Broker-Dealer vs. Registered Investment Advisor

Download your FREE copy of Broker-Dealer vs. Registered Investment Advisor: Understanding What Will Work Best for Your Financial Practice.

Do you think you know what an RIA offers in comparison to your broker dealer? There’s more to learn.

Traditionally, if you planned to buy and sell investments and you were going to earn a commission, you needed to be affiliated with a broker-dealer who could facilitate the transaction and pay out the commission. But today’s consumers want more — they are looking for true holistic financial planning and guidance.

Enter the full-service RIA model that offers more flexibility and allows customization of services to each client relationship. And while broker-dealers provide firms with a structure and a network of solutions, some ways of doing business can be restrictive due to legacy:

• Many broker-dealers have decades built up with transactional registered products.
• If an advisor doesn’t maintain those relationships, they lose corresponding revenue.
• This revenue they would have to walk away from handcuffs them to the broker-dealer.

Advisors often choose to maintain their relationship with their broker-dealer because they haven’t been made aware of the scale and scope of the product offerings in today’s market.

“Almost all the products that are available at a broker-dealer are now also available through an RIA. The only difference is instead of getting a commission to sell them, the advisor would charge an advisory fee to offer those products.”

-Dave Alison, CFP®, EA, BPC, Owner of Alison Wealth Management

If you are looking to not be a cog in a massive broker-dealer machine and provide a different kind of client experience, but with all the resources you’re used to, it may be time to learn more about the RIA model.

Don’t get lost in the shuffle — Download the FREE guide, Broker-Dealer vs. Registered Investment Advisor, to learn more!