United States as well as overseas. In the United Kingdom, for example, with the introduction of the retail distribution review (RDR), platforms may no longer obtain reimbursements from the fund companies for whom they provide access to advisors and their clients. This has forced a new economic relationship between all the parties, but has also created greater transparency in costs and deliverables. In Australia, the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA)4 requires advisors to tell their clients what they can expect to pay in actual dollars for the services to be rendered in the coming year. Now that these financial professionals cannot hide the charges clients are charged, they have to do more to demonstrate value.
The point is that robo-advisors—or digital platforms—are just another step that automates what was a manual and labor-intensive experience. Using algorithms, their model portfolios may even be able to outperform the strategies that human advisors deploy. But this is not the only reason why individual clients choose to work with a financial professional.
The complexity of a person’s life—especially the wealthier they are—requires judgment and insight. What clients want is an easier way to access these points of view along with a simpler way to conduct business. For most advisors, leveraging technology to deliver the best of robo combined with the best of humans will likely be the model for advisory firms. Of course, the pure technology plays will get their share of business just as the self-directed platforms at places like Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and Fidelity have. The challenge and the opportunity for advisors is not to concede that ground to those investing so much in competitive solutions, but rather partner with providers who can enhance the client experience while at the same time keeping the advisor at the core of the relationship.
The Profession Will Benefit from the Pending Transfer of Wealth
Depending on what you read, you will find there is upward of $40 trillion of wealth in the United States alone that is expected to go from the Baby Boomer generation to their children and grandchildren.5 As a result, pundits are urging advisory firms to create a process for capturing this asset movement by positioning their firms properly in the minds of the inheritors and their benefactors.
While money in motion can be great for those prepared to be in the middle of it, the reality is that most of this wealth will be distributed in fractions to their beneficiaries. And not all of the beneficiaries will be the offspring of the rich folk. Much of this will go to charities and other causes the creators of wealth hold dear. Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) are great leading examples of people who want to make an impact with their legacy. Their kids will also see a large inheritance upon the death of their parents, of course, but the point is that what is left over will be distributed in much smaller chunks.
Furthermore, the suggestion that advisors should be on a death watch waiting for their Baby Boomer clients to croak is insulting to younger prospective clients. The greatest amount of wealth creation will come from the efforts of Gen X, Y, and Z directly. We are seeing great examples of innovation and consequently wealth accumulation that has little to do with being born with a silver spoon.
So the opportunity for growth from inheritance is a very dark strategy when one considers the opportunity for growth from betting on the next generation of wealth accumulators. A balanced approach seems to be the best strategy.
While skepticism about conventional wisdom is healthy, your wariness will prove useless if you don’t take a constructive approach to what you perceive as threats. Being a professional naysayer adds little value to business decisions.
Granted, there are many other examples of conventional wisdom that deserve challenge. They at least deserve to be questioned as we observe a profession that is going through one of its most profound changes in decades. Advisory firms of the future, however, will not be replicating each other’s business strategies, but will be challenging convention, deciding based on facts, and finding cracks in the market that will result in big openings to do more business.
What Should You Consider?
That’s why it is so critical to review what you know about the business and try to understand what the data and trends are telling you about its future, and your role in it.
There are several irrefutable facts that should be informing the strategies for leaders in financial services.
The business is experiencing margin compression.
Growth for mature firms is coming more from existing clients than new.
There is an oversupply of clients and an undersupply of people to provide advice.
The industry in general has a tarnished reputation among prospective employees and clients.
Compliance and regulation is a growing component in a firm’s financial statements.
Industry consolidation is inevitable as age and economics drive owners of advisory firms to make difficult choices.
Margin Compression
At a time when the average advisory firm is growing and the average advisor is making more money than ever, it is not always obvious when an advisory firm is suffering profitability challenges. This is why we recommend that advisory firms maintain proper financial statements with key ratio reports that show trends in gross profit margin and operating profit margin.6
Profitability in advisory firms is affected by several forces. Earlier in this chapter we rebutted the notion of price compression for the best-performing firms, but the reality is that the average advisory firm has not been able to keep the prices aligned with their rising costs of doing business or adjusted for the added services an advisory firm may be delivering to clients. Furthermore, with most fee structures tied to asset values, it is difficult for many advisory firms to keep pace with inflation in a low-return environment.
In addition to pricing, five other variables that affect profitability the most are:
Poor service mix
Poor productivity
Poor client mix
Poor cost control
Low revenue (sales) volume
In our experience, most advisory firm leaders do not actively manage to profitability and as a result are unaware of the insidious nature of some of their decisions. For example, it is common to introduce new services or take on new clients because of a perceived opportunity, not because of a conscious strategy. As a result, substantial resources and attention get diverted to a new initiative that costs more than it generates.
The advisory firm of the future will need to be more disciplined about the investment decisions it makes in its own business, much like it creates a framework for making investment recommendations for clients based on risk, reward, diversification, and other drivers.
Growth for Mature Firms
As advisory firms evolve through their life cycles, they take on the same characteristics as the humans who manage them. In the early years, it runs on energy, not on wisdom. In the teen years, the firm acts with an insouciance derived from the belief that nothing bad can happen. When it arrives at adulthood, the business acts with confidence and wisdom. In the later years, its energy begins to wane and the decisions that emanate from the business seem to be focused on conserving rather than growing.
For advisory firms that have not invested in the development of people, it reaches a limit in regard to the number of active client relationships that can be served effectively. Depending on what is being delivered and how the clients are being served, that limit is somewhere between 50 and 150 clients per advisor.
Once advisors reach capacity, they tend to slow their efforts to develop new business. In firms containing multiple professionals, all with responsibility for getting new clients, this is not a concern. However, in firms in which all the advisors have reached their peak, it’s not uncommon to see revenue from new clients drop from 15 to 20 percent of the total to 5 to 10 percent.
Why is this a concern? Often in parallel with the aging of the advisor is the aging of the client. There comes a point that with limited renewal of the client base, most clients shift into withdrawal phase away from accumulation. The old rule of thumb was that investors could afford to withdraw 4 percent of their wealth in order to live their lives comfortably. Assuming this as your guide, and assuming your revenue is tied to assets under management, advisors would need to replace these assets each year just to stay even. But of course, this gives no consideration to death or termination of the client relationships, let alone the rising costs of doing business.
It is clearly important for advisors to define reasonable growth objectives in clients, assets, and revenues, and manage them all to a goal. Without a conscious target, it is possible to become complacent about the need to refresh one’s center of influence, seek out referrals, and urge everyone in the firm to be aware of the need to grow each year.
An Oversupply of Clients, an Undersupply of Providers
Every industry would love the unique dynamics of the financial profession. Throughout the world, we have seen a marked increase in the number of millionaires. Simultaneous with this trend, we are seeing a decline in the number of advisors guiding these individuals whose lives have become more financially complex.
For example, in the United Kingdom since the implementation of Retail Distribution Review (RDR) in 2013, 10,000 independent financial advisors (IFA) have left the business. In the United States, since the market collapse of 2008, there are 40,000 fewer financial professionals in all channels.
Many of these clients are seeking do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions that they can obtain online, but there is still considerable demand for the wisdom and insight that come from working with a professionally trained advisor—especially when their decisions go beyond the investment realm.
The talent shortage is a risk for advisory firms that are seeking to grow because it is more difficult to find the right people to do the work they seek. It also means that compensation costs are rising in order to create the right inducements for people to join these organizations.
The talent shortage is also an opportunity for advisory firms that are able to position themselves as the employer of choice in their markets. They can establish a presence on college campuses where personal financial planning or related disciplines is a legitimate major. They can recruit from other firms by promising a career path, an opportunity to work with more challenging clients, and the appeal of greater financial rewards.
For advisors contemplating the future of their business in a sea of uncertainty, being positioned clearly among prospective employees and partners creates an opportunity unique in our business.
Tarnished Reputation
In a recent survey, most investors believe the financial services industry puts profits ahead of client interests.7
The reputation of financial services has diminished a lot over the decades. The financial crisis of 2008, the nefarious activities of players like Bernie Madoff and his compatriots, the mortgage crisis, the collapse of previously trusted financial institutions have all contributed to a negative image. Even those who have held themselves out as fiduciary advisors got caught in the mix, with several leading advisors being indicted and convicted for illegal behavior.
As much as Main Street advisors try to distance themselves from the stink of corruption, both the trade press and Main Street media highlight the misdeeds of people in the business constantly. Furthermore, members of Congress and regulators persistently cite the abuse of elders and the less informed as reasons to tighten the rules on bad behavior.
Of course, it doesn’t help that industry regulators have diluted the terminology, thus making it difficult for the average consumer to truly understand whom they are dealing with. For example, the term advisor was meant to be the province of those registered with the SEC but when broker/dealers purloined that nomenclature as a replacement for the term broker, no one objected. Yet broker/dealers operate under an exemption that says their registered reps can give advice as long as it is incidental to their business. Imagine holding yourself out as an advisor without having to register as one because it’s not considered core to what you do.
Other terms that tend to confuse is fee-only versus fee-based. Or suitability versus fiduciary standard. If you are the average client without reason to understand the jargon of this business, it may come as a surprise to you when you are recommended or sold something that doesn’t fit your goals, your risk profile, or your level of comprehension.
This is not to imply that one segment of the business is less trustworthy than another. It would be as if a chiropractor held himself out as an osteopathic doctor. Chiropractors and osteopaths are both medical professionals who treat patients with a focus on the musculoskeletal system. But the two disciplines require different levels of certification.
A chiropractor is a medical professional trained in chiropractic medicine, typically in a three to four year program. An osteopath, on the other hand, must be a licensed physician and is able to perform surgery and prescribe medicine.
The parallel to financial services is that clients do not know if they are being served by someone who gets paid based on the products they sell them, or paid for the advice they give regardless of which financial solution they use. Furthermore, when a bad act is committed, the press usually uses the word “advisor” in the headline, which reinforces the idea that the entire business is suspect.
In the end, advisors and brokers who are able to convey confidence and trust and who are transparent in how they conduct business will go a long way toward giving comfort to clients, prospects, and centers of influence. But the apprehension people have in dealing with financial services providers remains a headwind in the conduct of business.
Compliance Costs Are Rising
Regardless of which business model financial professionals operate under, the cost of compliance continues to rise. For independent firms, this cost can represent 2 to 4 percent of all expenses. For the most part, it is a variable cost, meaning that it goes up and down based on the volume of business one is doing.
Much of what has to be done in the advisory profession is prophylactic and not to remedy bad deeds, but the cost of surveillance and enforcing rules of behavior is meaningful. To be effective, it requires at least one individual whose sole job is to monitor activities and take remedial actions when something is amiss. It’s like having a traffic cop on every corner.
Most advisors would say they are honest and ethical, so the cost of compliance seems especially burdensome. But the myriad rules in place to ensure both brokers and advisors are acting in the best interests of their clients require well-trained specialists to educate, inform, and direct partners and employees to stop, look, and listen before acting.
Consolidation Is Inevitable
All of these forces of change contribute to the need for advisory firms to become bigger. “Bigger” is a relative term, of course, since for the most part, advisory firms are small businesses, even micro businesses.
But complexity and costs require firms to be managed professionally. Adding layers of process and management to a business means that revenues also have to increase to cover those costs. The need to generate more requires the addition of people and thus begins a never-ending cycle of growth.
Many firms have grown naturally by adding layers as needed, but others have found benefit in merging8 with like-minded firms to more efficiently consolidate certain costs, gain operating leverage, and establish a bigger market presence more quickly.
Firms like Hightower moved quickly to create a semi-national Registered Investment Advisory firm focused on recruiting people out of wirehouse brokerage firms. Focus Financial was an early roll-up firm that has acquired numerous large advisory practices around the country though it has not tried to merge them into a singular brand or common client experience. Middle-wear providers such as Dynasty serve as a bridge between advisors and their providers, providing outsourced solutions to those not yet big enough or disciplined enough to create their own management infrastructure for this purpose. Numerous advisory firms throughout the United States and in other countries have merged, as the founders of one looks to retire but seeks to provide continuity to their employees and clients.
While we do not predict the end of the solo-practitioner, it is clear that there will be a divergence in size and presence in different markets. It is not unfathomable to see some truly national advisory firms much like we see in the accounting profession with its Big 4 CPA firms. More likely, we will see the emergence of super regional advisory firms—what the accounting profession labels as “Group B” firms.
These super regional advisory firms will be managed professionally with a branch manager system not unlike the brokerage industry. While there will be some that are scattered across the frontier, more likely the best-performing super regional firms will have a geographic concentration that provides for tighter management, tighter branding, and operational leverage.
We expect there will also be smaller, local advisory firms that find value in banding together with other advisors to create some economies of scale and continuity of practice. Many of these will be formed by second- and third-generation advisors who do not have the same fear of working with others that many of the industry pioneers seemed to have.
What the Assumptions Mean for You
One thing is clear in any business: What got you here will not get you there. In our mind, this means that the assumptions about the advisory business over the past 100 years have changed dramatically.
Think of what has transpired since the 1970s alone.
