Practice management: archive
Every Practice management story in Advisors, newest first. 316 stories
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SEC prepares to ease pay-to-play rule on RIA donations
A $150 donation can sideline a firm from public pension business for two years; the SEC is moving to soften that math.
A $40 million book-reassignment suit is a disability-leave warning
The complaint against Morgan Stanley shows why advisors should put leave policies and accommodation requests in writing before surgery.
For the misengaged spouse, meeting format is the fix
A Nerd's Eye View post sees the quiet spouse's silence as a communication gap. Meeting structure is the fix.
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Succession planning drops as NextGen readiness lags
DeVoe & Company's 2024 talent report ties the succession decline to a next-generation bench under pressure.
Fidelity's free Portfolio Quick Check cuts the lag between data and conversation
The no-cost tool turns portfolio data into a client-ready report, and gives advisors back the time for the conversation that follows.
Fidelity's 69% wealth figure argues for two service tracks
Fidelity's 2026 outlook urges balance-sheet segmentation and argues AI's true payoff is time for the planning conversations high-net-worth clients value most.
Heavy AI users report gains that lighter users are missing
Fieldguide's survey of 400 professionals quantifies the AI adoption gap. Cerulli's data shows technology now decides where advisers move.
Betterment expands Solo 401(k) to advisor networks HUB and Osaic
A paperless, no-setup-fee Solo 401(k) brings the growing self-employed market into advisor workflows without the administrative drag.
A $4.1 million Trump Account projection gives advisors a birth-date opening
A Guardian report and a Bquest critique push the planning conversation from childhood savings into the spending years.
SEI adds Zocks' AI assistant to its advisor services lineup
The partnership targets the post-meeting administrative grind, and SEI's real investment is in advisor confidence.
Self-directed investors still hire advisers, Betterment survey finds
Betterment's survey numbers turn clients' own research and AI experiments into an opening for advisers.
MissionSquare's wealth push hands public-plan advisors a rollover rival
The plan provider behind $73.6 billion in public-sector assets is adding brokerage and robo accounts, competing for rollovers and household money.
Nonqualified deferred compensation takes over at the 401(k) ceiling
A niche plan for key employees gives fee-pressured advisors a product with no menu price.
Europe's wealth taxes split over what counts as wealth
A Tax Foundation map of Europe's 2026 wealth taxes shows Norway, Spain and Switzerland taxing total net wealth, while France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands hit only certain assets.
Schwab's 2025 RIA Benchmarking Study gives firms a yardstick
The 1,288-firm survey sets a comparative baseline for growth, pricing, and staffing. The data are self-reported and limited to Schwab-custodied firms; treat them accordingly.
California's billionaire tax leaves a ten-month residency gap
Advisors should ask California clients about domicile before the January 1 snapshot locks in.
NASAA tallies 1,650 senior-abuse probes as deepfake scams rise
The enforcement count hands RIA principals a number and a date to raise with clients.
The last mile of retirement is a spending problem
A new IRIC white paper makes the case for building spending permission into the plan, rather than hoping clients find it on their own.
The Labor Department's lost-and-found database locates forgotten retirement plans
The SECURE 2.0 search tool gives advisors a fresh annual-review ritual — just don't mistake a match for a payout.
Finra proposes a ten-day pause on suspicious account moves
Brokerages would gain a ten-day window to stop fraud. Advisors would need to explain the pause to a client.
FINRA proposes fresh list when arbitrator selections fail
A rule filing would replace random substitutions with a new list when the first round of arbitrator picks falls short.
Your website is the source ChatGPT cites most
Advisor-controlled pages account for 45% of ChatGPT's citations when it recommends an advisor, according to a new study.
Retire SMART's $800M book: 25% of revenue into marketing
An Omaha RIA built its book organically by treating educational marketing as a line item.
Vibe-coded tools are building on top of the advisor stack
A new Nerd's Eye View analysis finds that most advisor-built AI tools are supplements to existing platforms, not substitutes — and the build-versus-buy math has shifted less than the hype implies.
A three-person team runs $240 million on a meeting agenda
A two-sided meeting agenda, refined over 20 years, is the system behind a $240 million practice.
Most of the $124 trillion transfer lands with women
Seventy percent of women have never met an advisor; the first meeting is where the transfer's largest client block will be won.
YCharts folds Zephyr SMA data into proposals; Advyzon ships AI suite
Two upgrades inside existing platforms push RIAs to test built-in features against the tools they already run.
FINNY prices marketing on a share of the assets it wins
A $50 monthly platform fee plus a 20-basis-point asset charge makes marketing a recurring cost of growth.
Edward Jones's $5,000 digital pilot takes aim at the next generation
A salaried remote advisor and a 0.65% fee give the 20,500-broker firm a product for clients too small for a branch relationship.
RIAs push trust and estate in-house despite a thin advisor bench
The services are moving in-house faster than the advisor expertise to staff them, survey data suggest.
A new directory catalogs nearly 50 AI agents for advisors
The directory lists individual agents, so advisors can compare the tools buried behind vendor jargon.
Bloomberg's Canoe deal puts alts document automation in the advisor spotlight
RIAs and family offices now have a stake in how accurately AI reads alts documents — and in the humans who check the output.
AI note takers belong in the coaching workflow, ActiFi CEO says
Spenser Segal argues meeting-capture software should feed advisor coaching, not just compliance files, and prescribes a five-question test for real AI strategy.
Anthropic's auto mode previews the next test for AI governance
The approval-fatigue data behind Claude Code's auto mode show how RIAs will control automated client interactions.
Usage-based AI clauses are silently raising your next renewal
Wealthtech contracts are passing AI compute costs through to advisory firms, and the meter turns whether or not anyone uses the feature.
RMD season is the true test of an AI prompt
The latest AI Prompt Lab installment makes the case that seasonal batch emails need a fixed skeleton, per-client variables, and a compliance rail.