The Advisor Group of broker-dealers made a series of announcements last week during its annual ConnectED conference in Orlando, Florida. The news affects programs for the more than 5,000 advisors affiliated with FSC Securities Corp., Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial and Woodbury Financial Services, which collectively have $190 billion in assets, as well as the financial advice business in general.
First, Advisor Group says it has rolled out My Succession Plan, a program that supports succession planning-based M&A transactions across its four independent broker-dealers.
The platform provides both advisors with the affiliated IBDs and other non-affiliated financial advisors with a business valuation model and access to consultants to assist them with succession planning.
Advisors are not charged a closing fee for transactions. They are, however, required to pay a yearly membership fee of $300. Financing assistance is available through Live Oak Bank.
"We're thrilled to launch My Succession Plan at a time when many advisors are feeling the need to start planning for a succession discussion," said Advisor Group President and CEO Jamie Price, in a statement.
The firm says the platform will serve as "a one-stop resource for independent advisors looking to either buy or sell a practice, or just create a responsible continuity plan."
Working with Truelytics, advisors can use an online valuation model and get a fair market estimate of the value of their business. They can also identify potential partners and sort and filter these candidates by factors such as total revenue and revenue characteristics, client assets under management, number of households, location, service offerings and so on.
The Advisor Group succession-and-acquisitions consulting team is led by Senior Vice President Todd Fulks.
"Buyers and sellers of independent advisor practices continue to site finding the right partner as the most difficult aspect of a deal," Fulks explained in a statement. "Through this new offering, we've addressed this challenge leveraging our expertise in succession planning and created a platform that meets an increasingly important need in our industry."
Communications Platform
The Advisor Group also plans to introduce MyCMO, a multichannel communications platform for advisors to use in building personalized marketing campaigns for clients and prospects, over the next few weeks.
"Studies over the years have consistently proven that the top reason clients fire their advisors is poor communication," said CMO Susan Theder, in a statement."That's why we built MyCMO — to empower advisors to send the kinds of communications they have always wanted, but never had the time to do."
