Some highlights from the last week:

• Schwab reduced their new account minimums.
• Pershing’s RIA Unit launches Ideas Without Limits program to teach advisors how to grow or sell their practices.
• Financial Advisor Magazine discovers that the new Oil ETFs aren’t tracking to the actual price of crude oil. They try to explain why.
• Morningstar tells us How a Fund’s Expense Ratio Can Predict Its Success, emphasizing again why fund expense ratios should be their main criteria for comparison, even more than past performance.
• Naviplan wasn’t ready for Vista.

Have a nice weekend!

If you have not been following this series of articles, you should. It gives some great insight on the struggles of running a financial planning firm. The series starts when the firm was in a home in March of 2006 and goes through technology issues, software selection and even a merger.

It’s interesting to talk to different Advisors and see how they decided to grow their business. Since successful entrepreneurs (including Independent Advisors) tend to be a-type personalities, they all have their take on what it takes to be successful, how to grow the business and the right way to do financial planning. All the successful ones are right.

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Many firms do not contemplate the legal requirements when they consider outsourcing any part of their operations. There are many regulations that must be considered and should be asked of any outsourcing provider and guaranteed in writing.

Regulations that must be considered include the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Sarbanes-Oxley, various SEC and NASD requirements, Basel II, Gramm-Leach Bliley Act, and many others. For the sake of this article I am going to keep to security requirements and record keeping requirements.

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Investment News has an interesting article about Anna Nicole Smith’s will. It contains a few interesting details that I hadn’t heard in the multi-week all-channel news coverage surrounding her death.

This why you should update your will often:

Surprisingly, her will stated that she “intentionally omitted to provide for my spouse and other heirs, including future spouses and children.” That provision shocked many attorneys and advisers.

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Last week was a busy one for the CFP Board. They finally hired a new full-time CEO who — one assumes — will oversee their move to Washington DC, in addition to his normal duties:

The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, a nonprofit organization that grants the CFP credential for financial advisors in the U.S., today named Kevin R. Keller, as its chief executive, effective May 1. He replaces interim CEO Don I. Tharpe.

Keller served for 16 years at the 16,000-member Association for Financial Professionals, the last seven years as senior vice president and chief operating officer, where he was instrumental in enhancing and expanding the AFP’s Certified Treasury Professional credential.

The CFP Board hopes that Keller will work the same magic in his new role by increasing the “status, visibility, respect and credibility” of its Certified Financial Planner designation, a major professional credential held by about 55,000 financial planners, stockbrokers and others nationwide.

Not a surprise really, in the partial survey results released by Managed Objects most IT executives expect a few hours of downtime this year. The interesting piece of information is that there is a disconnect between senior executives and IT executives. 70% Senior executives expect no meaningful failures while 54% of IT executives expect no meaningful failures.

While those numbers are for big companies (>$1 Billion in revenue) the same pattern exists in smaller companies. It’s important to recognize that failures are going to happen, they happen to companies of all size and your IT infrastructure is critical to your business.

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I’m spending my day watching the Gonzales “Attorneygate” hearing. So instead of a big post, let me throw out a few things that caught my eye in my feeds:

• The CFP Board’s Giant Step Forward - John Ritter, CFP praises the CFP Board for adopting a fiduciary responsibility requirement for all CFPs.
• Investment Advisor Magazine announced their annual awards for the best separate account managers. They mention a 24.8% increase in SMA assets.
• Morningstar acquired S&P’s mutual fund research business for $55 million. Meh. That’s over the $50 million HSR limit that requires them to file with the DoJ. I wonder if there was an investigation. (Can you tell I’m watching the AG hearing while I’m writing this?)
• The readership of Investment News, 2 to 1, does NOT think that Don Imus should have been fired.
• The CIO of PIMCO thinks the bad housing market is going to drive interest rates down.

On the Gonzales front, it looks like he’s going with the “extreme incompetence” defense. Wow Schumer just said he wasn’t in control of his department and asked him to step down. Points out that Gonzales is answering virtually all questions with “I don’t recall.” Wow! Specter just did the same thing and he’s a friggin’ Republican. Leahy’s piling on.

They just ended the hearing early due to their overwhelming disgust with Gonzales’ testimony. Gonzales is walking out and you can hear people in the background singing, “Sha na naaa na, hey hey hey, Good bye.”

Tough room.

Andy Gluck responds to to a growing sentiment among industry pundits that the dream of all-in-one software is dead. He buys into the dogma but holds out hope that we’ll see a new version of all-in-one software via Web 2.0:

Instead of one company developing a workstation that includes all three applications crucial to running an advisory firm, Web-based PMS, CRM and financial planning vendors are exchanging data through Web services. … Keep in mind, a Web service is far superior to imports and exports of data from one application to another. Imports and exports require manual processes. Web services can happen automatically. Without much difficulty, Web services can provide live, real-time integration. When data changes in your data-provider’s application, it could automatically be updated in real-time in other applications without any manual intervention.

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I’ve seen it coming ever since the CFP Board elected well-known Washington insider Sarah Teslik as their CEO. The CFP Board intends to get more involved in influencing federal politics. They’re really getting serious about it, announcing today that they’re leaving Denver and moving to Washington DC:

From the article:

The move, which will take place over the next few months, represents the CFP Board’s increased focus on regulatory matters as they relate to the financial planning industry, according to a statement released today.

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Everybody has probably heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech that killed 31 people. I attended Tech in the nineties, lived in Major Williams dorm and had several classes in Norris Hall, where most of the deaths happened. My heart goes out to all the current students and the family and friends of all the students who were injured or killed today.

• USA Today Blog With Constant Updates
• Wikipedia Article on Virginia Tech Shootings
• YouTube Cell Camera Video
• Eyewitness Reports From Shootings

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