It doesn’t matter to us one way or another if the firms we support have broker/dealer relationships. However, since we provide an RIA to RIA agreement to each firm, should you decide that your business model requires you to keep a broker/dealer affiliation, then that broker/dealer must allow you to have your own outside RIA. In situations where advisors are dually registered with both the SEC and FINRA, we simply provide the broker/dealer with feeds and access to all relevant activities they need from an oversight standpoint. We can certainly provide thoughts to you if you’re currently reviewing broker/dealer options.
Each firm we support has one central point of contact here at FocusPoint who handles all of their day—to—day issues. This means the advisors who work with us enjoy the simplicity of not needing to deal directly with custodians. We have chosen to align with specific custodians because of the excellent service, support, leverage, and pricing they provide to advisors we support. Each year we conduct due diligence on these firms.
“As a traditional ensemble firm with over 20 years in the business, we could afford to bring on our own employees, but then we’d have to find the right people, make sure they were trained and had the right systems, supervise them, manage the human aspects that come with that type of a working relationship, create an investment committee, and more. Frankly, I don’t want the headaches that come with more people and systems.”
© Copyright 2008, FocusPoint Solutions and it's licensors. All rights reserved. (503) 445-1957.
