July brings our succession planning issue. It may be uncomfortable to think about what will happen to a practice you've spent years building when you finally decide to leave it, but as recent events have shown not all exits have the luxury of being planned. As Kim Nourie points out in our cover feature, succession is more than simply planning for the exit—it's about continuity and continued client confidence in your business as a going concern. What would happen to your practice following a natural disaster or a retiring partner? We talk to a broker-dealer rep and an RIA in our cover feature to see how they approach planning for the unforeseeable and the inevitable.
Also this month, we break from our usual Overlooked Manager's feature to tell you about an overlooked broker-dealer. Medical Capital and Provident Royalties have brought BDs into the spotlight in a bad way. Top reps with Financial Network Investment Corporation are working hard to raise the industry's image; find out what they're doing.
In part II of our Grow Your Firm series, Spenser Segal, CEO of ActiFi and 2011 IA 25 honoree, explains how choosing the right CRM is so important to your practice—and reveals why so many advisors don't take advantage of their system.
Click through the following slides to preview the rest of the July Investment Advisor features.
Half of advisors over the age of 50 intend to sell their businesses upon retirement. What does the other half plan on doing? It's hard to say; research shows just 29% of independent advisors have written succession plans. Whether you're affiliated with a broker-dealer or completely independent as an RIA, proper succession planning helps you realize value long before you walk out the door. Editor in Chief John Sullivan talks to Kim Nourie of United Planners, and Rob Francais of Aspiriant, to get their take on succession planning.
With Medical Capital and Provident Royalties dominating headlines, top reps with Financial Network Investment Corporation are mad as hell about the current state of the broker-dealer industry. They're not going to take it anymore, and have taken it upon themselves to do what they can to set it right. In a departure from our usual Overlooked Manager's feature, Editor in Chief John Sullivan uncovers what the reps with Financial Network Investment Corporation are doing to improve the industry's image.