Date of Call
Operations Assessment
Firm Structure
What is the name of your firm?
Make sure this matches the HubSpot Record
Address
Street Address
Street Address Line 2
City
State / Province
Postal / Zip Code
What is your firm's website?
What is your preferred phone number?
Please enter a valid phone number.
What is your email address?
example@example.com
What is your firm's legal structure?
Please Select
LLC
S-Corp
C-Corp
Partnership
Other
Please describe your firm's legal structure. How is the entity taxed?
Who are your firm's owners?
Are all of the owners participants in the business?
Please Select
Yes
No
Do you have a broker dealer (BD) affiliation?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, please explain the BD affiliation.
If you are an IAR of a corporate BD, what is your advisory fee schedule?
Does the firm have any of the following financial industry affiliations?
Accounting Firm
Legal Firm
Bank or Trust
Insurance agency
Private investment solicitor
Pension/ERISA plan consultant
None
Does the firm have any of the following investment affiliations?
Please Select
Hedge Fund
Private Equity
Venture Capital
None
If yes, please explain the affiliation.
Do you have an solicitor or subadvisor agreements in place today?
Do any of the owners of the firm have OBAs registered with SEC/FINRA?
Do you have any soft dollar arrangements in effect?
Client Profile
What is your firm's AUM by RIA?
What is your firm's AUM by BD?
How much of your firm's AUM is discretionary?
Please provide your AUM for the last 4 years.
What was your revenue for the past two fiscal years?
What is your year-to-date revenue?
What are your total client households?
What are your total client accounts?
What is your average client AUM?
Please Select
$250,000 to $500,000
$500,000 to $1,000,000
$1,000,000 to $3,000,000
$3,000,000 to $5,000,000
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000
>$10,000,000
What percentage of your clients are accumulators (>5 years to retirement), pre-retirees and retirees?
What is the average age of your client?
Please provide an approximation of the percentage of revenue attributable to AUM fees, insurance commissions, brokerage commissions, financial planning fees, solicitation fees, other.
How much of your revenue is recurring?
How much of your revenue is non-recurring?
Do you provide any family office services?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, how much of your practice is dedicated to family office services and what services do you provide?
Firm Culture
What services do you provide your clients with?
Financial Planning
Investment Management
Qualified Plans
Insurance
Tax Prep
Estate Planning
Exit Planning
Tax Planning
Family Office
Other
Please describe the other services you offer.
What is your firm's primary mission?
What are your firm's core values?
What goals do you have for both you and your firm over the next 3 to 5 years?
What areas do you need to focus on in order to achieve your firm's goals? Please check all that apply.
Staffing/Capacity
Technology/Innovation
Services Provided
Client Experience
Succession
Growth Initiatives
Operations
Other
If other, please describe what you need to focus on.
What would you most like to improve within your firm?
What do you feel is the biggest potential risk to your business?
Please provide the number of employees involved in the following roles: Leadership Team, Client-facing Financial Advisor, non Client-facing Financial Planner, Client Relationship Manager, Compliance, Technology and Administrative Support.
From a staffing perspective, what would the efficiencies offered by a partnership allow you to do? Please check all that apply.
Downsize
Re-purpose staff to new roles
Outsource your back office support roles
Centralize specialty functions, such as trading, portfolio management, financial planning, etc.
Develop staff, provide improved career opportunities
What is the firm looking for in a partnership? Please choose your top 3.
Improve client experience
Provide more holistic wealth management and/ or financial planning services
Improve or expand on the investment management platform
Pursue active growth & marketing strategies
Allow partners to allocate more time to revenue producing activities
Operational efficiencies in areas such as compliance, human resources, accounting, CRM and portfolio reporting
Share in equity creation with a national RIA firm
Monetize your enterprise value
Raise capital for further growth
Other
If other, please describe what your firm is looking for in a partnership.
Accounting, Financials & Compliance
Who acts as the firm's CFO?
How do you bill your clients - Monthly/Quarterly, Arrears/Advance, Based on AUM balance as of last day of the quarter/daily average balance?
Please Select
In Advance
In Arrears
Monthly
Quarterly
AUM Balance as of last day of quarter
AUM Daily Average Balance
Add any detail on how you bill your clients:
If applicable, please provide the percentages of clients billed in advance and in arrears?
Do any of your clients represent 10% or more of your client base? If so, please list using a generic "Family A, B, etc." along with the corresponding percentage. Client concentration risk.
Are there now or have there ever been outstanding loans?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, is the firm currently in default on any loans or has it ever been in default on loans?
Please Select
Yes
No
Have any of these loans been with a non bank lender (e.g. friends, family or client)?
Please Select
Yes
No
Please provide loan descriptions and/ or explanations.
When was the last time you had an independent audit of your financial statements?
Who acts as the firms current Chief Compliance Officer, handling a majority of the day to day compliance responsibilities?
Do you or any member of your firm have any pending investigation(s)/enforcement items by any local, state, federal and/or regulatory authority?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, please explain the pending investigation(s)/enforcement items
Does the firm or any employee of the firm have any negative history relating to items that require reporting on the firm or employees from FINRA/SEC, DRP/U4, etc?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, please explain the negative history.
Has the firm been audited by one or more regulatory agencies over the past five years?
Please Select
Yes
No
If so, provide the date that the audit/s was initiated and the regulatory agency that conducted the audit. Describe any material deficiencies noted and if they have been addressed. Please provide a copy of the deficiency letter, the firm's response and the regulatory entities' follow-up.
Does the firm or any employee of the firm take custody of client assets (non-family members) including but not limited to acting as a trustee, executor, full power of attorney or any other means to independently take possession of client assets including the use of clients passwords to access service and/or trade client accounts?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, please explain the custody process.
Are there any threatened, pending and settled litigation, mediation, alternative dispute resolution, or arbitration involving the Adviser or any "supervised person"?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, please provide a description of the allegations, the status and a brief description of any "out of court" or informal settlement.
Explain if and how you present your clients with an Investment Policy Statement and the percentage of clients with an IPS.
Provide employee licenses and professional designations for each applicable team member.
Are there any internal red flags you would like to make us aware of?
Investment Management/Products and Services
Who acts as the firms current Chief Investment Officer handling a majority of the day to day investment management responsibilities? If more than one team member actively contributes to investment management responsibilities, please indicate each below and the corresponding percentage of time required?
Does your firm currently outsource Investment Management to a third party? If so, who do you use and what percentage do you outsource to each third party?
If you use third party managers what are some names that you have the most AUM with? -- SEND THEM ALARIS THIRD PARTY MANAGER SPREADSHEET
What is your investment philosophy and what investment research do you use?
Do you create and trade your own proprietary investment models, or do you use platform or third party models? If using a platform/third party, what is the internal fee? What percentage of your portfolios are custom built?
Some examples of common mutual fund sponsors (families) that you use.
What is your fee schedule?
Is your firm willing to take advantage of investment strategies run by a team that you trust?
Please Select
Enjoy money management, would prefer not to give up control
Prefer to retain in-house but willing to discuss outsourcing to a centralized team
Have been contemplating outsourcing, would be interested in discussing
Would prefer to outsource money management to a trusted third party
What has been the firms approach to alternative asset classes? (Alternative assets include real estate, commodities, as well as rare coins and stamps, artwork or trading cards). More recently the term has also come to be used to refer to other institutional asset classes including private equity, venture capital, trading strategy indices and hedge funds.
Please Select
Do not participate in these types of investments
Only discuss these investments with clients who specifically ask
Becoming more interested in including these in clients' portfolios
Have been actively including and recommending these investments for a period of time
Does the firm advise and/or bill on any alternative assets that are not publicly traded, or lack daily liquidity?
Please Select
Yes
No
If so, provide the name of the investment, the number of clients invested and the amount of assets in each. Also, notes on alternatives.
Does the firm utilize any proprietary products?
Please Select
Yes
No
If so, please describe the products.
For your managed accounts, do you currently run strategies at the individual account level or at the household level across all of the clients' accounts?
Please Select
Individual
Household
Combination
What percentage of clients are modeled via an asset allocation strategy? Is this a consistent implementation?
How does the firm determine a client's global allocation between stocks and bonds?
Risk Tolerance Questionnaire
Asset Allocation Software
Financial Planning Software
Proprietary Process
Other
If proprietary process or other, please provide a summary.
How much of your AUM is the result of your own proprietary stock selection process?
Do you sponsor or manage a WRAP fee program?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, please describe the fee program.
For the following time frames, please indicate the total custody/trading costs and if the client or firm is responsible for paying these costs. What is the current overall amount clients are paying for Investment Management (all-in): Current YTD, YTD annualized, Prior Year, 2 Years Ago?
Does the firm have an investment committee? Describe the R&D process, screening & vetting and rebalance frequency. Is R&D active with extensive review of ongoing client investment solutions (landscape review of new opportunities)?
Do you vote proxies?
Please Select
Yes
No
Advice & Planning
Does the firm currently provide advice/financial planning services to clients (If yes, please complete this section. If no, please skip ahead to the Insurance section)?
Please Select
Yes
No
Do you charge a separate fee for advice/financial plans?
Please Select
Yes
No
Do you charge annually for ongoing planning?
Please Select
Yes
No
For the current year, what percentage of your clients have financial plans? What is your Gross Planning Revenue (YTD)?
Please use the space below to indicate fees charged and method for assessing. How do you tier advice for your clients, what are the fees associated with each tier and how are the fees assessed?
How does your firm position advice/financial planning? Check all that apply.
Loss Leader
Prospecting Tool
Tool to Gather Assets
Tool to Increase Wallet Share
Service for an Additional Fee
Service Included in AM Fee
Enhance the client experience
Please indicate the financial planning tools and resources used and corresponding annual cost for each tool and resource.
Do you currently provide advice on clients' outside assets?
Please Select
Yes
No
Do you charge for them?
Please Select
Yes
No
Do you service them?
Please Select
Yes
No
Do you trade them?
Please Select
Yes
No
Using the space below, indicate the deliverable(s) the client receives and with what frequency.
Insurance
Would you be willing to leverage internal risk management solutions?
Please Select
Yes
No
Maybe
Do you currently offer risk management solutions internally or leverage a trusted professional to help with these needs? If no, please skip to the Client Service Model Section.
Please Select
Yes
No
List first year commissions for this year and the preceding two years.
List renewal commissions for this year and the preceding two years.
List percentage breakdown for the following products: variable annuities, fixed annuities, index annuities, annuities in qualified verse non-qualified accounts, variable life, fixed life, index life, Long-Term care, disability.
Client Service Model
Do you have defined client segments?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, please describe the segments.
Does the firm have a defined client service model?
Please Select
Yes
No
If yes, using the space below, outline the firm's current client segmentation and service model for each.
On average, what percentage of wallet share does the firm have within its client base?
Does the firm incorporate a regular dialogue on wallet share with clients?
Please Select
Yes
No
Other
If yes, what system does the firm use for capturing and managing this information?
Marketing
Who acts as the firms current Chief Marketing Officer, managing and implementing the firms marketing strategy?
If you have a documented marketing plan, please provide a summary.
Please describe your firm's targeted client profile.
Please explain what marketing efforts have been the most effective for you.
What is the annual revenue growth target? List both percentage and dollar amount.
Sources of Organic Growth (by %): Referred by Clients? Referred by 3rd Party? Other?
Business Development Activities: Provide % time spent & Revenue spent on each activity: Content Marketing, Collateral, Networking, Social Media, Other Digital Marketing, Online Events, Online Advertising, Traditional Advertising, PR, Direct Mail, Cold Calling, Other Niche
What are your marketing goals?
Are there particular marketing activities or tools that you would like to utilize? What tools have you found successful in the past and why?
Do you routinely host workshops or seminars? If no, would you like to?
Data & Systems
Using the spaces below, indicate which technologies your firm utilizes, the name of the program and the extent to which it is integrated into other technologies within your firm.
How do you handle IT? in-house or outsourced?
Video Conferencing
Portfolio Management (PMS)
Order Management (OMS)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Financial Planning Software
Client Reporting System
Portfolio Accounting
Portfolio Rebalancing
Accounting
Email & Email Archiving
E-Vault/Documentation Management
Form/Application Filling (i.e. Laser App)
Payroll Provider
General Comments
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