Financial Marketing and Cross Selling Blog
The future of financial advice and why banks are well positioned to be the leaders
In a recent American Banker article, “New Rules of Retirement Advice Get Mixed Reviews”, Lydell Bridgeford discusses the Department of Labor’s new regulation plans on how financial services firms that act as plan fiduciaries can provide investment advice to their plans participants.
The new regulations allow participants to receive investment advice through a computer model certified as unbiased. The idea is to create a regulatory environment where financial services firms could provide advice to plan participants in a way that doesn’t conflict with their own interests.
These new regulations were introduced back on January 21st but put on hold by the Obama administration to allow further review. The original launch date was set for March 23rd but it’s now set for May 23rd. Many suspect that senior Obama officials and Democratic senators are going to try and reverse some of the Bush-era regulations in the Pension Plan Act of 2006.
But according to Alan Vorchheimer, principal at Buck Consultants in New York, he’s not so sure these new regulations will help plan participants to have access to investment advice. He believes many fiduciary advisers will see the annual audits and compliance ensuring the advice being provide is unbiased as burdensome and won’t choose to provide such a computer system to participants.
How does this go in favor of banks? Simple, unlike plan providers, banks don’t care which product their customers eventually choose. There is no conflict of interest what so ever leaving the investment advice and education window wide open for banks to provide. And studies show that many consumers are more open to receiving messages from... Read More >>
Succeeding in a down market…Texas style
A big focus for us at Truebridge is filtering out the bad news and focusing on the positives. In doing so, we recognize that there’s a lot we can learn from the mistakes that have been made by the larger financial firms, but when you brush all those aside, you expose a whole universe of individuals and institutions that have remained strong by sticking to their tried and true business practices.
Recently we highlighted a few stories that the media has covered over the past couple months about banks. Here’s a story about an individual working inside a community bank in Texas.
Today the American Banker highlighted a Texas rep whose production grew 300% in the past two years, which is triple the industry average.
Brian Surovik is a financial advisor at Lone Star Bank in College Station, TX. The tag line for this bank reads, “Financial services… Texas Style”. When I think of the Texas culture, I think of cowboys, BBQ’s and line dancing. However, I’m also reminded of the southern hospitality that asks you to slow down, take a break and chat with your neighbor. This style fits perfectly with financial services and Brian is one who takes it to heart.
Over the past few... Read More >>
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