Spire Investment Partners LLC and Portfolio Resources Group Inc. announced Thursday that their independent financial advisors are now members of the Financial Services Institute.
The financial advisors' first-year membership – usually $99 per person – is being offered on a complimentary basis by the firms.
Initiatives like free first-year memberships have helped FSI steadily increase the number of individual members, which has doubled since 2011. FSI has grown to nearly 37,000 financial advisors, said Chris Paulitz, FSI's senior vice president of membership and marketing.
"It's because of the commitment of firms like we announced today that our membership has grown so rapidly and sustained itself," Paulitz said in an interview with ThinkAdvisor.
Firms started offering these complimentary memberships to its advisors in 2011, Paulitz said.
In addition to the 37,000 individual advisor memberships, FSI has about 100 small firms with corporate memberships. Of those 100 firms, about 60 firms have participated is a mass membership campaign, whether the first-year complimentary initiative or other similar programs, Paulitz said.
Spire Investment Partners, which is a hybrid independent financial advisory firm headquartered in McLean, Virginia, and the parent of both an RIA and a broker-dealer, has been a member of FSI since 2008, said Spire CEO David Blisk in a press release.
"[FSI is] the only organization that advocates on behalf of independent financial services firms like us – dually registered and hybrid," Blisk said in a statement. "FSI shares our values and commitment to education and public awareness by representing Spire with our regulators, legislators and the investing public. Without FSI, the best interests of our wealth advisors and clients would not be served."
