You Can Act Like a Fiduciary Regardless of What the Law Says
Reg BI has now been birthed and with it a maelstrom of emotion and controversy. Fiduciary advocates are wearing black and flying their flags at half-mast. They see Reg BI as a sell-out of the individual investors the SEC was created to protect and a knife in the back of the fiduciary RIA community.
A New Series of Portfolios to Give You More Options
On April 1st (no fooling) we launched a new series of portfolios—the Factor Select portfolios. We created them in response to advisors who wanted our best ideas about how to build low cost, factor-based portfolios. A lot of work and research went into their design and we proudly offer them to give
TAMP Users: Watch Out for This Fiduciary Landmine
TAMP users beware! There is a disturbing trend in our industry that may get you in trouble with the regulators if you’re not careful. Everything Was Fine Until… It all started innocently enough. In the “early days” (early 1990s) there weren’t many TAMPs, and their investment offerings
Building Your Own Piece of the Future – Client Profiling
“You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone for the times they are a changin’.” –Bob Dylan Last time we talked about how technology is changing the game for advisors. To sum up, in the future, the traditional cornerstones of your value proposition like investment managemen
Building Your Own Piece of the Future – Technology
“You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone for the times they are a changin’.” –Bob Dylan You have no need to fear the future, but you better be prepared for it. Failure to adapt to the changes that are taking place today will cause your business to sink like a stone tomo
Stop the Dangerous Notion That Asset Management is Commoditized
This article also appears in the Journal of Financial Planning: Practice Management Blog. The emergence of low-cost investment solutions like robo-advisers and model marketplaces has elicited statements by earnest pundits about the “commoditization” of asset management. These well-meaning observ
The annual tsunami of prognostications about how the stock market and the economy will perform in 2018 was beginning to slow to a trickle, thankfully. Then the stock market had a major hiccup and the punditry scrambled back to its soap boxes to give us another dose. Their explanations about why the
This is the time of year when the gurus share their predictions and prognostications for the coming year. It is also the time of year when the media reports on how poorly the gurus fared in predicting and prognosticating about the events of the past year. The story is the same every year. As a
A Surefire Way to Better Serve Your Clients and Build a Stronger Practice
Do you want to differentiate your firm from the competition, while adding value to your client relationships? Focus attention on an area that is ignored by most advisors: client profiling. Because few advisors even think of this as an area where they might add value, it presents you with a great o
The Benefits of Outsourcing: Part 2
Last month, we looked at how outsourcing the investment management can help reduce overhead costs and help you build credibility in your investment offering. This month, we’re going to look at how outsourcing can help you buy back a part of your day so you can focus on the parts of your job that t
The Benefits of Outsourcing: Part 1
Outsourcing of the investment management function by financial advisors has grown dramatically since its beginnings in the late 1980s. Depending on which studies you reference, somewhere between 25% to 50% of all advisors outsource some or all their investment management functions. That number is de
Announcing Our New Master Class Program
We are very excited to announce the launch of our new Master Class program. It is a monthly webinar series designed to give you access to industry experts who can help you: Run your business more efficiently Grow your business more effectively Add more value to your client relationships Position you
Forty-five years ago I had the best meal of my life in a restaurant called Taillevent. I had just graduated from college and was traveling through Europe looking for adventure. I linked up with my father in Paris, and he suggested that we have dinner at Taillevent. I don’t remember what I ate that
How We Gain a Performance Advantage No Matter What the Markets Do – Part II
In my last blog post I talked about the importance of controlling fees and expenses in a portfolio. In this post I will tell you how we do it at First Ascent and give you an example of the huge benefits that clients could receive through this process. The Fix is Straightforward Here’s how we
How We Gain a Performance Advantage No Matter What the Markets Do – Part I
Obvious and Boring Everyone wants to gain a performance advantage by placing bets based on smart-factors, data-driven algorithms or macro-calls that purport to predict the future. It’s certainly fun and intellectually stimulating to do this and you feel so smart when your bets pay off. We think
The streamlined process will increase operational efficiency, decrease time to account opening, and allows First Ascent to continue providing white-glove service to its advisors and their clients.
Featuring Scott MacKillop, CEO of First Ascent Asset Management, with Robert Huebscher
