Are Financial Advisors Worth Their Fees?
The short answer is, “it depends”. The “financial advisor” that sells you an expensive annuity with an undisclosed $20,000 front end commission and then has a hard time returning your phone calls is clearly not worth what you unknowingly paid him or her. But according to multiple studies, most financial advisors are worth multiple times what you pay them. […]
Don’t Be Martha
At Vintage we aren’t licensed life insurance agents but we still sometimes get e-mails targeted to the commission based agents. This one pitches the fat commissions available for taking advantage of poor Martha, a 66-year-old woman with an extra $90,000 in the bank. It suggests that the agent can pitch Martha on turning her $90,000 […]
Vintage One of Just Five
Vintage was again named to the Financial Time’s FT 300 list, a national ranking of the country’s top Registered Investment Advisory firms. The average firm this year managed over $4 billion for their clients. This year only five firms from Michigan were named to the prestigious ranking. See the article and list at Financial Times. […]
Wall Street Wins, Investors Lose
Earlier this month the SEC approved new, long awaited regulations on investment advisors and brokers and how they work with their clients. While there has been a major push by investors and many investment advisors for a fiduciary standard for all advisors, the new SEC rules further confuse the differences between salespersons and fiduciary advisors. […]
The Rule That Would Help Investors—Won’t
The new Department of Labor rule to protect investors was supposed to go into effect today. It would require any financial advisor giving you advice or selling you products for your retirement accounts to put your interests first and act as a fiduciary. But it didn’t happen. The DoL has spent the past seven years […]
Investor Protection Rule Gets Trumped
Less than two weeks after taking office, President Trump directed the Department of Labor to review implementation of a new rule to protect investors. The DoL’s fiduciary rule, first proposed in 2010, would require brokers, insurance agents, financial planners and others that give financial advice on retirement plans to put their client’s interests first. Wall […]
Frank Quoted in New York Times
Frank Moore was quoted in the New York Times in October in an article titled, Red-Flag Time: Your Broker Offers a Can’t-Miss Sales Contest. The article discussed how it is difficult for consumers to determine whether or not to trust their financial advisor. Frank shared one of the recent cases we’ve seen where brokers sell […]
Is it Time to Trust Brokers?
The big Wall Street brokerage firms/banks seem to run in a cycle of abusing their customers until there’s a crisis or crash and then facing additional regulation aimed at putting a stop to their less than ethical activities. The more recent examples followed the dot com crash in 2000-02 when the NASDAQ stock index fell […]
What’s Fee Only?
In the financial planning profession there is a small minority of planners that refer to themselves as “fee only”. No one wants to pay fees so why would they promote themselves like this? Fee only refers to the way that advisors are compensated. It isn’t in addition to commission based compensation so it isn’t […]
Financial Advisor Compensation Conflicts
In the financial services industry there are different types of financial advisors with different regulators and different compensation structures. Financial advisors or planners are typically regulated by the SEC, FINRA and/or the state insurance commissioner. Those regulated by the SEC can charge fees while FINRA and insurance licensed advisors are paid via commissions. Some advisors […]
