by Andrew Gluck
3/1/2010 10:32:00 PM
Last Friday’s webinar with Charles Epstein, the 401(k) Coach, was a big hit, as you can see from the comments from attendees shown below. 
Epstein is a financial advisor who achieved success in the 401(k) business, so much success that he started a coaching program that has trained about 1,200 advisors. He’s also one of our featured bloggers on Advisors4Advisors.
Epstein is a pragmatist and offered real world wisdom that advisors appreciated. GoToWebinar, the tool we use for running these sessions, indicated that every single one of the attendees was “highly interested” in Epstein’s presentation. I can’t recall any other speaker who was able to hold the interst of the audience as well as Epstein.
Epstein’s session is available for replay at Advisor Products and on Advisors4Advisors.
Epstein provided a handout that can be used by fiduciaries to conduct an meeting with a plan sponsor that is a prospect, and it can be downloaded by members of A4A in the Advisor Rewards section of your profile.
Epstein will be doing another webinar in April or May. What did you think of the webinar? How can we improve it?
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Very good overview of the 401k market for advisors. I like it when speaker provides resources like he did. Would like to see more on how to market services to companies.
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More events with Mr. Epstein
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Outstanding. Short and to the point. Thank you for taking the questions.
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I thought it to be great information
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It was good. I am interested in hearing from someone experienced in fiduciary plans the top shelf plans where advisors take on ERISA 3-38.
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Interesting topic and completely new to me
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A transcript, available upon request by an attendee, would help a great deal.
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Good
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Excellent webinar.
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Very good session...only complaint is he went a little fast, but the slides and a replay is available so it is no big deal. Thanks very much.
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It was excellent, and I especially appreciated your allowing download of slides. I wish I had known throughout the presentation however, because I was feverishly writing down each slide!
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I really like your webinars. If I could change anything, it would be to keep them to an hour. I don't know how you do this because I don't think there is a lot of wasted time, but I personally struggle with the dual desires of wanting to continue learning and also moving on to the next, scheduled thing. This is fairly minor but I would prefer they be a little shorter.
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Make a CD of the audio
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Great Information.
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I think it was very good. Thanks for coordinating and brininging important topics to us RIA's.
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Excellent topic. Presenter moved a little fast and glossed over a few complex topics.
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Sensational amount of information packed into an hour. Great job with the questions at the end of the program, Andy. They were delivered clearly, and you moved the answers right along without letting the speaker get bogged down.
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I liked it.
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Very good webinar. Good topic!
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I liked it. It was helpful.
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Very informative. Discussion included many topics I was not aware of especially fiduciary responsibility issues for the advisor to a plan.
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Very good. Always like more take away, actionable items to implement. Not always just a sales pitch to sign up for a new program.
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I appreciated the information. I would be interested in hearing the additional portions of the 401k Coach program on A4A.
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Great timing for me since I am entering this service area.
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Very informative
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Good info & resources. Would like to hear Part 2 from Charlie (the remaining 3 steps)
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This was a great webinar. Moderation intro was a little too long and slow
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Very good and any process template or handouts would be appreciated
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Spectacular. Thank you so much.
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Awesome good information. Sometimes it is helpful to identify those things that "you don't know you don't know" and then provide resources to fill in the gaps.
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Bring back for steps 4,5,6
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Charlie is terrific!
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Terrific very informative insightful and useful
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Sometimes Charles moved onto a slide before giving the audience time to process what was on the slide. Being able to download the slides before the presentation would have been helpful
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It moved very fast for me since I'm not active in this part of the business now, but it was a great presentation.
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There was a lot to cover. Better to sometimes just commit to a 90 minute program. Thanks.
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I thought it was informative. He had to fly through his slides, so I feel like I need to go back and look at them again.
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Give and take questions
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The audio was in and out and when I called the # the password was invalid it said.
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Great questions Andy
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by Andrew Gluck
2/28/2010 11:42:00 AM
Advisor Products has moved. Our new address is:
333 Jericho Turnpike
Suite 333
Jericho, NY 11753
Our phone number remains the same at (516) 333-0066 or (888) 274-5755.
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by Andrew Gluck
2/21/2010 4:58:00 PM
For advisors going independent, producing monthly or quarterly performance reports is unfamiliar ground.
Without a documenting the process and choosing a technology platform to implement a system, performance reporting can be overwhelming.
Advisors4Advisors, a practice management portal for independent advisors that I started about six month ago, recently produced a webinar to help brokers making the transition to independence and who have never before had to use portfolio-reporting software and manage the delivery of performance reports to clients.
Two seasoned executives from Orion Advisor Services were our guest presenters for the session. Orion is a portfolio reporting services that is used by about 200 independent advisory firms. The firm got its start in 1999. Originally the system was built by CLS Investments, which manages about $3 billion in assets, to produce client performance reports and then it was offered as a product that could be used by other RIAs.
Bill Wostoupal, the head of business development, and Randy Lambert, who runs operations at Orion, did a great job of explaining the performance reporting process RIAs must go through without making it sound like a commercial for Orion.
They also came up with a template process and worksheet that new RIAs can use to develop reporting procedures internally. The template process and worksheet is useful to RIAs no matter what portfolio reporting system you use.
The process Orion provides is a template that you can adapt to your needs, and the worksheet makes it easy for you to document the process and embed it in your CRM system. If you embed your firm’s performance reporting process in your CRM system and assign staff to each step in the workflow, then your firm will be more efficient. Staff will be held accountable and reporting tasks will not be dropped or handled improperly.
Members of Advisors4Advisors can down download the Performance Reporting Workflow Worksheet for free.
You can view a replay of the session here.
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by Andrew Gluck
2/6/2010 4:24:00 PM
Bob Keebler killed at yesterday’s session of the Financial Advisor Webinar Series. Attendees who filled in our post-webinar survey with ratings and comments on the session raved.
Keebler over the past decade has established himself as the premier educator of financial professionals on IRAs.
While he lacks the showmanship of other IRA experts, Keebler is great at making IRA esoterica understandable. He does not try to make things simple but clearly explains the arcane.
Keebler received the highest rating of any speaker since we started the weekly webinar series in October 2008. With five being the best score, attendees gave the webinar overall a 4.7 rating, and that was dragged down ratings on my performance as moderator. Keebler’s rating, without mine factored in, was an astounding 4.8!
In fairness to all of the other presenters that have come before Keebler, advisors are incredibly critical. No matter what we do on these sessions, some attendees complain.
If we go beyond one hour to take questions, some attendees ream me out in the surveys for letting the sessions go long. If we don’t take many questions because we want to end on time, I get an earful from some attendees about that.
Even Keebler, who was obviously great, got some flak for speaking too fast, and several attendees several attendees actually gave him a rating of 1.
What this demonstrates is that some advisors are really nuts. They complain no matter what you do for them.
On the other hand, more than half of the advisors on the session took the time to fill our post-webinar survey and the vast majority gave us great ratings. And the fact that a small handful of advisors found something to give us poor ratings is not all bad. At least they care enough about what we’re doing to express an opinion.
If you’re a member of Advisors4Advisors, you can get CFP Continuing Education by viewing a replay of the session. If you’re not a member, you can view it (with no CE credit) at the Advisor Products webinar page.
I’d ask one favor of you: We have plans to automate the attendee ratings from the post-webinar survey to feed the ratings module in A4A, but we’ve not gotten to it yet. If you’re one of the 1,500 members of the A4A community, please take a minute to go to the Events page on A4A and rate the Keebler webinar and any other sessions you’ve attended.
Below are comments attendees gave us on Keebler’s session, in answering the question, “What could we do to improve the webinar?
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Good topic and good presentation - thanks!
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Excellent
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Excellent! Great info!
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Excellent
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The content was excellent, but you should have allowed more time & had Bob speak in more depth about various of the issues
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Don't change a thing.
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Very informative
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Excellent. All excellent material that I can use to communicate with clients
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Thank you
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This particular webinar was very helpful. However, in other webinars (last week's) this survey form did not populate at the close. Therefore, in order to receive CE credit, I must call in or email advisors4advisors the following week. This has been frustrating since it has happened multiple times. Improvements here would be much appreciated!
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Great seminar. The best one I have heard on this topic by far.
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How to market this concept?
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Very useful. This will be a bigger topic than many advisors realize this year.
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Liked it, very helpful
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I think it is really excellent. Perhaps being ab;e to access the slides as soon as the webinar begins would be great it was hard to keep up at times
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I thought the webinar was great and there's nothing that comes to mind to improve it.
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Great webinar, extremely useful, looking forward to receiving the two-pager.
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Excellent!
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I thought it was very good and put together well. My only issue is that it went by so fast. I will probably have to listen to it again once you get it online.
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Great information!
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Awesome. This helped me raise the bar on evaluating CPA quality!
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Very in-depth discussion. I think the opportunity to print out the front/back handout in advance of the webinar might have helped. It would have been good to be able to read.
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Very good...Bob is a little fast in delivery.
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Absolutely, wonderfully informative.
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Splendid. No suggestions.
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Wow! May be the most relevant subject and best speaker possible. Excellent info. I have attended many of your webinars the past year and found this one and the Don Phillips webinar last Feb to be the best. Thanks for making this available.
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This was one of if not the best webinar I have attended on advisors for advisors.
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Bob did a great job of answering specific questions. He went well beyond the basics which have been outlined many times. Nice work!
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Great job
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Honestly....a little hard to keep up but I'll download the presentation....thanks.
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You might consider posting the handout, in addition to the slides, prior to the start of the webinar. Overall, time well-spent! Thank you.
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Every time I listen to a presentation on ROTH conversions I pick up new information
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It was great, a real eye opener on Roth conversions.
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Great speaker
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This was the best ever. Bob Keebler was the sharpest, most knowledgeable presenter you have ever had. My head is still swimming.
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Have Bob speak again-Great Webinar!!!
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Very informative
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Great presentation and useful material. More info on case studies will be handy as I visit with clients down the road.
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Good topic. thanks.
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Great Seminar. Thanks Andy!
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I'm a CPA/PFS and not a CFP. Can I get CPE credit for these webinars?
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One of the best yet, but too many questions..
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Excellent, thank you for allowing it to run over for questons.
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Awesome!
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Very knowledgeable speaker
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Difficult to cover it all on this topic. Nice job though.
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I have heard several presentations on htis issue and this was the best in terms of being understandable and detailed at the same time.
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It was a great overview of all concepts regarding the topic.
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I thought it was great. One of the best sessions on ROTHs and conversions I've listened to. Bob is very knowledgeable and I'm sure I'll go listen to the replay when questions hit me in the middle of the night! Thanks again!
by Andrew Gluck
1/31/2010 1:11:00 PM
At a recent session of the Financial Advisor Webinar Series, Mike Williams of Schwab Performance Technologies (SPT) talked about what developments in PortfolioCenter and PortfolioServices.
While we usually don’t invite vendors to talk about their products at our webinars, we made an exception because Schwab is so influential; SPT is used by 3,300 advisory firms and its parent provides custodial services to 6,000 RIAs.
Despite allotting 25 minutes for questions, attendees at the session had more questions than Williams could answer. So we passed along to Williams the unanswered questions chatted in by attendees. In this post, Williams answers those questions.
Do you use ByAll Accounts to connect to custodians that you do not have direct interfaces with?
Yes. Both our PortfolioCenter and PortfolioServices products can leverage ByAllAccounts to acquire account information from financial institutions with which there is no available direct data feed.
When will the custom report enhancements you talked about at the webinar be available?
The first general release of the new report presentations will be in mid-2010. Subsequent releases will occur later this year and throughout 2011.
For the new graphical reporting: will a PortfolioCenter user need the Enhanced Reporting Module (ERM), and what is the cost of the ERM for a current PC user?
Yes, the new report presentations require a PortfolioCenter Enhanced license. The Enhanced Reporting Module is $1,500 year one and carries an annual maintenance fee of $500. Please contact SPT Sales at (800) 528-9595, option 2 for further information.
To see answers to 12 other questions, please sign into www.advisors4advisors.com.
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by Andrew Gluck
1/26/2010 12:29:00 AM
Guidelines issued by FINRA yesterday governing how registered reps use social media websites are constructive but highlight the challenge regulators face in structuring advertising rules that keep up with technology.
One can only cheer the suddenly enlightened view of FINRA in releasing the Notice. FINRA has stood silent for several years while social networking exploded. As the FINRA release points out, 46% of American internet users logged on to a social networking site in 2009.
With FINRA issuing no guidance as social media exploded in popularity in recent years, registered reps were absent from the online scene out of fear that they would break undefined rules. So FINRA in to be commended for finally bringing some clarity to this issue.
Where the guidelines go wrong and muddle the rules, however, is in an effort to distinguish “static” and “non-static” content.
To read the rest of my post, please sign up for membership at Advisors4Advisors.
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by Andrew Gluck
1/15/2010 3:04:00 PM
When I was in graduate school in 1978, one of the members of Monty Python Flying Circus was a guest lecturer at journalism school. He was there to talk about a parody paper he published called Not The New York Times. It was an exact replica of the real newspaper, but it was all fake news.
That summer, Pope Paul VI died and was succeed by Pope John Paul I, who died 33 days after being elected. This led the faux paper to write a fake news story saying the third Pope that month, "John Paul John Paul," died 18 minutes after he was elected. "Pope Dies Yet Again," read the headline, "Reign is Briefest Ever," said the subtext, which added, "Cardinals Return From Airport."
I am not sure whether the speaker was Graham Chapman or John Cleese. But I do remember clearly that he told us that the fake New York Times was a new business idea called custom publishing. "Someday, there will be a magazine called 'Fred,'" he said, "dedicated solely to people named Fred."
That line about Fred magazine has always stuck in my mind. As ridiculous as it sounded, the idea of personalized publishing tantalized me.
Thirty-two years later, I can tell you that Advisor Products is making that prediction a reality.
Client Portals from Advisor Products lets an advisor create a personal electronic newsletter for each individual client. You can profile each client as retiree, pre-retiree, or business owner, and you can choose from a list of topics that would interest each client from our list of 100 wealth management topics.
Those two settings determine which stories from Advisor Products' proprietary content library of hundreds of articles will appear on the client's personal web page. Those settings also filter the topics of wealth management articles we do not write but that we allow into the client's personal portal.
In addition, you can bring in RSS feeds about entertainment, sports, health, food, and myriad other topics from other websites.
Personalizing financial articles is only one small part of the Client Portal platform. It also integrates with many CRM, financial planning, and performance reporting applications and includes a personal vault for each client. To learn more, call us at 516 333-0066 ext. 223.
by Andrew Gluck
1/12/2010 11:04:00 PM
The tragic events in Haiti are being recorded and reacted to live on Twitter. To see the live feed, click here.
Text YELE to 501501 to give $5 for earthquake relief in haiti. Your cell phone will be charged $5.
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by Andrew Gluck
1/10/2010 8:40:00 PM
At the Financial Advisor Webinar Series on December 11, Ben Norquist of Convergent Retirement Plan Solutions delivered a presentation that was highly rated by attendees about how advisors can seize the 2010 Roth IRA conversion opportunity.
Norquist showed a simple web-based application he developed that makes it easy for advisors to calculate complex conversion scenarios to show the net benefit of conversion.
The tool's strength is that it allows you to dynamically on-the-fly change variables affecting a client's conversion options. The variables include future tax rates, the amount of cash available to pay income taxes incurred on the withdrawal of assets being converted from traditional IRAs or qualified plans, the monthly withdrawals of the IRA owner for living expenses, what you'll earn on a traditional IRA that's not converted, required minimum distributions on the traditional IRA, and the amount left for beneficiaries.
While the software is a one-trick pony and is only good for Roth IRA conversion calculations, the opportunity to advise on Roth IRA conversions justifies the software’s $600 perpetual license fee. I don't believe any of the financial planning applications can make these dynamic calculations and illustrations on the fly, making it a great app to work with live in front of clients.
To receive CFP CE credit for this session and dozens of other webinars, please join Advisors4Advisors.
You can also see a replay of the session (without getting CE credit) at the Financial Advisor Webinar Series page on Advisor Products’ website.
At Norquist's session, we had more questions from attendees than we could answer. So Norquist sent me answers to some of the questions we did not have time for. Below are four of the 15 questions he sent me answers for. To see the rest of the Q&A, please join Advisors4Advisors.
Q: Does the five-year rule apply to distributions made from Roth Conversions after age 59½?
A: No. The five-year rule that applies specifically to Roth IRA conversion assets is only pertinent in situations where an individual under age 59½ takes a distribution of conversion assets within five years of the conversion transaction.
Q: Can an individual with a 401(k) plan convert even if he is still employed? Must the plan allow for in-service distributions? If allowed, can this be converted directly into a Roth IRA or must it first go into a traditional IRA?
A: A 401(k) participant can potentially take a distribution of 401(k) assets for Roth conversion purposes provided the plan he is covered under contains some type of in-service withdrawal provision. If an individual is able to request an "eligible rollover distribution" from his 401(k) plan, he can elect to roll over (i.e., "convert") the distribution directly to a Roth IRA without first going through a traditional IRA. (If the 401(k) distribution occurred during 2009, the individual would be subject to the $100,000 income restriction on Roth IRA conversions.)
Q: Can you address re-characterization options if the market should go down after the point of conversion?
A: The re-characterization option basically allows you to "rewind" a Roth IRA conversion and treat the transaction as if it never happened. In situations where the market value of your IRA assets declines following a Roth IRA conversion, the re-characterization option can provide you with the opportunity to undo your original conversion, thereby avoiding an income tax liability on the value of the assets at the time of original conversion. It should be noted that you cannot re-convert the same assets until the latter of a) January 1 following the year of original conversion, or b) 30 days following the date of re-characterization.
Q: What about the impact of estate taxes on Roth IRAs as Income in Respect of a Decedent?
A: Both traditional IRA assets and Roth IRA assets are included in a decedent's overall estate when assessing potential estate tax liability. Part of the beauty of Roth IRA conversion is that, by paying taxes up front, an individual is able to reduce the overall value of his or her estate, thereby potentially decreasing the amount of estate tax liability. While it is true that the beneficiaries of deceased traditional IRA holders are potentially eligible to take subsequent tax deductions due to Income in Respect of a Decedent (IRD), some financial planning professionals believe it is often more beneficial to reduce the aggregate estate tax liability rather than depending on recouping taxes over a period of years through the IRD deduction.
by Andrew Gluck
1/8/2010 12:05:00 PM
Advisor Products’ Quarterly Market Summary becomes available Monday for the fourth quarter of 2009.
QMS is a comprehensive analysis of activity in stock and bond markets and examines a range of asset classes.
It is utilized as a companion piece with quarterly performance reports provided by RIAs.
Written by a veteran financial reporter and edited by one of the nation’s leading financial editors, QMS is delivered to subscribers as an eight-page Microsoft Word document 10 days after the end of every quarter. You can cut, paste, and edit QMS to fit your needs.
Each quarterly release of QMS typically covers performance of:
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S&P 500 large cap stocks
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Russell 2000 small cap stocks
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Growth versus value stocks
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Corporate earnings
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Foreign stocks
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Emerging markets
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U.S. Dollar versus Euro
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Fixed income markets
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Two versus 10-year Treasurys
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Corporate bonds
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Economic growth
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Fed interest rate policy
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U.S. Retail sales
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Consumer confidence
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Unemployment
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Consumer Price Index
Because of the time sensitive nature of the content, QMS is submitted for review by FINRA only after it is distributed to RIAs. Registered reps, therefore, should consult with their broker/dealer about its use.
QMS is priced at $1,200 for a one year subscription, and can be ordered by submitting this form.
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