Agents and Agencies, Why You Need to Go RIA
Why Every Agent and Agency Should Move to the RIA Model
“Over the last few months I have noticed an accelerating sentiment in the agency arena. More and more firms are hearing from their agents questions about the RIA model. Entering the RIA space is a natural move for both these firms and agents and this is why:
Securing your business: The agent model is staring at substantial changes on the event horizon. Preempting regulatory scrutiny by moving to the RIA platform hedges the agent practice in a number of ways. As the Fiduciary Standard marches closer to implementation, it only makes sense to choose your path to the Fiduciary side of the business now. This way when the industry is bound to move, you are already ahead of the game and compliant. Until everyone is a fiduciary, it is also a powerful competitive advantage. Entering the RIA space also gives your practice increased flexibility when it comes to servicing your clients. This will also give you long-term protection against Source of Funds legislation that could jeopardize 1035s altogether. Rather than reacting, as much of the industry did in response to 151A, entering the fiduciary fee-based business is a strategic proactive decision.
Diversifying your business: As an RIA you are capable of soliciting securities investments from your clients, in addition to the Life and Annuity business you already do. This enables you to service clients’ entire portfolios and increases your value to them. Considering annuity cases are just beginning to be declined, the Agent who has diverse solutions for their clients stands to maintain a competitive advantage over less dimensioned competitors. As a result of your total service, you will be able to better identify client objectives and how to fulfill them. Happy clients are the hotbed of referrals.
Recapitalize Your Book of Sales: Fiduciaries are obliged to always act in their clients’ best interest. Successful agents already have a book of clients whom they correctly identified a solution for and made the sale in the past. Simply by going back to your existing clients and examining their situation today as a fiduciary will give you substantial opportunity to capture fee-based securities business in addition to new appropriate product based solutions. This conversion, from book of sales to book of business, is one of the greatest wealth creation opportunities in the market today.
Early Adopter’s Advantage: Getting into the RIA space is not a new idea. Even though the trend is not young, it is still accelerating everyday. RIAs that can bring to market premium solutions today can absolutely compete with the best the of the wirehouse advisors. Correctly positioning your practice as a fiduciary with the best solutions from across the dimensions of financial planning, you will enjoy substantial competitive advantage over your competitors that is not based solely on exclusive access to products. Something that is simply not the case in the agency model today.
The result of taking your practice to the RIA model is a competitive simple multidimensional client focused practice that is staged for long-term success.”
SimplyRIA’s solutions were built specifically to help you capture this very opportunity. How so? Our turnkey solutions are the fastest in the industry, helping expedite your ability to solicit securities based business. Our solutions go beyond just registration and licensing. We can also provide your business access to online marketing dominance, tangible premium print collateral, and premier turnkey asset management systems to help you focus on asset gathering not compliance or asset management.
Originally published on Linkedin by Jasnik Parmar, Director of Institutional Sales.