Advisor Products recently added powerful new client communication features to AdvisorSites Platinum, including:

• Advanced Settings For Collaborating With Accountants And Attorneys


• AdvisorVault Desktop Connector to access client vaults from your desktop


• Social Media Content Stream For Financial Advisors


• Articles monthly based on Fritz Meyer economic analysis and Bob Keebler income- and estate-tax tactics


• Videos monthly based on Fritz Meyer economic analysis and Bob Keebler income- and estate-tax tactics


• AdvisorVault Client View for TD Ameritrade Institutional Veo

Over the past few years, Advisor Products packed a lot of sophisticated new features in AdvisorSites Platinum at no cost, including:

• AdvisorVault


• Automated website archiving


• Template Emails to personalize and automate notifications of a new post to a client’s vault


• Referral Network Pages for attorneys, accountants and other partners


• Event Calendar and Administration Tool for posting information on your website about events


• Quarterly Market Summary


• Economy Watch

In late 2011, our cost for developing software soared suddenly when one of our software development partners changed business strategy. So, after seven years without a price increase, Advisor Products is raising the cost of its Platinum website by about $20 a month, from $2,100 to $2,337 annually.  It's remains by far the best value in advisor websites for RIAs.

Please continue to support us because we are now great at making your communication with clients more meaningful, personal, efficient, and secure. After 16 years in the business, Advisor Products, at long last, is great and we are more focused than ever on advisors serving high-net-worth investors (HNWI) and ultra-HNWIs. Please feel free to call me directly about the price increase or any other questions or suggestions you have at (516) 333-0066.

The TD Ameritrade-AdvisorVault integration is live. RIAs can now provide clients reports generated in TD Ameritrade Institutional’s (TDAI) Veo platform via their own websites. Using AdvisorVault, the TDAI account look-up becomes an opportunity to communicate with clients when they check balances is good for clients and you. Here's why.

The TDAI reports from VEO, which are updated daily, can be branded by an RIA.

Until now, RIAs using TDAI as a custodian could not brand Veo reports, which feature the TDAI’s branding. The client experience in AdvisorVault is totally different.

Your clients are going to your website — not to TDAI’s — to check their Account Balances, Holdings, and Transactions.

It’s under your brand, of course. More important, however, is that when client check account values, they see all the other posts to their vaults -- financial plans, wills, trusts, medical emergency details, LPOAs, newsletters, correspondence with other professionals, and more -- alongside TDAI account data.

The TDAI account statement is one just piece of the client view in AdvisorVault. The folders and documents show clients what you’ve done for them lately and remind them of their long-term goals. That's a much different presentation than what's currently available.

For example, after a sharp downturn you can post a newsletter article about the history of stock market volatility to all your client vaults. Next time clients log in to AdvisorVault to check their TDAI accounts, the first thing they see is a link to the unread newsletter article about volatility.

You can view a report showing who logged in and what they viewed. When you notice a client is checking his account frequently, you can call to see if all is well.

Clients can access their account balances online now anytime by going directly to TDAI’s website or using TDAI’s advisor-client website, but presenting TDAI account data through AdvisorVault better supports RIAs and, most importantly, their clients.

The fact that you can monitor client log-ins is disclosed to clients in the default user agreement clients must accept to log in to AdvisorVault for the first time. As long as you're helping clients stick to a long-term plan that you genuinely believe is in their best interest, and you make the prop[er disclosures, using log-in report is ethical and professional, and helping clients stick to a long-term plan is easier with AdvisorVault.

Embrace transparency and view the times that clients check their balances as opportunities to educate, communicate, and build client relationships.

For now, you can add the TDAI interface to any existing AdvisorVault for free by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Use subject line: "Add TDAI To My AdvisorVault."

Social Media Content Stream For Financial Advisors was launched recently by Advisor Products Inc., enabling thousands of financial advisors to provide a social media content about wealth management.

Social Media Content Stream For Financial Advisors is for advisors too busy to create all of their own content.

• We create articles and videos for your website


• We write tweets about our financial content


• You send the tweets to your social network


• The tweets link to your website

Advisor Products produces 12 articles a month that can be posted to your website. Many of the articles are based on ideas from subject matter experts like investment strategist Fritz Meyer and tax and estate planning expert Robert Keebler. The articles are usually reviewed on an expedited basis by FINRA to ensure timeliness, and many articles are accompanied by Meyer or Keebler narrating a two-minute slideshow about investment or tax strategy.

With each article, Advisor Products provides three tweets — 140-character status updates that you can post to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for distribution to your social network. Each tweet links to the article and video on your website, where information about your services are also displayed.

It's almost effortless but it's an effective content marketing tactic.

Social Media Content Stream For Financial Advisors is written and edited by financial journalists based on ideas and strategies from Advisor Products subject matter experts, recognized authorities in areas of private wealth management.

Social Media Content Stream For Financial Advisors simplifies distribution of social media content for advisors.  The tweets for each story are available in the AdvisorSites BackOffice content management system.

Currently, advisors copy tweets for each story and manually post them to social networks. In 1Q12, Advisor Products expects to launch a dashboard allowing advisors to choose and schedule each tweet or totally automate the social stream to send by sending out one tweet daily.

Social Media Content Stream For Financial Advisors is not meant to replace original content created by a financial advisor. Nothing replaces a personal message expressing your views in your words. But it's sensible to augment content you personally create with Advisor Products articles and videos, which are targeted to high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth investors.

Social Media Content Stream for Financial Advisors has been added to AdvisorSites Platinum, which costs $2,337 and includes AdvisorSites Content Management and compliance, AdvisorVault, eight hours of service, compliance tools, and much more.

You can add the Social Media Content Stream to any advisor website for $1,337 a year plus a $300 set-up fee. Call (888) 274-5755 for more information.

 

 

 

As strange as it may seem to investment advisors, B/Ds are concerned about possible liability exposure arising when clients are able to upload documents to their advisor’s online vault. While the issue could be dealt with contractually, it is worth mentioning the concern of one B-D and the improved configuration settings recently added to AdvisorVault to address the issue.

 

AdvisorVault is a secure system for advisors to share documents with clients. It integrates client communications into your work flow and engages clients. It also enables advisors to collaborate online with a client’s attorney and accountant, thus helping advisors build a team approach to wealth management and building a referral network of allied professionals.

 

 

One large B-D that claims to be planning  implementation of AdvisorVault with hundreds of its affiliated advisors raised a concern about clients uploading documents to AdvisorVault. The B-D is worried that a client might upload information about his financial situation that the advisor is unaware of and that conflicts with the advice proffered by the advisor. For instance, what if the client posts a document declaring he is a conservative investor when the advisor has determined the client is a growth investor?

The advisor could add a sentence or two to the AdvisorVault user agreement, which must be approved by his clients before they enter their vault for the first time. Such language would help protect the advisor by saying that the advisor is not responsible for knowing about all the information clients upload to their vault. But we went a step further.

For B-Ds and RIAs concerned about client uploads, advanced configuration settings recently added to AdvisorVault now allow you to disable upload privileges by clients. You can also disable the upload privilege on attorneys, accountants, and other outside professionals.

Another new configuration setting added to AdvisorVault allows advisors to disable a client’s ability to request their advisor grant vault access to an outside professional.

The default configuration of AdvisorVault allows clients to request that you provide access to a lawyer or accountant. Transparency is the operative idea behind all of our default settings, in alignment with fiduciaries.

A small percentage of advisors did not want clients to be able to request that their advisor grant access to an accountant, attorney, or other professional. So we've made that doable  in a  few clicks.  The video shows you how it's done.

Released in 2007, AdvisorVault is used by 700 RIAs to share information with clients securely. Advanced features replete throughout AdvisorVault make it highly configurable, and a free desktop app puts your client vaults on your desktop, which makes it really easy to use. For $1,000 a year, AdvisorVault can be added to any advisor website. For $2,337 a year, a Platinum license provides financial news articles and videos reviewed by FINRA, automated website archiving, eight hours of service, and a content management system.

 

 

Fritz Meyer’s research is already very popular with investment advisors, but it’s about to become even more popular: We’ve slashed the price from $50 to $25 a month if you sign up for a one-year subscription.

Meyer’s research is updated monthly in a 70-slide PowerPoint. The content is well suited to investment advisors utilizing strategic asset allocation and broad diversification and who would benefit from continually educating, assuring, and reminding clients taking a long-term perspective on investing.

Every month, Meyer produces a presentation examining fundamentals driving investment markets. Hundreds of independent financial advisors view his monthly webinars and give Meyer rave reviews. The webinar is free.

If you purchase the slides makes after attending Meyer’s webinar and hearing his latest comments on the economy, it’s easy for you to create your own content using Fritz’s slides.

You can use any of Meyer’s slides in your client meetings, webinars, seminars, blog posts, or newsletters.

Leveraging Fritz Meyer’s research makes it far easier for financial advisors to generate a personal social media content stream that is based on economic facts and analysis and framed by a long-term perspective.

In addition to distributing Fritz Meyer’s slide shows, Advisor Products embeds Meyer’s research in websites and newsletters. Every month, the highlights of Meyer’s webinar are edited into one-minute videos and articles are written to accompany them and they are sold with Platinum advisor websites.

Articles and videos based on research from financial economist Fritz Meyer will soon come with an Advisor Products Platinum website.

Meyer’s monthly analysis of the economy and investment markets is popular with advisors using strategic asset allocation and broad diversification.  Every month, Meyer produces a 70-slide PowerPoint presentation that examines key fundamental economic factors driving investment markets. Hundreds of independent financial advisors view his monthly webinars and give Fritz rave reviews.

Now, Advisor Products, a leading website platform for investment advisors, is using Meyer’s research to create content for advisor clients.

Advisor Products is integrating Meyer’s ideas into websites we host for investment advisors. We’ll create articles and videos monthly that can be posted to an advisor website automatically. The additional content will be available on all “Platinum” advisor websites hosted by Advisor Products. (See a sample of a video for clients below.)

Fritz Meyer’s valuable research is the latest improvement to be offered as part of the $2,100 annual Platinum license from Advisor Products. Additional Platinum website benefits include:

• 256-bit encrypted AdvisorVault for secure document-sharing with clients and COIs


• content management system for editing your website


• automated website archiving


• FINRA-reviewed personal finance article database


• FINRA-reviewed video library branded to you


• eight hours of support


• 10 email accounts


• stock market data streamed throughout the day


• redundant infrastructure


• SAS 70 Type II hosting facility


• Social media content stream


• Fritz Meyer content

Beginning January 1, 2012, the annual fee for Advisor Products Platinum will increase from $2,100 to $2,337. In the seven years since our last price increase, Advisor Products added the following to Platinum advisor websites:

• AdvisorVault 2.0 secure document sharing


• AdvisorVault Desktop Connector


• Branded videos


• Monthly Fritz Meyer content


• Automated website archiving


• Social media content stream


• Event calendar


• Five additional email accounts

For advisors who want to create their own blogs, articles, and slide shows, the full monthly PowerPoint Fritz Meyer Slide Show continues to be available monthly for $50.

 

Custom portfolio reports in Abridge Solutions, the performance reporting system used by most independent broker/dealers and advisors, are now integrated into AdvisorVault.

Albridge custom reports are used by advisors for “householding” client accounts. Several individuals can be grouped and all their accounts displayed in a single report.

For example, an advisor managing the assets of parents as well as their three children and 10 grandchildren can create a custom report in Albridge to consolidate reporting on the family’s holdings, asset allocation, and portfolio performance into one statement.

AdvisorVault now enables 24/7 Albridge custom reports to clients of advisors.

Until now, AdvisorVault was able to pull in Albridge reports on individual clients but custom reports were unavailable.

AdvisorVault’s integration enables advisors to send clients to their firm’s website to view performance reports. That’s better for an advisor than sending clients to Albridge’s website because AdvisorVault brands the reports to your firm.

More important, however, is that in addition to Albridge portfolio reports, advisor clients can view their financial plans, tax returns, insurance policies, and other documents in AdvisorVault. Clients get a holistic view of their financial situation, reminding them that investment management is just one aspect of the services they receive from their advisor.

AdvisorVault gets rave reviews for its collaboration features. Advisors can easily share client folders with accountants and lawyers, which helps an advisor quarterback a team of professionals for a client and builds a financial advisor’s professional network.

 


AdvisorVault is used by about 700 private wealth RIAs. A growing number of independent broker/dealers, including American Portfolios, Cambridge Investment Research, and Raymond James Financial allow advisors they supervise to use AdvisorVault and it is becoming popular with top-tier of advisors at independent broker/dealers.

AdvisorVault comes as a standalone application that can be added to any advisor website for $1000 a year, or it comes free with a Platinum advisor website, which also content, service, and compliance tools for $2,337 annually.

Financial advisors can now drag and drop any file on their desktop to a client’s vault.

With the launch this week of AdvisorVault Desktop Connector, Sharing documents securely with clients has never been so easy.

There’s no need to open a browser, log in to a vault application, browse to a client's vault, and browse to the file you want to upload.

The drag and drop capability means advisors can routinely share documents with clients and outside professionals throughout the business day as part of their routine workflow.

DesktopConnector is the latest enhancement to AdvisorVault, which is a fully encrypted web-based system enabling secure sharing of personal financial documents with clients, estate planning attorneys, and accountants.

AdvisorVault Desktop Connector lets advisors view all of their clients’ vaults and drill down in each vault’s folders right on their desktop without opening a browser.

Compatible with Windows operating systems, is available at no additional charge to AdvisorVault users.

AdvisorVault integrations with Schwab PortfolioCenter, Advent Axys, Albridge Solutions, AssetBook, CabinetNG, MoneyGuide Pro, and other leading professional applications imports client reports in batches.

AdvisorVault is used by more than 400 advisory firms and offers features and workflows that make advisory firms more efficient and better able to communicate personal information to clients.

For more information, please contact us.

Erado, makers of social media compliance platform for independent BDs and investment advisors, today announced it has been tapped by Investacorp, Inc., an independent broker-dealer subsidiary of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc.

Erado looks like it's a fine compliance app and I hope to get to work with Erado, but compliance apps do not get an advisor to change his behavior and suddenly become active on social media.

Maybe 1% of an independent broker/dealer’s advisors will actually figure out how to parlay a new social media compliance platform into client acquisition.

To it credit, Investacorp has now made it possible for its affiliated advisors to communicate and engage in business development using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Erado’s platform allows Investacorp to track and archive its advisors' social media activity. It's a good thing for sure.

FINRA regulatory notice 11-39 requires diligent record-keeping and supervision of social media content from mobile and other devices, and I’m sure Erado has a solution addressing that.

However, working with an app that ensures compliance when an advisor uses social media is totally different from getting an advisor to create his own engaging social media content that is consistent with a strategic marketing plan.

My guess is that the vast majority of advisors—probably 80%—will not in the next 12 months change their behavior enough to benefit from social media marketing. Maybe 20% of advisors will put in enough effort to benefit from social media in 2012, with an emphasis on “maybe.”

Advisor Products, which has been focused on helping advisors use social media for several years, is  launching an automated and integrated social media content stream for financial advisors in 2012. Details will be announced shortly. (If you’re responsible for helping groups of successful advisors market their services, give me a call to talk about this.)

Point is, for BDs, social media compliance is only part of the equation in helping advisors use social media for business development. I’m not sure BDs appreciate what’s needed beyond compliance.

Here is a chance to reach prospects in a direct and personal way.

I will be off camera interviewing you, the questions are then edited out, and what remains are 6 one- to threee-minute videos that give prospects a great sense of who you are and what is important in your practice.

The videos can be posted to your website, to your LinkedIn profile, and to YouTube and other social media sites. You can then send links to the videos to prospects.

The cost of the videos is $1,750 includes videotaping with professional equipment and all post-production editing.

See samples and sign up now.

A recent upgrade of hardware and software is causing a random intermittent problem with websites.

We will be doing maintenance and testing overnight and your site may experience some down time.

Please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if your site's loading slowly tomorrow.

We apologize for the inconvenience and are working hard to fix the problem.

Fritz Meyer’s monthly investment research now comes with client-facing content for your website, blog or social media pages.

Meyer’s research is currently available as a PowerPoint presentation. Meyer updates his research monthly and advisors can buy it for $50 monthly.

Advisors use the slides in client meetings, webinars, and as the basis for blogs and newsletter articles.

To make it even easier for advisor to use Meyer’s research in client communications, we’re now providing Meyer’s research as ready-to-go videos--at no additional cost.

Each month, we’re creating three two-minute videos that summarize Fritz’s most important ideas for long-term investors.

In addition, advisors also receive scripts of what Fritz says in each of three short videos, which can be used as a basis for writing your blog posts.

You can also use the script to narrate your own Slidecast.  Then, your voice is what clients and prospects will hear.

Finally, we’re providing subscribers MP3 audio files of each of the three short presentations, so you can use Fritz’s narration on a Slidecast branded to your firm.

Making Meyer’s research accessible in so many formats makes it easy for advisors to create their own content, which is necessary for effective social media marketing.

Meyer’s research supports advisors with a long-term investment horizon who utilize a broadly diversified asset allocation strategy.

Please keep in mind that because of the timeliness, we do not submit the Fritz Meyer slides shows (or the videos) to FINRA for advertising review. While all of our other content is submitted to FINRA, you will need to ensure they meet your firm’s compliance requirements if you are making them available to clients.

Fritz provides a free webinar on the second Wednesday of every explaining his latest research and advisors give Firtz rave reviews. Sign up for Fritz's next webinar.

Advisor Products staff worked from their homes Monday, accessing company systems online, after Hurricane Irene knocked out power throughout Long Island and at the company's Jericho, N.Y. office.

Though Advisor Products is not an advisory firm, its recovery from the hurricane provides a model for advisory firms to prepare for a disaster.


An estimated half million Long Island residents—270,264 homes and businesses, according to Long Island Power Authority—remained without power as of noon Tuesday.  Advisor Products operations, however, were back to normal.

Advisor Products websites were unaffected by Hurricane Irene. Advisor Products hosts about 1,100 financial advisor websites as well as secure client communications systems, like AdvisorVault, at an SAS 70 datacenter. The hosting facility never lost power and did not even need to resort to using its backup power systems.

However, internal systems for managing the staff and tracking client service requests had to be reconfigured Monday morning as the company implemented its disaster recovery plan and went virtual to service customers.

The professionalism and dedication of the Advisor Products staff has been remarkable:

• Nipun Manglik, an engineer on the advisor websites Help Desk, says that despite the disruption in power he has ensured all customer services requests made by Advisor Products are responded to within 24-hours by phone.


• IT Manager Jason Fogelson, whose wife is expecting a baby imminently, provided a desk and electric power to three Advisor Products staffers who do not have power in their homes.

 


While Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it struck Long Island overnight Saturday, it hit the 125- by 25-mile swath of land in its power grid. By the time the wind and rain stopped on Sunday afternoon, widespread power outages had befallen the dense- populated suburban towns across the Island. Trees weakened by a rain-soaked August fell throughout Nassau and Suffolk County.

At 9 a.m., Monday, the company’s phone and email systems had been restored, enabling staff to answer client calls and emails, and the company’s CRM system was back online at 5 p.m., allowing project managers, HTML specialists, and technical support staff access notes about open cases and track client website development projects.

I’m proud of the way our team has performed.

Document management systems for advisors, which enable advisors to create a paperless office, are crucial for record keeping and efficiency. They're legally required for Registered Investment Advisers.

But they are not designed for client access.

To be sure, Document Management Software (DMS) is crucial technology to operating a financial advice business efficiently.

The way you file documents--the software interface the staff uses to file documents--is created by your DMS system. The information stored on your DMS must be logically structured, searchable, and scalable. Of course, security, redundancy, and your service agreement are important factors to evaluate. DMS solutions are complex systems that enable a paperless office.

But they are not designed for client access.

That's why the integration of Cabinet NG's document management software for advisors with AdvisorVault's client vault system for advisors is a big deal.

 

 

By working together, Cabinet NG and Advisor Products have taken the paperless office concept a step further than any other tech vendors serving advisors.

We've made it easy for advisors to post documents to a client vault from document management software.

The integration of Cabinet NG's document management software with AdvisorVault turns documents stored internally into external client communications.

To satisfy books and records rules, investment advisors must retain all documents relevant to servicing clients. Cabinet NG fulfills that requirement, using write once, read many (WORM) disk drives to fulfill Securities and Exchange Commission requirements that your records are tamper-proof.

But, like all other document management systems for advisors, Cabinet NG is not meant to be shared with your clients. So Cabinet NG partnered with Advisor Products to streamline an advisor's work.

Not all vendors are as enlightened as Cabinet NG.

Just about every practice management software app used by wealth managers, financial planners and other investment advisors offers a client online access point. Ebix SmartOffice, for instance, offers a client portal. So do Junxure, MoneyGuide Pro, Finance Logix, Black Diamond, AssetBook, PortfolioCenter, and just about every other app made for advisors. They all offer a way for you to give clients a view of their data online.

But none of those apps used by advisors is dedicated to creating the best client interface that integrates information from other systems.

Those apps provide ways for advisors to create financial plans, manage and report portfolio performance, and manage customer relationships. But none is made expressly to promote client communications.

While the client interface is a secondary goal for these apps, that is AdvisorVault’s sole mission: helping you create a great client experience by making communication secure and easy.

Every tech vendor that integrates with AdvisorVault acknowledges that the client interface it may provide is different from AdvisorVault, a solution dedicated solely to client communications. Not every tech vendor is willing to concede that their app will not be the client portal.

In integrating with AdvisorVault, Cabinet NG shows a commitment to doing what's best for advisors. Together, we can do great things for advisors.

For example, you can set up client folders in Cabinet NG to automatically synch with a client’s vault. Anytime you put a document into a client’s folder in your document management system, it will be automatically uploaded the client’s vault. And if the client does not have a vault, Cabinet NG sets one up on AdvisorVault.

Then, AdvisorVault notifies the client, who comes to your website to view the document. The clients sees that document along with others stored in his vault—portfolio reports, financial plans, brokerage statements as well as wills and trust documents, copies of passports, a medical proxy, and other personal information.

 

Hurricane Irene, the biggest storm to hit the New York metropolitan area in 25 years, battered Long Island with 65 mile an hour winds and gusts of 85, but service to Advisor Products websites and customers was uninterrupted.

Long Island, a peninsula-shaped stretch of land jutting east 125 miles from Manhattan into the Atlantic and the home of Advisor Products in Jericho, N.Y., was hit right in its power grid. On Monday morning, 24 hours after the rain and winded ended, a half-million Long Islanders reportedly remained without electric power (including the CEO’s home.)

At Advisor Products headquarters, where no advisor websites are hosted but internal management information systems are maintained, IT managers Steve Gordonson and Jason Fogelson elected late Saturday night in preparation for the hurricane to shut down all internal operations systems. The decision proved wise. Power to the Jericho area turned off and on many times overnight Saturday but by 9 a.m. power outages in the suburban hamlet of 13,045 were widespread.

Fallen trees and power poles can be seen all over Long Island  Monday morning. A map on the website of the local utility, Long Island Power Authority, on Monday morning showed widespread power-outages still affected almost every town on Long Island.

By 7 a.m. Monday, when it was clear the power would not be restored in time for business by 9.m., Advisor Products went virtual, relying solely on web-based apps to service advisory firms. By 9 a.m., Advisor Products VOIP phone system was relocated and restored, enabling customers to call the company.

Advisor Products’ 14 employees were all able to run internal company systems from their homes using the Internet and were available to help customers.

A senior member of the service staff  located in Florida and another staffer in California were unaffected by the hurricane. In addition, contractors worldwide work for the company by accessing Advisor Product’s internal applications online. For Advisor Products, "going virtual" and shutting down its Jericho office, takes a few hours.

While some disruption to daily operations was expected Monday morning, all systems supporting service to Advisor Products clients--including the company's CRM--are expected to be fully operational  by mid-afternoon Monday afternoon.

While the company’s engineering team was well-prepared and responded quickly to Hurricane Irene, Advisor Products recently made a significant new investment in new hardware configuration enabling virtual server technology. It's expected to be launched by the end of 2011 and will make disaster recovery simpler.

With markets swooning, Advisor Products last week released nine articles for immediate use by advisors who subscribing to our website and client newsletter services. Breaking news coverage from our team of experienced financial reporters, along with interviews with investment strategist Fritz Meyer, were included in the special content release.

It was a week in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average swung 400-points up or down four days in a row. Whipsawed advisors began emailing us Wednesday requesting articles to distribute to their clients. The downgrade of the U.S. Government by Standard & Poor’s and worries about the debt crisis spreading to Europe had sparked uncertainty and panic selling.

Wednesday night, Advisor Products responded by providing an article based on research from investment strategist Fritz Meyer entitled, “Focus On Economic Fundamentals That Drive Securities Prices Long Term, And Don’t Succumb To The Hysteria In The Markets.”

On Friday evening, we released another eight articles:

• The U.S. Downgrade Was Bad, But Default Would’ve Been Worse


• Money Market Funds Should Shrug Off U.S. Downgrade


• Economic Measures Signal Solid Rebound Even As Stocks Fall


• Take Advantage Of Fed’s Low-Rate Pledge


• Don’t Panic: The Economy Is Signaling A Recovery


• European Politicians Can Still Come Back From Vacation And Save The Euro


• What Does The Downgrade Of U.S. Debt Really Mean?


• Short-Term Correction Creates Long-Term Buying Opportunity

The content release contained a note disclosing that the articles were not FINRA reviewed and advising advisors to consult their compliance officers before sending them to clients. The articles were for use in emails. They are now being submitted to FINRA.

Sending out breaking news articles is a departure from our usual editorial process. Advisor Products, which has produced client newsletters for advisors since 1996, has a team of financial editors and writers that produce our content. In addition, an Editorial Advisory Board comprised of leading financial advisors review content for technical accuracy, and then the articles are submitted to FINRA for regulatory review. With markets so erratic, however, we truncated our editorial process and released copy without FINRA review.

Would appreciate any feedback on how we did.

Advisors are often stumped about what to post to increase their social media and online presence. So here are some ideas about how you can use Advisor Products articles for status updates and tweets.

Not only will these ideas boost communication with clients and prospects, but they’ll also boost your search engine rankings.

Leverage Our Articles. Advisor Products content is FINRA-reviewed and top-quality. If you are a Platinum-level client with Financial Briefs or Featured News on your website, post status updates linked to those articles to bring traffic to your website.

Target It. Advisor Products content has three high-net-worth targets: retirees, pre-retired executives, and owners of business and professional corporations. Target updates to your prospects.

Comment. Find blogs and forums discussing topics related to wealth management and financial planning and link to articles on your website discussing those topics. For instance, a question about converting to a Roth IRA was posted on Mint.com recently. You could post a response and link to this article about Roth IRA conversion on your website. Since links to your website, link popularity, is the most important factor in search engine optimization, this can be powerful.

Distribute Market Data Bank. Advisor Products Platinum provides you with three quarterly FINRA-reviewed features: Market Data Bank, Economy Watch and Quarterly Market Summary. Post status updates referencing this content. Each of these features has a unique URL on your website that you should link to in your updates.

Tweet About Your Videos. Advisor Products Platinum also gives you access to our FINRA-reviewed video library. Just as you update your status using our articles, you can provide links in your status updates to videos like this one about Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts, which we create for your website.

Fritz Meyer Slideshows. These slideshows include about 60 slides each month with the latest data about the economy and is based on research by investment strategist Fritz Meyer. You can post the entire slide show to your website. But it would be wiser to pick a one or two of the slides and post a blog about them with your analysis about the data. (The Fritz Meyer slides are not FINRA-reviewed.)

If you’re tweeting out headlines from the financial news, that’s not valuable. You’ll need original ideas and insightful content. We’re making that easy for advisors.

If you’re not regularly updating your social media, there’s less reason to follow you. Advisor Products Platinum provides you with more than enough content to update your status every day— a few times a day if you want.

With the downgrade of America’s credit rating by Standard & Poor’s, clients have yet another reason to be jittery. Telling clients to stay the course is no longer enough to prevent them  from abandoning long-term investment plans in difficult times. The financial crisis and subsequent market meltdown have made it more difficult to convince clients to stick with their investment policies.

Here's a brilliant solution: Fritz Meyer’s slideshows contain 60-plus slides filled with the latest economic data. Meyer presents the case for broad diversification and buy-and-hold investing based on analysis of economic data. Updated monthly, Meyer's slideshows explains key economic fundamentals driving investment markets, and is a voice of reason. Here are four ways to use Fritz Meyer’s slideshows to calm clients and assure prospects, who now more than ever value unemotional advice and analysis framed by a long-term perspective.

1. Webinars. The Fritz Meyer slideshows can be used by you to create your own webinars. Every month, Meyer conducts a webinar explaining the latest economic data and outlook, and the webinars are available for you to replay 24/7 if you are a member of Advisors4Advisors. After replaying the webinar and hearing Meyer explain the latest data, you can pretty easily use the research in the slides as a script for your own webinar. Post your webinar on YouTube and embed it in your website.


2. Blogs. People consumer information in different ways. Some prefer viewing a video, while others want to read ideas. The more ways you present information, the more likely your message will be heard. You can pull out a slide or two from any Fritz Meyer slideshow and use it to write a blog entry explaining a particular aspect of the economy or markets.


3. Newsletters. Your blog entry may not be read by clients who don’t use the Internet. For them, refashion a blog entry for use in a newsletter. A chart showing a recovery in manufacturing or autos, for example, could tell a story about hopeful signs, and your words of reassurance are thus backed by research grounded in facts.


4. 4. SlideShare. I’ve written previously about this social media application for sharing presentations. The quickest, easiest and coolest way to use the Fritz Meyer’s research with Slideshare is to  create your own “Slidecast.” Simply select three or five slides from the latest monthly installment. Then, create an MP3 recording explaining each slide. If you’re not technically inclined, buy an MP3 recorder that plugs into a USB port, or use your smartphone to make the recording. Then, email slides and recording to be uploaded by your staff or virtual assistant.

 

The Fritz Meyer slideshows are an inexpensive way for advisors to create their own content, which will help you with search engines and prospects as well as with clients. Fritz is beloved for the his common-sense approach and easy to understand analysis.

Fritz Meyer will be addressing the U.S. credit downgrade Tuesday at 4 EST in a free monthly webinar.  Please join us.

What if communicating personal information with each of your clients was effortless? That’s no longer a merely a philosophical question. It’s becoming a reality.

Integration of AdvisorVault with Cabinet NG’s document management system, which was announced last week, is a big step toward making communication with clients effortless.



It portends a world in which a financial advisor’s relationship with his clients is more transparent, a world in which communicating with clients about their most personal financial details is automated. It makes advisors more valuable to clients.

The integration allows an advisor to select files in CNG’s document management system—just hold down “Ctrl” and click—to push them into a designated client’s vault automatically. What’s coming next, however, is a game changer:

Advisors will designate “sync” folders in their document management system for automatic synchronization with a client’s vault. You folder for client “John Smith” in your document management system can automatically synchronize with John Smith’s client vault. Anything placed in John Smith’s folder in CNG will automatically be displayed in Mr. Smith’s vault.

The automatic synchronization means client brokerage statements, performance reports, trade confirmations, 1099s and other documents can be pushed to clients without an advisor lifting a finger. For instance, clearing firms typically provide advisors a batch file containing of all their clients’ monthly statements. Using CNG’s tool, each client’s statement can easily be parsed into a separate folder on CNG and then automatically ported to each client.

Document management systems like CNG provide a great way for advisors to organize documents, indexing and filing them so you can retrieve them quickly. It makes documents in advisor’s office accessible anywhere and enables you to back up your records.

Document management systems, however, typically are not made with the features advisors need to share documents with clients. Nor are document management systems typically meant for sharing documents with accountants, lawyers, and other allied professionals.

AdvisorVault, however, integrates a communication module that automatically notifies clients and allied professionals when documents are posted to their vaults and enables notifications to be templated, batched, and automated. AdvisorVault’s interface was built for clients, and it was architected for compatibility with all of the popular browsers used by consumers. In addition, it is integrated with apps advisors use to pull and push data that advisors want to share with clients.

All of this makes the integration of AdvisorVault client communication with Cabinet NG’s document management system a major advance for financial advisors.

Just want you to know that I am having a blast.

My wife, Mindy, who handles accounting here at Advisor Products, was asked by one of our clients yesterday if I still cared about Advisor Products.

He was concerned I might be neglecting Advisor Products.

Basically, he told Mindy that I was devoting so much attention to Advisors4Advisors that Advisor Products might suffer.

Fortunately, creativity is expansive.  Like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

I am on a roll. Ideas are springing forth daily about how to make this little tiny corner of the world a little bit better.

A4A makes me think about professional issues objectively, methodically, and daily.

It makes clear how to best help advisors help their clients.

I'm coming from a place rooted in history and knowledge about where this industry has been, and with an idea about where it should go to help people in the future.

Solutions from Advisor Products execute on those ideas.

I have no interest in merely reporting problems affecting you. I want to try to solve them.

I’m not fixing the budget deficit, but I’m doing what I can, and it feels good.

Thanks for caring about what I think. That is most satisfying above all.

 

Ratings on Advisors4Advisors for Fritz Meyer’s slide show earlier this week are fantastic. Advisors can actually love an investment strategist!

“Fritz is the most helpful webinar speaker I've heard. I can apply the information immediately in my practice,” says PeterK805.

“This ought to be mandatory listening/learning for the financial news media,” writes DTSDriver in his review. “PS: Congress, likewise!”

“Fritz Meyer is an American treasure,” says GeorgeS216. “He is concise, provides facts and charts that back up his thesis and provides his commentary with easy to understand logic. Bravo, Fritz and thank you!”

Those were not cherry-picked. They were just the first of 106 reviews by attendees who reviewed Fritz Meyer’s presentation earlier this week on the economic outlook.

By the way, we’re shortly going to announce a price reduction on Fritz Meyer’s Economy Slide Shows, pricing it so any advisor who wants to educate clients on economic fundamentals driving investment markets can afford it.

Cabinet NG, a leading document management system for financial advisors, has integrated with AdvisorVault, streamlining a financial advisor’s work and improving client service.

Cabinet NG has developed an interface to allow its users to automatically synch specified folders in its document management software to AdvisorVault, a secure platform for advisors to share documents with clients and allied professionals.

If an advisor designates a folder in CNG that contains documents to be shared with a client, the contents of that folder is ported over to AdvisorVault. The advisor does not need to open a browser and upload the documents to the client folder.

This simplifies and automates an advisor’s workflow dramatically. The integration of a document management system with a secure client vault will enable automation of client communications and makes it easy for advisors to provide clients with meaningful personal data regularly.

For example, an advisor can batch file all of clients monthly brokerage statements from Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing or TD Ameritrade using CNG. When statements coming from a brokerage are filed, they can be designated to be placed in a folder that can be synched with AdvisorVault.

The integration represents the only first phase of tasks advisors want to automate in using their document management system to share documents securely with clients.

CNG and Advisor Products are interested in working with advisors who want to automate the most common tasks in sharing documents with clients. Please let us know if you have an idea about how we can automate document management to make your client communications more meaningful and productive, and sign up for a webinar on the Cabinet NG integration with AdvisorVault.

Financial advisors who want to learn about search engine optimization (SEO) can visit Advisor Products Learning Center, which features 18 videos about SEO techniques for private wealth managers, financial planners, and other independent financial advisors.

The 18 videos about SEO techniques for financial advisors are just one section of Advisor Products Learning Center, a free resource for independent financial advisors to learn about marketing.

The 18 videos cover key SEO concepts financial advisors need to know about including:

External Links Pointing to Your Website - SEO for Financial Advisors

Financial Advisors Can Go Local for Search Engine Optimization

Financial Advisors Can Use Videos To Improve Search Engine Rankings

Why Financial Advisors Should Develop a One Page Internet Strategy

Metadata for Search Engine Optimization for Financial Advisors

Optimize the Titles in the Title Bar - SEO Techniques for Financial Advisors

Optimizing URLs for Financial Advisor Websites

Semantic Markup for Search Engine Optimization for Financial Advisors

Submitting Your Site Map to Google - SEO Techniques For Advisors

Using Keywords and Website Writing Best Practices for Financial Advisors

Writing Social Media Profiles for Financial Advisors

 

Advisor Products is a leading marketing technology company serving financial planners, private wealth managers, and other independent financial advisors.

 

You’ve probably received an email from an SEO expert listing the mistakes preventing your website from ranking higher in search engines.  Problem is, the “expert” is mostly spewing half truths and distortions. Here are five top myths those snake oil SEO salesmen peddle:

5. W3C Validation errors will negatively affect your search engine ranking.
W3C validation compares the code of a website to strict rules about how the code is formatted.  Many of the rules have little or no affect on how a website is ranked by search engines or appears to visitors.  Matt Cutts, a prominent engineer from Google, confirms this. If you still don’t buy it, try the W3C validator on your favorite websites.  I tried it on amazon.com and got 505 errors.

4. Incompatibility with Opera will make you rank lower.
Of course, you want your site to work on all browsers, even the 0.56% using the Opera browser in the U.S. , according to StatCounter.  However, if your site doesn’t look quite right in Opera, it has no bearing on your search engine rankings. Search engines read through the source code, which has no connection with idiosyncrasies of the rarely-used Opera browser.

If you’re a financial advisor, here’s how to use a marketing funnel on the Web to create a path connecting you with your target clients or niches.

Maybe your target is 50- to 65-year old teachers with at least $500,000 of qualified plan assets, retired doctors in your locale, or retired military officers. Whoever it is, you create the marketing funnel by offering valuable content to them—videos, articles, and tweets.

Once a month or once a quarter, you create a video or article with helpful ideas for dealing with financial issues crucial to your target client—something like, “The Five Biggest Financial Mistakes Business Owners Make In The Decade Before Retiring.”

When a business owner stumbles upon one of your free reports, he can read it and submit his email address to sign up for your free email newsletter. Later, you market webinars to your target audience. Eventually, you become a trusted source of information and get hired by some of these people.

The funnel relies on search engines to bring you leads. That’s because videos and articles about your areas of expertise are indexed by search engines. The more intelligent content you post, the higher the likelihood of getting traffic from your target market.

When a pre-retired professor has made one of the five biggest mistakes addressed in your articles or wants to avoid those mistakes, he is going to search for a solution to his problem on Google. Your site stands a chance of coming up in his research. Your success largely depends on how trusted you are as a source of information.

The biggest factors establishing yourself as a trusted source are how many sites link to your videos and articles and the trustworthiness of those websites.

The number of external links to your website and the trustworthiness of those sites are measured by Google’s algorithm and determine your ranking in search engine results.

If The New York Times links to articles and videos you create about financial planning and wealth management for doctors, that’s better than if small town newspaper does it. And if 20 important sites like The New York Times link to you, that’s better than if just two do it.

Advisor Products helps financial advisors do this kind of marketing.

We can provide you the content on an ongoing basis. Or, if you’re on a tight budget, you can hire us only to establish the framework enabling you to easily post content that you create.

For more ideas, see videos we offer about search engine optimization in the Learning Center of the Support Section at www.AdvisorProducts.com or call 516 333 0066 #224.

AdvisorVault, a fully-encrypted online application enabling financial advisors to share files with clients, has been upgraded to a server with 64-bit dual processors and six cores.

Before the upgrade, AdvisorVault’s integrations with Schwab PortfolioCenter and Advent Axys could process two advisory firm uploads concurrently, and any additional advisory firms attempting to upload their data would be placed in a queue. As a result of the upgrade, AdvisorVault’s processes four uploads simultaneously in one-quarter the time.

The new server uses dual Intel XEON X5650 2.66GHz sixcore CPUs with 48GB of RAM. That’s a lot of processing power.

Moving AdvisorVault to new hardware enables a software upgrade to the 64-bit version of Microsoft SQL Server, the database powering AdvisorVault.

The hardware and software upgrades increase AdvisorVault’s speed 400%.

While AdvisorVault is much faster for advisors and clients—as well as lawyers and accountants granted access—the hardware upgrade is most noticeable to advisory firms using AdvisorVault’s integrations with desktop portfolio management software (PMS) applications, Advent Axys and Schwab PortfolioCenter. Data upload is four times faster than the previous hardware configuration.

Sixty-four bits is the size of the program instructions and memory addresses that can be used by a computer processor. A 64-bit processor can use more than 32 times the amount of physical memory of a 32-bit processor.

Portfolio reports are now processed at four times the speed because more data can be accessed from RAM instead of the server’s hard drive.

Process more than four uploads concurrently without slowing AdvisorVault will be simple now. We’re monitoring the throughput and will add services as needed. Software development now under way will improve AdvisorVault’s scalability across multiple enterprises.

AdvisorVault can be added to any advisory firm’s website for $1,000 a year or integrated into websites hosted by Advisor Products for $2,100 annually. Schwab PortfolioCenter or Advent Axys costs an additional $1,500 a year.

I look at all of the websites my company builds. Geier Financial Group drew me in and I called Tom Geier.

Tom, 57, told me his brother, Joe, started the firm 15 years ago.

Joe Geier is a CPA and Tom is a CPA/PFS, which is the AICPA's credential for a Personal Financial Specialist--which in some ways is actually better than a CFP designation.

Joe started the advisory firm 15 years ago and Tom joined about 11 years ago.

"Joe and I had always talked about working together and we took the opportunity when it came up," says Tom, who quit his job as a corporate VP of finance to work as an advisor.

I'm a sucker when it comes to family businesses. What caught my attention about the Geier brothers is that these two guys are doing a few things right.

The website that I looked at is for Geier Financial's newly founded mutual fund company, Geier Funds.

I noticed right away that the writing on the site is clear and concise. You just don't see good writing like that too often on advisor websites. (The copy unfortunately was not written by our writers, but was a team effort at Geier.) Bravo!

The site is one of Advisor Products Designer Websites, which costs just $1,500 to build. Geier got its money's worth by thinking through the information architecture of the site, organizing the site's structure logically. Kudos to Geier's marketing staffer, Melissa Jordan.

What really made me curious is that Geier has an advisory firm in addition to the mutual fund, and the advisory firm has a track record that can be advertised by the mutual fund. Few advisory firms have mutual fund. I'd guess that one in 500 advisory firms start a fund. So that makes Geier pretty unusual. It's about as rare to find an advisory firm with a track record, and Geier is also has a track record, and its performance is impressive.

The track record is GIPS® compliant. GIPS is short for Global Investment Performance Standards, a set of standards for reporting investment performance established by the CFA Institute.

It's wise for an advisory firm to maintain a track record that can be used in advertising, especially if you think you might want day start a mutual fund. While the up-front cost and hassle of establishing an accounting system to report portfolio returns properly are not trivial, the benefits can be significant. Geier is a good example of that.

From the start of 2002 through September 30, 2010, Geier's Strategic Capital Preservation Composite, which represents all of the performance on all fee-paying assets managed by Geier, showed an annualized return net of expenses of 6%.

The fund is actively managed using technical analysis and fundamental research, says Tom Geier, its portfolio manager. He uses a trend following strategy. As a flexible fund, GAMTX allocates its investments primarily among stocks, bonds, ETFs, REITs, and other investments that are selected mainly for their long-term growth potential. It's marketed as a conservative growth, absolute return fund.

In addition to the mutual fund, Geier Financial's advisory firm is actually two businesses. One on side of the company is a family office catering to athletes, mostly baseball players, like former Baltimore Orioles great Cal Ripken and Yankee first basemen and Baltimore-native Mark Teixeira, as well as other ultra-high–net-worth individuals. That part of the firm manages money for about 15 clients and provides full-service financial planning including bill paying.

The other part of the advisory firm, according to Tom Geier, consists of about 130 clients who are friends and relatives of the Geiers and Geier Financial's clients. Geier Financial has 15 employees, four of whom are advisors. In January, The Baltimore Sun published a flattering story about the firm.

I asked Tom Geier what his firm's minimum is and whether he and his brother should be working with the 130 smaller clients when working with UHNWi's in family office is more profitable and scalable. "They're friends and family," he says. "You can't say no to them."

Tom Geier says Geier Financial manages $150 million, and about $30 million of it is in the mutual fund. The smaller clients not getting family office services have been moved into the mutual fund, which Tom Geier says has reduced their fees.

Interesting advisory firm.

Financial Advisor Marketing Videos was launched on our website yesterday, and it is a powerful marketing presentation for knowledgeable, ethical, and open financial advisors.

At Advisor Products, we’ve been experimenting with different video techniques over the last year. We’ve learned that advisors need two types of videos: “update videos” targeted to clients and “marketing videos” targeting prospects.

Update videos don’t need special effects, expensive equipment, or professional talent. They are one-take videos, just two or three minutes in length, so you don’t have to edit them. You can produce them yourself in your office by creating an inexpensive video studio. If you need to edit videos, it’s going to complicate things and make it less likely you will use this medium.

Marketing videos are different. You don’t need music, a teleprompter, or actors, but you do need to edit marketing videos. Financial Advisor Marketing Videos from Advisor Products fill this need.

With Financial Advisor Marketing Videos, an advisor sitting in front of a plain white background is interviewed by me. I’m off-camera and my voice is removed in post-production editing, along with any awkward phrasing or words misspoken. What remains is a financial advisor speaking to the camera about how he practices—his compensation scheme, investment strategy, specialties and all-time favorite clients.

While the advisor is the star, my questions and direction helps keep the advisor focused, concise, and factual. The resulting video conveys the candor and credibility of a TV news interview. It’s honest.

For financial advisors who have studied wealth management, believe in themselves, care about their clients’ success, and practice with integrity and professionalism, Financial Advisor Marketing Videos are extremely effective. These attributes are capture under the glare of bright lights.

The three advisors who have used our approach were all so satisfied with the results that they agreed to allow us to use their videos as samples. Check them out.

Morgan Stone
Pat Jennerjohn
Glenn Mickelson

A library of FINRA-reviewed videos for advisor websites is now packaged with every Advisor Products Platinum website.

When you buy a website from Advisor Products, a library of videos can be personalized to your branding and posted to your website explaining the online tools you provide clients.

Crucial information about trusts, Roth IRAs, and wealth strategies is communicated to clients and prospects in the videos. How clients use AdvisorVault to access their portfolio reports and retirement plans is explained along with information about they can view their insurance and estate planning documents.

In addition to showing clients how to use your online advice platform, the videos market your services to prospects.

In showcasing features of the online platform that you make available to clients, the videos about AdvisorVault and Client Portals help you market your services to prospects.

The videos are part of our Video Library Dashboard.  With VLD, you get a selection of videos to choose from that can be posetd on ay page of your website, and your logo is automatically embedded in any video you post. VLD comes with a AdvisorSites Platinum, which costs $2,100 annually and comes with eight hours of service from our staff, automated website archiving, a databse of hundreds of financial articles, and AdvisorVault.    

 To see samples of the videos, you must be registered with Advisor Products. If you are already registered, log in here.

For advisors wise enough to be concerned about security of client data secure and privacy rules, AdvisorVault provides an excellent solution for sharing files with clients. But it enables you and your clients to share files with accountants and attorneys, and that’s really important.

AdvisorVault is a highly specialized file-sharing application created specifically for financial planners, wealth managers, investment consultants, and other financial advisors.

It’s not a document management system (DMS). Those systems lack features advisors needed to share documents with clients. For instance, AdvisorVault is integrated with a messaging system that automatically emails clients when you post a new document, and you can also post documents in batch for all your clients or a group or them and automatically notify them.

AdvisorVault is loaded with features and integrations that make client communications easier, providing a crucial component to an advisor’s online advice platform for clients.

In addition, AdvisorVault enables collaboration with attorneys, accountants, consultants, and other allied professionals. You can share a client’s entire vault with an attorney or accountant, or you can limit access to a single folder or a single file.

Your clients have a “Manage Professionals” feature in their vaults. When clients fill in the name and email address of their lawyer or accountant, it triggers an email to you requesting that you grant access to that professional to the client’s vault.  

AdvisorVault’s collaboration features thus make your website the hub for clients to manage all of their advice professionals.

Meanwhile, in the course of sharing information via AdvisorVault, you communicate build a new network of attorneys, accountants, consultants, and other professionals that can result in referrals.

Most advisors are jury-rigging systems for sharing documents with clients and allied professionals, or just ignoring privacy rules. However, security and privacy is likely to be an issue of interest to regulators in the months ahead, however.

For just $2,100, you can get AdvisorVault with a website—along with access to a database of hundreds of FINRA-reviewed articles, eight hours of service, automated website archiving. Or, for just $1,000 a year, you can add AdvisorVault to a website Advisor Products doesn’t host it.

Adopt this comprehensive client communication system with so many compelling benefits is sensible.

If you're still using a "framed" website, here's another reason to upgrade your site to our .NET website platform: we'll automatically create an XML sitemap for you to submit to search engines. XML site maps help search engines index a website, making it more likely to appear in search engine searches.

Advisor Products stopped building framed websites several years ago when it became clear that search engines were discriminating against them.
Web technology changed and we created an easy upgrade path.

Upgrading to our .NET website engine makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website and will give each page on your site a unique URL. You're even able to rewrite URLs using SEO-friendly keywords.

Advisor Products charges $250 to upgrade an old framed template website. The cost of upgrading a custom website depends on the number of pages and other factors and you'll need to contact us for a quote.

You’re probably not driving a car you bought in 2001. And, if you are, you probably don’t expect it to perform the same way as a 2011 model. Your website is not much different.

If you're still using an old framed site, now’s a good time to upgrade. Give us a call at (516) 333-0066 x224.

If you want a professionally-produced three-minute marketing video for your website, please schedule an appointment now.

Advisor Products will be shooting videos Friday, January 4 from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. PST at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.

We've got a professional TV crew coming and we'll be using studio-quality lighting and cameras .

We'll shoot five- to 10-minutes of you answering questions about your firm's value proposition.

Your video will be edited down to three one-minute segments and branded with your logo.

The file will be posted online for you to download and we will provide you with detailed instructions about how to post the video to YouTube and embed in in your website—all for $1,000.

If you have an Advisor Products Platinum website, we'll post the video on YouTube and embed it on your site for you.

If you were to hire your own crew and video editor, it could eaily cost you two or $2000 to make a video like this. 

Schedule your session at https://tungle.me/advisorvideos. Please give us your name, email address, and phone number in the subject line so we can contact you with detailed instructions.

If you have any questoins, please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Financial economist Fritz Meyer, after 15 years as investment strategist at Invesco, recently left his post and launched his own firm to provide advisors with institutional-quality macro analysis at an affordable price. Advisor Products is distributing Meyer’s research.

A PowerPoint slide show for advisors to present at seminars, webinars, and client meetings is the first product of collaboration between Meyer and Advisor Products.


The monthly scripted and editable 45-minute presentations contain dozens of tables and charts. The slides guide advisors through illustrated analysis of key economic issues and their effect on investment strategy.

Meyer’s research is targeted to advisors utilizing broadly diversified portfolios and Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT).

While most advisors adhere to the precepts of MPT, it's difficult to produce a monthly presentation with the latest economic data and that concisely explains how fundamental trends affect a broadly diversified portfolio constructed for long-term investors.

Meyer’s research provides an advisory firm the benefits of a full-time investment strategist at a fraction of the cost.

Meyer is also blogging about the economy monthly on Advisors4Advisors.


Working with a great thinker of Fritz Meyer’s stature is an exciting partnership for Advisor Products. We're having fun.


Meyer spoke at a webinar entitled, Modern Portfolio Theory Is Alive And Well.

Modern Portfolio Theory Is Alive And Well And Here's How To Use It Right Now from Advisors4Advisors on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, a few members of the Advisor Products staff, who can sing really well, were out of town or camera shy, but we nonethless posted this holiday greetings to our friends.

Thanks for making 2010 great, and happy holiday!

AdvisorVault Desktop Connector, which enables financial advisors to drag and drop any file on their desktop to a client’s vault, is headed for testing shortly and we are seeking beta users.

AdvisorVault is a fully encrypted web-based system for financial advisors enabling secure sharing of personal financial documents with clients, estate planning attorneys, and accountants.

Desktop Connector enables advisors to drag and drop any file to a client’s vault from the desktop and eliminates the need to open a browser and upload files.  You can also drag and drop files from a client's vault to your computer locally.

Compatible with Windows and Mac operating systems, AdvisorVault Desktop Connector lets advisors view all of their clients’ vaults and drill down in each vault’s folders.

AdvisorVault  Desktop Connector simplifies secure document-sharing with clients. Just open Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, navigate to a document on a local drive or network, and drag and drop it from Explorer or Finder into a client folder in Desktop Connector.

You don’t need to open a browser, navigate to a client’s vault, browse your local drive to select the target document, and wait for the document to upload. All of those steps are eliminated.

Desktop Connector will be available at no additional charge to AdvisorVault users.

AdvisorVault integrations with Schwab PortfolioCenter, Advent Axys, Albridge Solutions, MoneyGuide Pro, and other leading professional applications imports client reports in batches.

Desktop Connector allows advisors to quickly post reports one-by-one from any application—even those not integrated with AdvisorVault. For example, while AdvisorVault has no integration to post a batch of all your client reports from NaviPlan or Sungard financial planning applications, an advisor using Dektop Connector can individually drag and drop client reports from these apps into AdvisorVault.

If you would like to volunteer to be a beta tester, please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Financial advisors can build their own video studio for $750 or less. We did it and it was easy.

You can buy a support system for a backdrop for $150.

For the backdrop, we wanted that clean, white look that is in vogue on the Web right now. So we bought a white blanket at Bed Bath & Beyond for $30 and draped t over the support system.

For lighting, we used a kit that costs about $500.

For the camera, we used a Creative Labs Vado that costs $65. We also used an $8,000 professional camcorder.

See below the difference beween the two camcorders.

I'm not happy with the lighting and will work on it in the weeks ahead. Should not be hard to make it look really good. Maybe I'll splurge and buy a better camcorder than the $65 Vado.

To see future posts on this topic, visit Advisors4Advisors.com.

An Advisor Products webinar about how financial advisors can produce video updates and optimize them for search engine rankings received a 4 1/2 star-rating from from attendees.

Here’s the video we made with the $65 camcorder.


Here’s the video we made with the $8000 professional unit.

Having a great client portal doesn’t only make your firm more efficient, it also helps you acquire new clients. When financial advisors buy Client Portals from Advisor Products, they can post two videos to their websites that demonstrate the benefits of these advisor technology platforms to clients and prospects. The videos are free for any financial advisor that purchases an Advisor Products website with AdvisorVault or Client Portals.

There’s an old saying in the financial services industry: insurance is not bought, it’s sold.

I’m seeing that with advisor websites.

Advisor websites are getting sold. Instances of price-gouging and sales hype have come across my desk more often lately in the sale of advisor websites.

Admittedly, my evidence is anecdotal, but in the 15 years since founding Advisors Products, I’ve only seen this level of hype once before—during the dotcom boom of 1999.

The rise in unsavory sales of advisor websites accompanies a shift in the industry in favor of local independent design shops. Advisors are using local designers and consultants more often, getting sold “branding packages.” In fact, local design firms and independent are now the main competitors to Advisor Products.

Advisor Products has focused in recent years on developing client portals for advisor websites, which shifted the company away from competing with traditional advisor website development companies. We often work with independent designer and marketing consultants because advisors utilize our “backend” tools—AdvisorVault, portfolio performance reporting, email newsletters, financial advisor content—while hiring  independent consultants for marketing and design assistance.

What I’m seeing is that a small number of these local design firms and independent consultants are using the technical mumbo-jumbo as an excuse to overcharge advisors, and sometimes problems are arising with misleading claims about search engine optimization or an advisor website.

This week, I worked with an advisor now on the hook for $27,000 for a website, logo, and SEO copywriting package that gives him far less than what Advisor Products provides for about a third of the cost. He’s switching to Advisor Products.

The site looks good, but it was built using an open-source content management system (CMS) template.

Open source CMS platforms are great. The big ones, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, are growing explosively, and local design shops have flocked to them, and for good reason.

Open-source platforms publish their source code, enabling programmers all over the world to develop plug-ins and overlays. So if you want to add a blog you your Joomla site, for example, Joomla has an app store and you choose from a long list of add-ons, called extensions, that are free or low cost.  

Cool features like blog moderation, integration with email newsletters, event calendars, news headline display, and other functionality can be added easily to a website using the extensions. Apps stores for Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla make it easy to display a Twitter-stream on a page of an advisor website, add and manage polls, or embed videos you post on YouTube.

Point is, the advisor who called this week was sold a template website built on Joomla plus a few website pages of copy that had been optimized for search engines, and a logo. Total cost: $27,000.

In addition to overcharging by a huge amount, the advisor is very limited in his ability to change content on his website because of an extremely restrictive configuration of the Joomla CMS platform.

Advisor Products works with many outside designers and marketing consultants and the vast majority are good and honest. We don’t have a monopoly on great graphic design and our development process enables advisors to use their favorite designers and consultants and leverage our specialized tools.

Advisor Products builds websites for firms using open source CMS when appropriate, depending on your circumstances. In fact, we’re in the process of integrating our proprietary financial advisor content and compliance tools for advisor websites with an open-source CMS platform.

But the growth of open source CMS platforms has allowed some greedy operators to take advantage of advisors who don’t know much about website development. So watch out.

If you want to work with a marketing consultant or design firm and also leverage AdvisorVault, Client Portals and other apps we provide to financial advisors, we welcome your business. And if you want us to evaluate the deal you are getting from a local designer or marketing consultant, we’ll give you an honest assessment.  

We’re transparent.

To financial advisors, search engine optimization (SEO) is arcane. As a result, financial advisors seeking SEO assistance are often sold on hype.

A couple of months ago, for example, an advisor who’s been a client of Advisor Products for years, told me that he was thinking of moving his website. A consultant, who is now making the rounds with advisors, had told him Advisor Products could not build a blog site for him with social media features to help boost his website’s search engine rankings. 

So I asked the advisor exactly what the consultant was offering him. The answer: a WordPress blog site. WordPress is a free open-source content management system. Anyone can use it! If he wanted a WordPress blog, we could build it for him. Any web developer can! (A WordPress blog can’t integrate the Advisor Products compliance engine used by broker/dealers—at least not now—but he this advisor is not affiliated with a B/D and did not need the compliance engine. So we added a WordPress blog to his website with all of the social media features he was looking for and saved him from rebuilding his site from scratch.

Still, the episode alerted me to the fact that Advisor Products needed to make social media and SEO more understandable and accessible to advisors. Although we had produced about 10 educational webinars for advisors over the last couple of years addressing social media and SEO for financial advisors, we needed to do something make it easier to get started with SEO and social media marketing—something that would  it less arcane and more affordable.  

After months of planning, Advisor Products last week began offering a comprehensive suite of practical SEO and social media services geared specifically to financial advisors.  

Our approach is modular. It allows a firm with a tight budget to get started with search engine optimization of their website for local listings and map listings. But we also allow an advisory firm that already has done some SEO work to improve their search engine rankings by adding a series of blog posts packed with their keywords, profiling their target clients in SEO-friendly write-ups, or utilizing social media marketing. The six SEO services are:

• SEO Copywriting For Advisor Websites


• Blog Writing For Financial Advisors


• Local SEO For Financial Advisor Websites


• SEO Advisor Process Maps


• SEO Target-Client Profiles For Advisors


• Social Media Copywriting For Financial Advisors

Advisor Products’ suite of SEO services is different from others because we have clearly defined a full range of SEO engagements for advisors, eliminating the mystery so you understand what you’re getting. We’re not hiding behind a bunch of jargon and making promises we can’t keep.

One other way our service is different is that we’re going to teach you SEO techniques that you can use every day. Simple tips, like telling you to post comments on consumer financial websites like Mint or Motley Fool with a back-link to related information on your website, can improve your search engine rankings. We’ve written blog entries and provided educational webinars about ideas like this for many months, and we are now going to provide educational content regularly to advisors using our SEO services.

SEO is no longer something you can outsource to a firm and let them handle. The growing popularity of blogs, status updates, and information sharing on social means advisors and their staff must get involved in creating content to improve your search engine rankings.

What do you think? Are you mystified by SEO? Have the educational blog posts and webinars we’ve been conducting helping you? Are you going planning on using SEO techniques on 2011?

Advisors4Advisors has integrated with Twitter to enable financial advisors to “tweet” A4A content to clients, prospects, and referral sources in an instant.

Advisors4Advisors aggregates investment, industry, and technology news every business day.

Veteran financial reporters Mary Rowland, Bob Casey, and Andrew Gluck aggregate respectively the investment, industry, and tech news advisors need to read by scanning dozens of websites, blogs, and news releases daily. The reading list is emailed as The Daily Digest to members of Advisors4Advisors.

The Twitter aggregation allows you to tweet any of the content to everyone following you on Twitter.

To use the Advisor4Advisors Twitter integration:

1. Log in to Advisors4Advisors
2. From the home page, click on the headline of any article you want to Tweet
3. Click on the Twitter icon to automatically open Twitter and tweet the article

The Advisors4Advisors integration automatically opens a browser with your Twitter account, inserts the headline of the article as a tweet, and creates a shortened bit.ly link to the article. You simply press “Tweet” to send the headline and link to all of your followers.

To try it, register for a free trial at Advisors4Advisors.com.

The Semantic Web automates activities that now require human intervention by structuring information on the Internet. In a few years, Semantic Web will enable your phone to alert you when you’re out of milk, locate a mobile grocery service cruising your neighborhood, and request a milk delivery to your door. The Semantic Web is a long way off from realizing its potential, but it is now powering search engines and that’s why advisors need to know about it.

The Semantic Web, a phrase coined in 1999 by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet, will utilize many computer languages and technologies to make machines talk to each other. One of the languages is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), the language of used to develop web pages.

In Web 2.0, standards are taking hold governing the use of HTML to program Web pages. For instance, the standard way of marking up text you want to emphasize on a Web page has been using <i> to format a font with italics or <b> boldface type. While tagging text with that code formats the typeface, it does not indicate how important the italicized or boldface information is.

Now, with the Semantic Web taking hold, the tag <em> (emphasis) is used instead of <i> or <b>. The <em> tag is one of many Semantic HTML tags that can be used by search engines to index information on the Web.

Web crawlers used by search engines to index information on the Internet now look for Semantic HTML tags to determine the most important ideas on a page. The Semantic Web thus automates a process that once could only be accomplished with human interaction and allows search engine algorithms to make information the Web more useable and seaerchable.

For advisors, understanding the Semantic Web is important because it enables creating a site that is easy to be indexed by search engines. The easier it is for search engines to index your website and understand the information it contains, the better your search engine results will be.

At Advisor Products, we now program websites using Semantic HTML. This makes it more likely that advisors with Advisor Products websites will be ranked higher by search engines.

In addition, our BackOffice content management system, which is packed with features for managing financial advisor websites, includes a user-friendly “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) editor that creates Semantic HTML.  

WYSIWYG Web-page editors allow advisors and their staff to changes on their website. These user-friendly editors are used throughout the Web to post text to blogs, status updates, profiles and other Web pages. But they are controversial because they often don’t produce clean, Semantic HTML.

Advisor Products’ BackOffice HTML editor is programmed to allow financial advisors to produce Semantic HTML and boost advisor search engine rankings.

Semantic HTML provides six levels of heading tags, tagged as H1 through H6.Search engines will give more weight to the text within these tags. But you must select Heading 1 through Heading 6 to use these Semantic HTML tags.

In addition to making it easy for you to post Semantic HTML, we are hand-coding HTML tags where needed when financial advisors purchase any of our search engine optimized (SEO) copywriting solutions.

I was just monitoring one of our employee’s phone calls with a client and came across a great use of AdvisorVault to work with 401(k) plans.

I routinely monitor our help desk and sales calls every day. We use a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone system that enables me to “barge” calls with neither the client nor the staff member knowing I am monitoring the call. It keeps me in touch with what advisors need and whether we are giving good service. All advisory firm owners should have this VOIP system feature. (I posted about this at Advisors4Advisors.com.)

I barged a call just now in which an advisory firm wanted to give AdvisorVault access to a 401(k) plan sponsor. This is a great idea for advisory firms working with 401(k) plans.

Say ABC Advisors is advising XYZ Manufacturing on its 401(k) Plan.

ABC Advisors can give XYZ employees their own client vaults with their 401(k) information.

ABC Advisors can also give XYZ’s HR Department access to certain folders of each XYZ employee’s vault.

That allows XYZ, the plan sponsor, to place documents about the 401(k) plan into each client’s vault, but ABC Advisors can limit XYZ’s HR Department from seeing all of the client’s/employee’s documents.

AdvisorVault enables collaboration with third-party professionals. We always envisioned advisors giving access to a client’s vault to the client’s attorney or accountant. AdvisorVault has very elaborate controls for collaboration with third parties and advisors are telling us it helps them build a referral network of tax and estate planning professionals.

The advisory firm can enable third parties to see a client’s entire vault, just a folder in a vault, or just a single document in a vault. The third parties can be enabled to upload documents and get all the features of AdvisorVault, and the advisory firm that pays us controls the system. Advisors love this.

But we never imagined using the third-party collaboration features to enable advisors to work more efficiently with 401(k) plan sponsors. This is a great idea!

If you are advising a 401(k) plan for a group of doctors, for instance, you can enable the plan sponsor to post tax-related documents, educational articles, required disclosures, plan amendments, and all sort of other required information. And if you hope to turn some of the plan participants into wealth management clients, this is a great way to get to know them.

Please let me know what you think. Are there any caveats or questions we need to consider as advisors start using AdvisorVault to serve documents securely to 401(k) plan participants?

MBA student Jonathan Poyer contacted me in late June for help with a research project on investment advisory marketing companies. I vaguely remembered Jonathan contacting me five years earlier when he had an internship at Orion Advisor Services, but don't know him. Advisor Products tries to be transparent and behave nicely, however, so  I directed him to our website and offered to connect him with our marketing and sales department.

A month later, after completing his research, Jonathan contacted me again to thank me. In an email, he told  me how difficult it was to get straightforward answers from marketing companies specializing in serving investment advisors but that  Advisor Products was different.

Because he was indpendent and unbiased, I asked Jonathan to summarize what he learned in doing his research. Here’s what he says.   

This summer, as an MBA intern at Brigham Young University, I chose to work for Gemini Fund Services; a company I worked for previous to business school.  I worked on a great project putting together a business plan for a new entity that Gemini has been looking into.

A major portion of my project this summer was to obtain market research on third party marketing firms in the investment advisory space; especially those that provide marketing services for mutual funds.  I spent over a month working on this project; speaking with over 30 firms as I wanted a comprehensive understanding of the industry.  Since I had been in the business a number of years, I obtained information through contacts at the major custodians.  In addition, I found a number of firms through Google searches, marketing events, and others through references on marketing collateral or websites.  All told, I was able to interview almost 30 different people that focus on assisting investment professionals with their marketing initiatives.  The two major questions that I sought to answer included: what key services do you provide and what is the general pricing for those services. 

The bug fix to AdvisorVault that I mentioned in my blog entry on June 29  was made a couple of weeks ago, and I just realized I forgot to write an update about that.

Advisors who use AdvisorVault can now share a single file with an accountant or estate planning lawyer.

While you all along have been able to share a client entire vault or a single folder, the bug had prevented advisors from sharing a single file with an outside professional.  

For financial advisors, being able to share client documents securely with attorneys, accountants, consultants, and other allied professionals is an important feature in AdvisorVault.

It's one of those rare examples where a seemingly small technology feature  provides a big benefit.

Advisors say that collaboration with other professoinals is a natural way of creating a referral network of professionals.

In the course of sharing information about a client in AdvisorVault, allied professionals wind up communicating more efficiently and more frequently. And since secure file-sharing  in AdvisorVault is easy, the feedback I've gotten from advisors is that it's getting used a lot.

You can get 38 hours of CFP^â continuing education credit on Advisors4Advisors, a practice management portal for advisors. And if you sign up for a free six-month membership to A4A, you get it for free!

Simply register for our next webinar and you’ll receive an email with six-month free trial of A4A after the webinar.

Already a member of A4A? Just click on one of the webinar titles below and sign in to A4A to view the session. Watch the session for at least 50 minutes and take a 10-question quiz when it’s over to receive CFP® CE credit.

• Compliance Issues Posed By LinkedIn, Blogs, And Social Networking 


• Secure Solutions To Protect Client Data And Comply With New Privacy Laws


• Appointing A Trust Protector To Improve Estate Plans


• Deeper Client Connections Through The Power Of Story


• Financial Services Reform Update


• Trends In Family Offices And Multi-Family Offices


• Advisor Compliance Update


• Managing Portfolio Risk With Stock Collars


• Roth IRA: Beyond The Basics


• How To Talk To Clients In A Post-Crisis World


• Tactical Asset Allocation In Today's Market


• ETFs: The Good, Bad and Misunderstood


• Roth IRA Conversion Techniques


• The New Estate Planning Landscape


• Precious Metals: Can The Rally Continue?


• The 401k Upheaval And How It Affects Advisors


• Seizing The Roth IRA Opportunity With Clients And Prospects


• Privacy Law, Data Security And Financial Advisors


• 2010 Compliance Planning For RIAs


• Using Client Feedback To Drive Referrals


• One Year After The Global Financial Crisis


• A New Model For Life Planning


• Researching Your Prospects On The Web


• Regulatory Reform: Will You Be A Fiduciary?


• Navigating The Maze Of Exchange-Traded Products


• Advisor Self-Care: A Primer And Check-up


• Serving Middle Income Clients


• Actively Managing An ETF Portfolio


• After The Fall: Asset Allocation And Rebalancing


• Crucial Financial Conversations With Clients


• Restoring Investor Confidence


• Life Planning And The Financial Crisis


• Investment Tax Management: Turn Clients' Biggest Expense Into An Opportunity


• Preparing For The Worst: Managing Your Clients In A Bear Market 


• Conducting 401k Vendor Searches For Small Plan Sponsors


• Client Retention And Growth In Tough Times


• Asset Protection Planning


• Rational Expectations In Uncertain Markets

Advisor Products has implemented a unified threat management system to detect and prevent malicious activities on all of its web servers.

Adoption of the Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS) by Advisor Products had been requested by a large financial institution seeking to use AdvisorVault, a secure system that allows financial advisors to share documents with clients and allied professionals and that is integrated with several portfolio management software applications.

Hackers and malicious activities by rogue employees of tech vendors and advisory firms pose a growing risk, as more advisors are utilizing Web-based applications to communicate personal financial information to clients and improve efficiency.

Advisory firms are not only under pressure from cybercrime and insider abuse, but also face increasing compliance demands, as state and federal regulators tighten rules protecting client privacy and on establishing effective and measurable security.

The intrusion detection and prevention system implemented by Advisor Products adds a new layer to the company’s already elaborate security systems. The IDPS service monitors all Advisor Products servers 24/7 to identify malicious activity, log information about suspicious activity, attempt to block these activities, and automatically report them to technicians and engineers on the Advisor Products team. Some of the features include:

• Enterprise Grade Firewall. A sophisticated enterprise-grade firewall managed by certified security experts.


• Best In Class Intrusion Prevention. The system is carefully maintained and managed by a world leader in vulnerability and intrusion protection research and used by many of the world’s largest enterprise.


• Best Practices Management. Change management, incident management and all aspects of the service are monitored for compliance with times-tested management practices.


• 7x24 Incident Response. The service provider’s engineers monitor and respond to critical security events 7x24, 365 days per year and report critical issues to the Advisor Products tech team immediately.

Guidelines issued by FINRA yesterday governing how registered reps use social media websites are constructive but highlight the challenge regulators face in structuring advertising rules that keep up with technology.



One can only cheer the suddenly enlightened view of FINRA in releasing the Notice. FINRA has stood silent for several years while social networking exploded. As the FINRA release points out, 46% of American internet users logged on to a social networking site in 2009.



With FINRA issuing no guidance as social media exploded in popularity in recent years, registered reps were absent from the online scene out of fear that they would break undefined rules. So FINRA in to be commended for finally bringing some clarity to this issue.

Where the guidelines go wrong and muddle the rules, however, is in an effort to distinguish “static” and “non-static” content.

To read the rest of my post, please sign up for membership at Advisors4Advisors.

At a recent session of the Financial Advisor Webinar Series, Mike Williams of Schwab Performance Technologies (SPT) talked about what developments in PortfolioCenter and PortfolioServices.



While we usually don’t invite vendors to talk about their products at our webinars, we made an exception because Schwab is so influential; SPT is used by 3,300 advisory firms and its parent provides custodial services to 6,000 RIAs.



Despite allotting 25 minutes for questions, attendees at the session had more questions than Williams could answer. So we passed along to Williams the unanswered questions chatted in by attendees. In this post, Williams answers those questions.



Do you use ByAll Accounts to connect to custodians that you do not have direct interfaces with?

Yes. Both our PortfolioCenter and PortfolioServices products can leverage ByAllAccounts to acquire account information from financial institutions with which there is no available direct data feed.



When will the custom report enhancements you talked about at the webinar be available?

The first general release of the new report presentations will be in mid-2010. Subsequent releases will occur later this year and throughout 2011.



For the new graphical reporting: will a PortfolioCenter user need the Enhanced Reporting Module (ERM), and what is the cost of the ERM for a current PC user?

Yes, the new report presentations require a PortfolioCenter Enhanced license. The Enhanced Reporting Module is $1,500 year one and carries an annual maintenance fee of $500. Please contact SPT Sales at (800) 528-9595, option 2 for further information.



To see answers to 12 other questions, please sign into www.advisors4advisors.com.

For advisors going independent, producing monthly or quarterly performance reports is unfamiliar ground.



Without a documenting the process and choosing a technology platform to implement a system, performance reporting can be overwhelming.



Advisors4Advisors, a practice management portal for independent advisors that I started about six month ago, recently produced a webinar to help brokers making the transition to independence and who have never before had to use portfolio-reporting software and manage the delivery of performance reports to clients.



Two seasoned executives from Orion Advisor Services were our guest presenters for the session. Orion is a portfolio reporting services that is used by about 200 independent advisory firms. The firm got its start in 1999. Originally the system was built by CLS Investments, which manages about $3 billion in assets, to produce client performance reports and then it was offered as a product that could be used by other RIAs.



Bill Wostoupal, the head of business development, and Randy Lambert, who runs operations at Orion, did a great job of explaining the performance reporting process RIAs must go through without making it sound like a commercial for Orion.



They also came up with a template process and worksheet that new RIAs can use to develop reporting procedures internally. The template process and worksheet is useful to RIAs no matter what portfolio reporting system you use.



The process Orion provides is a template that you can adapt to your needs, and the worksheet makes it easy for you to document the process and embed it in your CRM system. If you embed your firm’s performance reporting process in your CRM system and assign staff to each step in the workflow, then your firm will be more efficient. Staff will be held accountable and reporting tasks will not be dropped or handled improperly.



Members of Advisors4Advisors can down download the Performance Reporting Workflow Worksheet for free.



You can view a replay of the session here.

Last Friday’s webinar with Charles Epstein, the 401(k) Coach, was a big hit, as you can see from the comments from attendees shown below.



Epstein is a financial advisor who achieved success in the 401(k) business, so much success that he started a coaching program that has trained about 1,200 advisors. He’s also one of our featured bloggers on Advisors4Advisors.



Epstein is a pragmatist and offered real world wisdom that advisors appreciated. GoToWebinar, the tool we use for running these sessions, indicated that every single one of the attendees was “highly interested” in Epstein’s presentation. I can’t recall any other speaker who was able to hold the interst of the audience as well as Epstein.



Epstein’s session is available for replay at Advisor Products and on Advisors4Advisors.



Epstein provided a handout that can be used by fiduciaries to conduct an meeting with a plan sponsor that is a prospect, and it can be downloaded by members of A4A in the Advisor Rewards section of your profile.



Epstein will be doing another webinar in April or May. What did you think of the webinar? How can we improve it?

• 
  
  
  Very good overview of the 401k market for advisors. I like it when speaker provides resources like he did. Would like to see more on how to market services to companies.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  More events with Mr. Epstein
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Outstanding. Short and to the point. Thank you for taking the questions.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  I thought it to be great information
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  It was good. I am interested in hearing from someone experienced in fiduciary plans the top shelf plans where advisors take on ERISA 3-38.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Interesting topic and completely new to me
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  A transcript, available upon request by an attendee, would help a great deal.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Good
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Excellent webinar.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Very good session...only complaint is he went a little fast, but the slides and a replay is available so it is no big deal. Thanks very much.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  It was excellent, and I especially appreciated your allowing download of slides. I wish I had known throughout the presentation however, because I was feverishly writing down each slide!
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  I really like your webinars. If I could change anything, it would be to keep them to an hour. I don't know how you do this because I don't think there is a lot of wasted time, but I personally struggle with the dual desires of wanting to continue learning and also moving on to the next, scheduled thing. This is fairly minor but I would prefer they be a little shorter.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Make a CD of the audio
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Great Information.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  I think it was very good. Thanks for coordinating and brininging important topics to us RIA's.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Excellent topic. Presenter moved a little fast and glossed over a few complex topics.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Sensational amount of information packed into an hour. Great job with the questions at the end of the program, Andy. They were delivered clearly, and you moved the answers right along without letting the speaker get bogged down.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  I liked it.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Very good webinar. Good topic!
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  I liked it. It was helpful.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Very informative. Discussion included many topics I was not aware of especially fiduciary responsibility issues for the advisor to a plan.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Very good. Always like more take away, actionable items to implement. Not always just a sales pitch to sign up for a new program.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  I appreciated the information. I would be interested in hearing the additional portions of the 401k Coach program on A4A.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Great timing for me since I am entering this service area.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Very informative
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Good info & resources. Would like to hear Part 2 from Charlie (the remaining 3 steps)
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  This was a great webinar. Moderation intro was a little too long and slow
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Very good and any process template or handouts would be appreciated
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Spectacular. Thank you so much.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Awesome good information. Sometimes it is helpful to identify those things that "you don't know you don't know" and then provide resources to fill in the gaps.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Bring back for steps 4,5,6
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Charlie is terrific!
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Terrific very informative insightful and useful
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Sometimes Charles moved onto a slide before giving the audience time to process what was on the slide. Being able to download the slides before the presentation would have been helpful
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  It moved very fast for me since I'm not active in this part of the business now, but it was a great presentation.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  There was a lot to cover. Better to sometimes just commit to a 90 minute program. Thanks.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  I thought it was informative. He had to fly through his slides, so I feel like I need to go back and look at them again.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Give and take questions
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  The audio was in and out and when I called the # the password was invalid it said.
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  Great questions Andy