In this session, advisors will gain a comprehensive understanding of the SEC Marketing Rule (Rule 206(4)-1) and how to apply it to create effective, compliant marketing strategies. Compliance experts Joseph Antonakakis and Jeffrey Lang with discuss the foundational aspects of the Marketing Rule, including its history, scope, and key changes from prior regulations. Additionally, advisors will learn how to navigate complex requirements surrounding testimonials, endorsements, third-party ratings, and rankings, while understanding the necessary disclosures, accuracy standards, and best practices for each. By the end of the session, advisors will be equipped with practical strategies for balancing compliance with creativity, enabling them to enhance their marketing efforts while adhering to regulatory expectations and upholding their ethical duty to prospects and clients.
Client review meetings are one of the most powerful and underleveraged opportunities in a financial advisor's practice to demonstrate ongoing value, deepen relationships, and advance long-term financial plans. Yet without a clear framework, it's easy to default to routine investment updates and miss the opportunity to showcase the true depth of planning expertise. This common gap can leave clients undervaluing their advisor's services, slow the momentum of important planning recommendations, and make review meetings feel more transactional than transformational. This course gives financial advisors a practical, step-by-step approach to planning and leading client review meetings with confidence and intention. Advisors will learn how to build planning-centered agendas that go well beyond portfolio performance, prepare for and present common planning topics in ways clients actually understand, and facilitate conversations that build trust and inspire action. Through real-world examples and application-based learning, participants will develop the skills to walk into every review meeting prepared, professional, and ready to conduct planning-centered conversations that move clients forward and create the foundation for successful long-term financial plans.
This course offers a comprehensive examination of conflicts of interest specifically tailored for investment advisor representatives, emphasizing their identification, disclosure, and management to ensure adherence to ethical and regulatory standards. Through detailed exploration of various types of conflicts, including actual, potential, and perceived, the course provides real-world examples and scenarios commonly encountered in investment advisory practices. It covers the relevant regulatory frameworks and ethical codes of conduct, supplemented by interactive quizzes and case studies that reinforce learning and application in professional settings. The curriculum also includes best practices for transparent communication and the roles of compliance departments and ethics officers in mitigating conflicts. This structured educational approach is designed to enhance advisors' ability to maintain trust with clients while navigating complex ethical landscapes.
This course covers an area of increased SEC scrutiny – RIAs’ obligations to eliminate, mitigate or disclose conflicts of interest. It reviews common types of conflicts and the steps RIAs can take to prevent potential regulatory problems and the associated loss of client goodwill. It concludes with an evaluation of recent regulatory cases, focusing on different types of conflicts.
Completing continuing education is both a professional responsibility and an ethical imperative for investment adviser representatives. This course helps IARs understand why continuing education requirements exist, why it is an ethical obligation to remain up-to-date on industry knowledge, and how the system of continuing education laid out in the Model Rule on Continuing Education for Investment Adviser Representatives provides a framework for fulfilling this obligation. This coursealso covers the expectations for IAs and IARs regarding compliance and recordkeeping, statevariations in continuing education requirements, and how engaging constructively with continuingeducation benefits clients.
This presentation introduces a simple 4-step retirement income plan that helps advisors gain a deeper understanding of the client's attitudes toward lifestyle and legacy goals. Goal-based retirement planning provides a client-driven process that matches investment risk and financial product selection to spending. Moving beyond a traditional withdrawal strategy and failure rates demonstrates the need for spending adjustments and provides a framework for discussing products that reduce longevity risk. Through a better understanding of client preferences and a deliberate discussion of objectives and income tradeoffs, the goal-based income plan provides retirees with a deeper and more realistic understanding of how their investments relate to how they spend in retirement.. At this webinar, Professor of Wealth Management at The American College of Financial Services, Michael Finke, explains the practical implementation of a simple 4-step retirement income plan designed to help financial planners gain a deeper understanding of their clients' attitudes toward lifestyle and legacy goals.
Because advisory clients entrust investment advisers and their representatives with their financial
wellbeing, ethics play a pivotal role in the investment advisory industry. These professionals are
counted on to provide guidance and to carefully manage their clients’ investments. This comprehensive
course delves into the intricate world of investment adviser ethics, exploring the principles, regulations,
and standards that govern ethical behavior in the industry. With a focus on client-centricity, fiduciary
duty, conflicts of interest, disclosure requirements, and professional conduct, we will examine
the essential components of ethical practices for investment advisers and their representatives.
Furthermore, this course emphasizes the importance of upholding integrity and trust to foster long-term
relationships with clients and to ensure the overall integrity of the financial services industry.
In this session, learners will review two estate planning articles from the Nerd's Eye View blog by David Haughton, JD, CPWA: Creating Incentive Trusts To Foster Beneficiary Legacies Without Spoiling The Kids and Making Estate Planning More Tax Efficient And Equitable For Beneficiaries By NOT Just Splitting The Assets Evenly. Both articles examine how inherited assets may impact beneficiaries and how clients, with the assistance of their advisors, can be proactive by planning for the realities of future inheritances. In the first article, Haughton walks through the common ways decedents transfer assets to beneficiaries and explains how incentive trusts can be used to incentivize (or disincentivize) behaviors in accordance with their values, such as personal responsibility, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy. In the second article, Haughton discusses how clients commonly leave their beneficiaries equal amounts of each asset to be distributed as a way to split assets tax-efficiently and equitably. But Haughton suggests an alternative asset-by-asset approach that can be more effective, which considers the beneficiary's unique financial circumstances and that may result in a more equitable split of assets. This article explains the approach, its advantages and disadvantages, and when it may be a useful strategy for clients to adopt.