New Website Lists Consumer Reviews of Financial Advisors

He compared clients of a newly licensed advisor to diners at a new restaurant. "When a restaurant first opens, some brave consumers need to go and give it a try. Similarly, when a new financial advisor gets licensed, they will be on WalletHub, but we hope that when they start getting clients those clients will start sharing their experiences and educate fellow consumers."

Nancy Lininger, founder of The Consortium, a compliance consulting firm, said she's heard concerns about Yelp before. "I have had advisors ask about Yelp recommendations in regards to the testimonials prohibition," she told ThinkAdvisor by email on Thursday. "My response is that you (the advisor) control Facebook, LinkedIn and similar social media sites. When in your control, you must do what you can to disable recommendation or like features, or to take recommendations down if posted."

Unfortunately, with third-party sites, it's out of advisors' hands. Lininger said, "Yelp, or newer similar services, are not under the advisor's control. There is no way to stop unsolicited postings to those sites. The only thing you can do is not to encourage clients or others to post to these third-party sites."

Similar to the way Twitter users can "follow" people and companies, WalletHub users can follow various news outlets to customize the news that appears on a dedicated page in their profile. Initially, news is automated through the outlets' RSS feeds, but those who want to take over their profile can do so by submitting a business listing, which will then be confirmed by the WalletHub team as a legitimate source. Papadimitriou said currently a "handful" of blogs and news outlets have taken control of their listing.

"This is a great way to attract readers that are focused on financial-related news," he said. "We are trying to attract a community of people who want to talk about saving money, about making smarter financial decisions, not about what they had for breakfast."

In addition to the Yelp-like review element of WalletHub and the Twitter-like element of the news page, Papadimitriou said, "The third element is companies will essentially be able to take over their profile, professionals can list their qualifications and services they offer, and that resembles LinkedIn. If you will, WalletHub you can think of as a child of LinkedIn, Yelp and Twitter: a 'Frankenstein' child but with a focus on personal finance."

He concluded, "When we go to a restaurant or visit a hotel, we take for granted that we can go to TripAdvisor for thousands of reviews. When it comes to much bigger money issues we, for whatever reason, as you mentioned some of it has to do with regulatory factors, have been completely isolated from transparency."