InvestmentNews posted an interesting piece yesterday covering 8 ways that wholesalers get blacklisted by advisors. There are some good things here, but they are probably best summed up by one comment: “Be a good business partner.”
 
Really, this is professional services selling 101 and the examples posted here should be obvious to anyone who has been in sales. The fact that InvestmentNews posted this shows people are still violating the fundamentals. Some might argue that this is a reason to rely on e-wholesaling. My take is that while there are many reasons to pursue an e-wholesaling strategy, it should not be the only distribution method of your wholesaling team. People are still important, but if your people cannot add value to the relationship they have with advisers, they are wasting your clients’ time and your money.

What do you think? What is the right balance between e-wholesaling and live reps?

Report: Practice Management Tools for Advisors

This report examines the sales topics and practice management materials available behind login on advisor sites. While firms frequently release sales ideas and find ways for advisors to sell their products, back-office issues frequently go ignored. Since practice management skills are essential for building a business, firms should take the time to provide advisors with tips for gaining and retaining clients, in addition to standard product-selling information.

To read more information, please visit our website.

Franklin Templeton updated their public and private sites about two weeks ago and our Mutual Fund Monitor clients were provided with information about it in the December 28, 2009 MFM Update. I thought our non-client readers might be interested in seeing the changes too and it’s a good way to show off what’s typically found inside one of our Mutual Fund Monitor Updates.

Here’s a preview of the preview: Franklin Templeton’s recent public and private sites changes added an investor-friendly private homepage that features account information and an updated navigational menu. Usability is also improved thanks to a new “I Am Here To” menu that provides quicklinks to key tools. Despite changes to the site’s appearance, most site content remains the same. Continue Reading »

As 2010 begins, we take a look back at the changes made across the financial services industry in the last month of 2009.

Of particular note, some credit card firms started to get into the holiday spirit with charity-focused giving initiatives and new tools were introduced across several industries.

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Like a trick-or-treater’s bag, heavy with an assortment of candy at the end of Halloween, this October offered a bit of everything…

Retirement gets social

After first launching a beta version in February 2008, TIAA-CREF made its retirement-focused online community, MyRetirement.org, publically available this month. MyRetirement is one of the broader online communities we have seen to date. Instead of focusing entirely on products, or featuring commentary exclusively from firm employees, TIAA-CREF provides customers with an open platform on which they can discuss retirement, as well as other topics of interest. TIAA-CREF’s decision to launch a beta version of the community was also significant; doing so allowed the firm to seed its discussion boards with user-generated content, meaning that when MyRetirement was officially opened, new users were able to join active conversations. Continue Reading »

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at the annual MFEA STAR awards in Chicago focusing on social media within the asset management industry. It was a lively discussion and a topic that is clearly on the minds of fund executives. Over the course of the day, there were a few recurring themes and issues, which I thought I’d highlight here as they are relevant to any financial firm exploring the social media waters: Continue Reading »

The big news for September revolves around Roth conversions. In the advisor realm, there was an influx of promotions surrounding the 2010 Roth conversion opportunity. A number of firms in our coverage groups are now supplying their advisors and brokers with new online marketing materials to help get ahead of the competition.

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July was a time for getting back to basics, it seems, as a number of firms introduced simplified or stripped-down versions of products. Credit card firms lead the way with changes from Bank of America, Wachovia and Wells Fargo.

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Fresh on the heels of our Mutual Fund Monitor Report on Online Security comes word out of the Black Hat security conference that ubiquitous page verification technology SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) may have some loopholes in the way it functions with Internet browsers.

Mutual fund firms will clearly wince at this news, as our report found that all 18 MFM companies employ SSL for security. The good news is that potential breaches such as these were discovered before they were nefariously implemented, so it gives security and browser developers a head start in plugging the holes.
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When we first reviewed financial services’ involvement in social media in our report, Social Media: Trends and Tactics in the Financial Services Industry, released in late 2008, we found that mutual fund firms were the slowest segment to accept social media into their marketing plans. In fact, none of the 24 total firms that we track for Mutual Fund Monitor and Advisor had even launched Twitter accounts at that time.

Recently, however, we’ve seen a definite shift towards a slow acceptance of social media, mainly in Twitter. As mentioned in a Corporate Insight blog post in May, Vanguard Blazes a Social Media Trail for Mutual Fund Firms, it was noted that Vanguard had just taken major strides in the mutual fund social media world by starting a blog, registering a Facebook page, and launching a Twitter account. We projected that we would see more of the same from other mutual fund firms. Continue Reading »

June was a busy month as firms, now well past the seasonal crunch of tax season and the radical market swings from earlier this year, made changes across the board, introducing new products and marketing campaigns, and some unique new tools as well. Continue Reading »