It was only a matter of time before NAPFA’s reputation would be tainted in the national media.

Ron Lieber, the personal finance columnist at The New York Times, wrote a story in today’s paper entitled, “How a Personal Finance Columnist Got Caught Up in Fraud.”

In the 2000 romantic comedy, “What Women Want,” after he accidentally sustains an electric shock, advertising executive Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) finds himself suddenly able to read women's minds. Gibson uses his newfound ESP to create better ad campaigns and make his boss, Darcy McGuire (Helen Hunt), fall head over heels for him.



Apart from the hilarity that ensues, the movie shows how important it can be to get into the heads of the people we care about. That’s what Advisor Products is doing right now with its clients and what advisors must do with their clients.



Advisor Products this morning sent an email to people we care about—advisors that are our clients—inviting them to a webinar where I will speak about marketing opportunities created by using our website services.

The webinar invitation included a link to a survey asking advisors they want from us, and we made the survey findings available. Like Mel Gibson, we now can see into the minds of our clients.



Advisors, to succeed in this environment, must work toward the same transparency, openness, and cooperative communication. How?



Whenever you rebalance a client’s accounts, complete a client’s review, or perform key services to clients, ask the client how you did. Creating a survey and emailing a link to your clients to fill out will take just a few minutes. Ask your clients how you’re doing. Ask them what they want.

“If you go to a doctor because your elbow hurts, the doctor isn’t going to treat you heart or hand,” says Craig Israelsen. “He’ll treat your elbow. That’s what advisors need to do with clients now.”



“It’s not like a client’s entire portfolio is hurt,” says Israelsen. “It’s just part of it.”



Israelsen, an associate professor at Brigham Young University and frequent contributor to Financial Planning Magazine, likens the market crash of 2008 to a client’s elbow that's taken a very unfunny blow to the funny-bone.



Israelsen will speak about how the market cataclysm affects rebalancing at this Friday’s 4 p.m. EDT session of the Financial Crisis Webinar Series.

Israelsen says that advisors who did not have retiree or pre-retirees holding age-appropriate cash positions before the global economic crisis decimated stock prices are vulnerable but have no one but themselves to blame. He has always argued that it was misguided to think of cash as being a drag on portfolios. “No one thinks cash is a drag now!”

I received a call from an advisor last Friday that taught me a lesson, one that perhaps many advisors can also learn from.



The call was from a longtime client of Advisor Products. We don’t speak often, but I always enjoy it when we do.



On Friday, she opened my eyes to the fact that Advisor Products needs to do more to educate advisors about what we offer. So I’m going to host a monthly webinar about how Advisor Products helps advisory firms retain clients and gain prospects. Please join me for the first session Wednesday, April 15 at 4 p.m.



Back to the lesson I learned and how you might be able to learn from it.



The advisor who called me is responsible for marketing at the firm, but she didn't know about important ways we could help her firm.



She didn’t know we just completed an interface with the CRM software used by her firm (XLR8) that enables her firm to assign her clients To-Dos in XLR8 and programmatically update them in a client’s personal portal. She didn’t know that Advisor Products 18 months ago more than doubled the number of articles available for newsletters and websites from 20 a quarter to 50. She didn’t know we now provide marketing videos or that we added search engine marketing services.



Advisor Products constantly updates advisors about how to benefit from what we do via:

• 
  
  
  MarketingSmart, an email newsletter with updates on all new services and advisor marketing tips
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  My blog, which I post almost every day
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  The weekly Financial Crisis Webinars Series that helps advisors manage the wrenching downturn
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  A sales team tasked with calling each of our clients every six months
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  A CRM system that records all email correspondence with each client and stores notes by our staff about every phone call
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  A “BackOffice” for each advisory firm to manage their newsletter and website and that prominently displays updates about our products and my blog
  
  
  
  
  

The list could go on but there’s no need to beat the point to death.

Yes, advisors can use Linkedin, they can blog, and they can even tweet on Twitter. Whether you’re a register rep or an IA rep, you can network online with friends and prospects, but you do have to follow the same compliance rules that govern other advertising materials.



To prepare for a webinar about compliance issues posed by social networking sites, the subject of this Friday’s Financial Crisis Webinar, I interviewed Brian Hamburger and Dan Bernstein of MarketCounsel, a compliance consulting firm serving independent advisors nationwide. (The 4 p.m. webinar on Friday is free but you must register to attend.) Below are some of what these experts said.



With regard to Twitter:

When an IA rep uses Twitter to send a link to an article from an online magazine, newspaper, or other site to clients and prospects "following" him, that communication is subject to SEC advertising rules. However, Bernstein says that merely sending a link is not advertising—as long as you don’t give your opinion.

· If a rep sends links to articles, however, it could be deemed advertising, which means some broker/dealers may require pre-approval of a tweet with a link. It depends on your BD. Many BDs allow reps to re-circulate articles. Most BDs will permit it, so long as the rep does not add content. Your BD may require you to print it out and retain each tweet in hard copy.

· IA reps have it a easier than registered reps. There is no preapproval required of IAs in any of the SEC rules.



On the topic of blogging:

· Yes, advisors can write blogs. Twitter is a microblog. However, a blog is like any other communication, and a rep needs it pre-approved, which makes blogging difficult.

· Some BDs regulations do not allow blogs. But it is a manpower issue and cost issue.

· Blogging is easier for IA reps because they do not need pre-approval of the material.

· A blog from an IA rep can discuss typical clients and situations that are hypothetical. You can “make up” a client and talk about his issues and problems and how you solved them—as long as you disclose that these are hypothetical abstracts and not real situations.

· Blogging about the economy, financial planning, or market commentary is less likely to pose compliance problems, but market commentary must avoid predictions.

· Commenting on your blog is permissible. But any commenting should be screened, so that you can take down a comment or edit it.

· You must be able to remove blog comments that are testimonials from clients.



If an advisor is using Linkedin:

· A "recommendation" on your Linkedin profile by a client does indeed constitute a testimonial and, thus, violates SEC rules prohibiting RIAs from using client testimonials in advertising.

· If a client writes a recommendation praising you as a moral or religious person, it will be construed as a testimonial—even if it does not address your skills as a professional investor.

· The testimonial prohibition is commonly thought to pertain specifically to clients. There is not a lot of guidance about using testimonials from non-clients. But the fact that there has not been many enforcement actions for using testimonials by non-clients indicates that using testimonials from non-clients may be within SEC rules. But the SEC may ask you to remove such recommendations from Linkedin. For instance, if you are on the board of directors at your church or synagogue, another board member could write a recommendation for you in your capacity as a board member and that would probably not be construed as a violation of the rules.



Because social networking is so new, there is no body of enforcement actions and rulings that you can reference. The SEC will be busy in coming months addressing the many issues posed by advisor use of social media .

Amid the gloomy landscape stands an oasis: Shareholder Services Group.



About a year after Peter Mangan left TD Waterhouse Institutional in 2002, he along with Barry Boyte and a few other veterans of the RIA custody business started Shareholder Services Group (SSG). (See my April 2003 article.)



Initially, I had my doubts. Could a custodian focusing on small advisors compete? It was the middle of a bear market, and the established custodians were still struggling in the aftermath of 9/11. I feared they'd fall flat on their faces. Boy was I wrong.



SSG is now a custodian to 480 RIA firms and it is experiencing a boom amid the economic bust. While the $1.7 billion amount of assets SSG custodies for RIAs is dwarfed by the big-name custodians—Fidelity, Pershing, Schwab, and TD Ameritrade, SSG has built a profitable business around smaller RIAs that the larger custodians don’t value as much.



According to Boyte, since the market meltdown about 15 to 20 new RIA firms have been signing on with SSG each month.



About 75% of the new RIAs are registered reps coming from BDs, Boyte says, and the vast majority are dropping their securities licenses. With a new regulatory regime likely (see previous post), these registered reps seem anxious to move to a fee-only or fee-based business-model now rather than wait.



These advisors are probably moving now because they have less to lose. The stock market meltdown has eroded the value of their 12b-1 fees, making it easier to walk away from them.



Other custodians are saying they’re seeing an influx of new assets, too, but the details of SSG’s growth tell a compelling story.



“It’s a good business model,” says Boyte. “Peter Mangan laid it out in a business plan in 2002 and we’ve adhered to it very closely because it works. First and foremost, it’s about giving good quality service.”



How is SSG succeeding? Nothing fancy, no unbelievable tech story, no huge discounts. Just good service.



Boyte says SSG pricing is competitive versus other custodians, but what separates the firm is the deep experience of its principals and staff, and SSG’s sole focus the RIA custody business. In contrast, Fidelity, Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and Pershing are financial services behemoths with an RIA division.



Boyte says the firm is not trying to bring in more advisors because it fears service issues. SSG, he says, is able to maintain a high service level because it only hired personnel experienced in working with RIAs. “Everyone on staff here now worked with us at Jack White and TD Waterhouse,” says Boyte. “When we need a new person, we know where to go and who to speak to.”



Any advisor who is discouraged because of tough business conditions should take comfort from SSG’s story. If you’re smart enough to stay focused on your business model and on doing the right thing for people in this business, you, too, will probably be doing back-flips in a few years.

The Securities and Exchange Commission took emergency action Wednesday to charge Nashville, Tenn.-based investment advisor Gordon B. Grigg, 46, and his firm, ProTrust Management, Inc., with securities fraud, and the agency obtained a court order freezing their assets.



“The Complaint alleges that ProTrust, a Tennessee corporation with offices in Nashville, is engaged in ongoing securities fraud,” according to the litigation release posted on the SEC’s website earlier today. “The Complaint further alleges that Grigg is a purported financial planner and an investment adviser who controls ProTrust.”

The SEC alleges that Grigg and ProTrust defrauded at least 27 clients out of at least $6.5 million and misrepresented that their money was invested in the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and other securities that, in reality, do not exist. The SEC alleges that Grigg bilked investors by selling them private placements and then fabricated account statements for the non-existent U.S. Government-guaranteed commercial paper and bank debt.



Grigg and ProTrust consented to the emergency relief sought by the SEC. William J. Haynes, Jr., a U.S. District Court Judge for the Middle District of Tennessee, Nashville Division, issued a temporary restraining order to prevent Grigg and his firm from further violations and froze their assets. While the ProTrust website is no longer online, the image to the right obtained by from WayBack Machine was previously on the firm's home page.



Grigg's scheme begain in 2003, according to the SEC complaint. In August 2007, the says charges, Grigg recommended that a client in North Carolina and a client in California, each of whom was a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, invest in “Private Placements.” Grigg “falsely and fraudulently” told the two piltos that the Private Placements were not available to individual investors but were available to his clients through the pooling of their funds. One client wired $237,000 and the sent $100,000 in cash.



Grigg, from approximately January 2008 through December 2008, faked monthly account statements to the North Carolina client, reporting positions in a $100,000 “Jumbo Corporate Debenture” with an 8.15% fixed annual return and a $132,000 “Kohlberg Kravis Roberts” investment product with a 14% fixed annual return. “In fact, no such investment products had been purchased by the Defendant,” says the SEC complaint, and no such KKR investment product exists.



Last month, the scheme took a new turn when, according to the SEC, Grigg mailed correspondence to the two pilots saying his firm “had access to debt guaranteed by the U.S. government through the government’s TARP program.”



“ProTrust Management has been a very small participant in a partnership that is headed up by Berkshire Hathaway and Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, or KKR,” Griggs reportedly wrote in a letter to both of pilots. “Via the partnership, ProTrust has purchased over eight million dollars worth of banking debt and commercial bank paper over the last five years with interest rates from 7.5% to14%. ProTrust was offered to participate in the latest offerings with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sacks [sic] through investments and loans.”



Added Griggs, “I agreed with the partnerships and committed to over $5 million dollars of commercial paper offering 12.5% in government-guaranteed commercial paper and bank debt. Griggs, in the portion of the letter provided by the SEC, declared: “This is an amazing opportunity as we now have a U.S. government guaranteed 12.5% bank debt. If you do not want to participate in the 12.5% government guaranteed fund please send me the enclosed liquidation form.” An additional 25 clients were told a very similar story by Griggs, the SEC alleges.



Perhaps most disturbing is that Grigg was terminated as a registered representative of a broker-dealer on April 25, 2002 for multiple compliance violations. In addition, on June 28, 2006 Grigg and ProTrust were the subjects of an administrative cease-and-desist order issued by the North Dakota Securities Department. North Dakota ordered them to pay restitution and a civil penalty of $570,000 for falsely representing to a client that her funds had been invested in certificates of deposit and other securities. The state authorities found that Griggs and ProTrust had violated registration and anti-fraud provisions of the state’s securities laws.



The 2002 and 2006 charges raise questions about why regulators at FINRA and the SEC did not discover Grigg’s alleged scheme earlier. If the SEC charges are true, Grigg brashly continued his fraudulent ways two and a half years after the North Dakota securities regulators identified him as a repeat securities offender.



Grigg’s case is the latest in a series of frauds that have unraveled after the market fallout, when nervous investors began trying to redeem their money only to learn that it was gone. None of the recent fraud cases compare to the $50 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly perpetrated by broker-dealer Madoff Securities and its disgraced founder Bernard Madoff, but the number fraud cases involving investment advisors in recent weeks has suddenly escalated to what appears to be an unprecedented level.



On Monday, Nicholas Cosmo, a Long Island, N.Y. investment-firm owner, surrendered to federal authorities. Mr. Cosmo allegedly raised more than $370 million between 2006 and 2008 by promising investors 48% annual returns from funding commercial loans, according to a federal affidavit in support of his arrest. On Tuesday, authorities arrested Arthur Nadel, the missing Florida hedge-fund adviser, who was accused by federal authorities of defrauding clients of millions of dollars. Less than two weeks ago, A Hamilton County Indiana Superior Court judge froze financial advisor Marcus Schrenker's assets and those of his wife after Schrenker reportedly parachuted out of his company-owned plane over Alabama Sunday while the plane continued flying on autopilot before crashing into Florida swampland two hours later. After a manhunt, Schrenker was apprehended and is now in custody.



As of today, Advisor Products, a leading developer of websites for for financial advisors, is recommending that all Registered Investment Advisers it serves post a Form ADV on their website, or a link to the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website where consumers can view the Form ADV. In both the Cosmo and Grigg cases, prosecutors allege the advisory firms were unregistered. So a Form ADV provides assurance to clients and prospects that you are properly registered and subject to SEC inspections.



Latest news about the Grigg case.



Latest news about the Cosmo case.



Latest news about the Schrenker case.



Latest about the Nadel case.

Clients demand and deserve a well-informed advisor. To help you stay on top the news and best thinkers, you may want to consider purchasing an Amazon Kindle.

A Hamilton County Indiana Superior Court judge froze financial advisor Marcus Schrenker's assets and those of his wife late yesterday, after Schrenker reportedly parachuted out of his company-owned plane over Alabama Sunday while the plane continued flying on autopilot before crashing into Florida swampland two hours later. A manhunt is under way, according to reports.

Click here for the latest news about this strange incident.  

Everyone knows that TV and the Web are melding. Videos are increasingly being used on the Web. comScore.com yesterday reported that U.S. Internet users viewed 12.7 billion online videos in November 2008, a 34% increase over the same time a year earlier. On YouTube this past November, 5.1 billion videos were viewed; more than 146 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 87 videos each, and the average online video viewer watched 273 minutes of video.

What’s really scary is that in my lifetime, we’ll probably be able to click on the couch that Oprah sits on and see its manufacturer and lowest price vendor. (My wife will bankrupt me!)

2008 was not a good year for a lot people. For Advisor Products, however, it was a great year.

While the Standard & Poor’s 500 lost 32% and the Dow Jones Industrials fell 37%, Advisor Products showed double digit sales growth. Moreover, we streamlined processes and dramatically improved our client service. I hope you can learn about how to improve your business by looking back at our key accomplishments in 2008.

The first time I saw a ticket kiosk at the airport, I was indignant. “How dare they make me ticket myself,” I thought. “Next thing you know, they’ll ask me to fly the damn plane!"

Soon enough, however, I tried the self-service ticketing machine. And guess what? I loved it! Now, when I walk into an airport without a self-service kiosk, I’m indignant. How dare they make me wait on a long line just to be ticketed!

Ten years ago, Will Smith was a rapper, Wikipedia did not exist, Charles Barkley—now running for Governor of Alabama—pleaded no-contest after allegedly throwing a bar patron through a plate-glass door, and many of us were still dancing the Macarena. A lot can happen in 10 years.

That’s why, in financial circles, 10 years means a lot. Ten-year returns have a ring of authority, bestowing an imprimatur of long-term success or failure on an investment manager or strategy. Ten years would seem to be long enough to smooth market bumps. It would seem to be long enough to include all kinds of weird market events. It would seem to be long enough to use as a predictor of future events.

I’m shocked that it works so well, surprised it was not more complicated to set up, and amazed at how useful it is. I’ve got to admit that account aggregation from Advisor Exchange is good! It may even be on the way to becoming great!

The reason why I was so surprised is that account aggregation has taken so long to come of age that I began to think it might never really work. You see, when account aggregation first appeared a little over a decade ago, I was one of the first people to write about how great it was. I never thought it would take 10 years to get it right!

While the economy and stock market has been tanking, we have been experiencing one of the strongest growth spurts in our 12-year history. Much of the increased demand for our products can be traced to AdvisorVault 2.0, our new secure online vault platform that allows advisors to share documents with clients.

AdvisorVault is pretty much a no-brainer for advisors. AdvisorVault is less expensive than standalone online vault platforms marketed to advisory firms. Such standalone vaults are not integrated with a marketing website, website content, email newsletters system, and other features that we offer to help advisors market and communicate. Some standalone vault systems do offer many features that are valuable to advisors, but they don't provide the same value as AdvisorVault. They cost about the same or more than what we charge for a website packaged with AdvisorVault, and AdvisorVault offers all the same features or more than the standalone vault systems. Point is, even though other companies may specialize and sell nothing but an online vault, AdvisorVault works as well or better.

In running Advisor Products Inc. for over 12 years, I’ve seen some wild market cycles. There was the roaring bull market of the mid-1990s, when large-cap growth stocks led the way for so long and by so much that some professional investors declared small-cap value stocks forever dead. Then, there was the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, followed by the dot-com bust of 2000, and the post-9/11 bear market. Then came the Bush bull market, which gave way in recent months to a collapse of confidence in America’s financial institutions and triggered a global economic crisis.

While I much prefer the ups to the downs, I have to admit to gaining some special satisfaction from this most recent flight from equities. It’s perhaps borne of the maturity that comes to us all in our 50s. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been through so many market crises since I began covering Wall Street in the mid-1980s at The New York Daily News that this meltdown is somehow easier to bear. For whatever the reason, Advisor Products was better prepared than ever to help advisors manage the financial crisis.

When writer Gertrude Stein said that “a rose is a rose is a rose,” she meant that things are what they are.

But sometimes that’s just plain untrue, as in the case of technology companies marketing client portals to advisors.

An article in today's issue of Investment News, entitled "Performance Reporting Isn't Cutting It For Clients," contains some good points but also contains some confusing information.

The story is about how important it’s been for advisors to be able to post performance reports online daily. Since the market crisis erupted in early October, the need has become acute.

During last Friday’s webinar with guest speakers Bill Bengen and Greg Brousseau, we conducted a series of polls. The results are surprising.

Based on answers to our polls, advisors are sticking with the traditional buy-and-hold asset allocation doctrine that has dominated the profession for two decades. Advisors say they have not reduced equity allocations. But they are looking for a less dogmatic approach. Here are the results of the poll from the webinar attended by about 120 advisors.

Beta testing of the Advisor Products Inc.'s (API) application for Online Reporting For PortfolioCenter has been a great success and we are now focused on improving web reporting for advisory firms using PortfolioCenter.

Beta testers gave API Online Reporting For PortfolioCenter rave reviews and some great suggestions for improving the application. Seven advisory firms participated in the beta test by uploading their client reports to our server, which successfully parsed client reports and deposited them into secure folders accessible to clients.

When the stock market plunged last week—bottoming with a loss of 40% from the all-time high reached October 9, 2007—we began a free service to help financial advisors manage client communications: a daily market update that you can copy, paste, and email to your clients.

The daily updates contain a summary of thoughtful stories covering the day’s events. These short takes on the financial tumult are intended to be used as a daily reminder to clients that you are in touch with them and on top of the situation.

We recently found ourselves in a peculiar position. It happened when we launched dynamic online performance reporting for PortfolioCenter and a new online vault. Ironically, offering more features at lower prices than our competitors inspired skepticism. While advisors were thrilled to hear that we can save them money—especially since financial crisis has pummeled asset prices and, thus, advisory fees—their enthusiasm is tempered by suspicion.

Charging low prices raised a question in the minds of some advisors: If their firm for years had been paying twice as much for online reporting, why is Advisor Products charging so much less?

If you’re one of the 3,400 advisory firms using Schwab PortfolioCenter™, we have some good news about sharing performance reports with your clients online. Online Reporting for PortfolioCenter, a new system now being beta tested by Advisor Products Inc. (API), is less costly, better designed, and easier to use than previous solutions for providing PortfolioCenter reports to clients online.

Online Reporting for PortfolioCenter costs about half as much as other such offerings, is built using a .NET framework with 256-bit encryption, and allows you to upload reports daily in just minutes. Online Reporting is simple:

Financial advisors for years have clamored for an all-in-one solution combining portfolio management, customer relationship management, and financial planning software into a single platform. Combining these three functions, which are essential to any advisory firm that wants to adhere to best industry practices, has been an elusive goal. Years ago, I branded the long-sought breakthrough application “The Silver Bullet,” evoking the legendary powers of the only weapon capable of killing a werewolf.

But the all-in-one application has proved elusive. So persnickety is the typical independent advisor (IA), he couldn’t work for anyone but himself. That’s why he chose to be an independent advisor. No single application incorporating portfolio management software (PMS), financial planning software (FPS), and customer relationship management (CRM) could ever be widely adopted. Uncompromising entrepreneurs don’t want a Veg-O-Matic—the kitchen appliance that sliced, diced, broiled, and boiled. A Swiss-Army-knife approach would be unacceptable.

The recent integration of Albridge Solutions’ portfolio performance reporting application and Advisor Products Inc.’s Personal Client Portals™ system makes any advisory firm more scalable, efficient, and client-centric. But what’s more exciting is that it will promote financial planning to millions of American households by making it easier for them to understand, measure, and manage their progress toward achieving long-term financial goals.

Since the early 1980s, thought leaders, professional membership associations, and governing bodies have strived to professionalize personal financial planning so it can be embraced by the mass affluent. The elusive but irresistible goal has been to deliver financial planning advice within a prescribed, systematic, and ethical framework to the masses. The challenge has been that providing financial planning services while adhering to best practices articulated by the FPA, CFP Board, NAPFA, Fiduciary 360, and other such groups is extremely labor intensive.

Advisor Products added an interface for Black Diamond Reporting to its Personal Client Portal platform this past week, allowing financial advisors to securely stream holdings, asset allocation, and performance data to individual clients automatically daily. Using the latest technology for integration, an XML Web Service, the interface between Black Diamond and Advisor Products feeds each client of an advisor continuously updated performance reports with no work required by the advisor.

The Black Diamond report displayed on your clients’ Personal Client Portals has three tabs.

If you’ve been yearning for a way to use the Internet more effectively with clients, check out our new Personal Client Portal platform. It fills a gap between your firm’s existing software applications and your clients. This is a new type of application, and there is nothing else like it.

Your financial planning, performance reporting, and customer relationship management applications are disconnected from your clients right now. Our new portal system bridges the gap between your applications and your clients.

Writing The Gluck Report in Financial Advisor Magazine, I get to research topics I’ve been covering in for most of my 25 years as a reporter—wealth management strategies, financial planning software, advisor marketing, and just about anything else involving advisors. But what’s frustrating is that I don’t get to write about my company. And that’s why I’m hoping you’re going to want to read this blog.

Advisor Products, which I founded in 1996, has been pretty damn innovative. In 1996, we offered the first client newsletter that allowed advisors to pick every story. In 2001, we launched the first email-newsletter marketing system targeted to advisors. Last year, we rolled out the first 12-page template brochure ever offered to financial advisors. But not enough advisors ever get to know about most of our innovative work.