Maks - You aren’t serious are you?

Those firms support their RIA clients quite well.  They know we don’t care about their branch offices.  They don’t touch our clients and in fact WE have to give permission for the client to even trade their own account.

[quote=Moraen]Maks - You aren’t serious are you?

Those firms support their RIA clients quite well. They know we don’t care about their branch offices. They don’t touch our clients and in fact WE have to give permission for the client to even trade their own account.

[/quote]

I am fairly serious though. Fine, maybe not soooo much of Fidelity. But of Scottrade and Chuck. Fidelity’s money comes from advisor sales, but not for scottrade and schwab, where their main business model is going after retail, and they are going upmarket.

I have met several prospects who had millions at scottrade, and it was that much more of an uphill battle to differentiate between order taker and advisor.

Furthermore, have numerous friends working at TD and Schwab, and do know what they are being paid to do. Call up RIA and Wirehouse clients.

Here, take a look at these. When your client watches these commercials, what do they think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFM-m31y5HY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpvDKuUA5rY&NR=1

And some scottrade commercials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z-XoZeetC4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyyFPCxZSnI&NR=1 (someone greeting a person at the door, gee, that office looks nice.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwFvDmDz33o&feature=related

TD Ameritrade

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcsSZjIe5uE&NR=1 (investment consultants anytime you need them with no strings attached)

This is almost like sending out a referral to a CPA who also does investment management and financial planning. Sure, he does Taxes. but how sure are you that sometime down the road the cpa will not asking the client for the investment business too?

Lastly, they are still competing for your clients.... yet what are they doing to bring you clients?

At least I can say that that TradePMR, Interactive Brokers, Pershings, LPL and others are not going to go out there with commercials that can be even miscontrued as saying you dont need advisors, as advisor business is their business.