For advisors, going independent requires not just careful cost-benefit analysis but also a focus on their clients' confidence—and their own. Ellen Uzelac's cover story in the June issue of Research magazine probes what's involved in making such a leap of faith, and looks at advisors who have done it.
In the issue's Finke on Finance feature, Michael Finke takes a fresh look at real estate investment trusts. REITs lost much of their reputation for safety during the financial crisis, but more recently their fortunes have revived. Finke assesses the distinctive features of this asset class.
The Edward Jones brokerage firm has a new recruiting strategy. Jane Wollman Rusoff brings you inside the big regional, describing how it hopes to get bigger and what it's doing to make that happen. The results so far have been notable.
A new wave of advisors is flirting with the independent channel—a move fraught with uncertainty, tinged with promise, and dominated by one core question: Will my clients follow me?
"A lot of research describes the transition to independence in behavioral and demographic terms. It does so with facts and figures about how many advisors are likely to move, the number of models they'll choose from, and the percentage that are likely to be happy," says Barnaby Riedel, chief research strategist for Riedel Strategy, a Newport Beach, Calif.-based market research and communications firm. "Yet advisors, almost universally, talk about the move as a kind of leap of faith. If you miss that kind of leap, and the quality of the decision-making, you miss the most important aspect of the advisor experience."
