In Challenging Conventional Wisdom, Evan Simonoff writes about how the financial services industry is changing. Though the article starts off somewhat funny :

Evan Simonoff on conferences:

…self-congratulation leavened with pompous platitudes about the noble public service provided by their businesses, culminating with a bunch of guys presenting awards to each other and telling each other how great they are.

The article does turn serious and has quite a few insights that were gathered at the conference. There is quite a bit of hard data presented in the meat of the article. Some of it is interesting and some not.

If you only have a few minutes the good stuff is at the bottom. Basically it says that RIA’s are thriving while traditional brokers are not. There are several comments from ordinary people that try to get at the heart of the issue.

I can sum it up for you, Advisors have more of a relationship with their clients. It’s no surprise to me, money is a very personal topic. You are talking with people about their worth, goals and dreams they’re not buying a new dishwasher.

Most people like to know that you genuinely care about them and that you are on their side of the table, not just trying to sell them a product and move on to the next mark.