Inside Edge: Making sense of Dollars & Sense

(October 19, 2004) “Everybody’s talkin’ at me. I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’.”

Perhaps you recognize the opening lines to Harry Nilsson’s hit single from the soundtrack of Midnight Cowboy, the Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 1969. With this year’s Annual Dollars & Sense Survey pegging the average advisor’s age at 46.4 years old, I’ll wager most of you do remember the song or the movie — likely both.

The lyrical reference is not an attempt on my part to reminisce about classic films and old songs. Instead, I find the lyrics apropos of the advisor experience today.

For a vocation whose central focus is the provision of advice to others, nowadays financial advisors seem to be flooded with myriad opinions on how they should conduct themselves and their businesses.

Those lining up to school advisors on what’s what include their own firms, mutual fund and insurance companies, the media, consultants, coaches for hire, researchers, and of course, the regulators. Collectively, their guidance is meant to help you become a more effective, profitable, client-centric and compliant advisor. Trouble is, when “everybody’s talkin’ at you,” it’s hard to “hear a word they’re sayin’.”

While there appears to be no shortage of “advice” suppliers to advisors, most of you are short on time to listen. Through talking to you, we have also learned the perspective you value more than all others is that of experienced advisors who have faced and overcome challenges similar to your own.

This issue of Advisor’s Edge features the results from our third Annual Dollars & Sense Survey of advisors. The content in the pages that follow is worth your time to read because it reflects data and opinions collected from more than 3,000 advisors coast-to-coast. They come from the IDA and MFDA channels. They are rookies and veteran top producers. They are insurance agents, financial planners and investment advisors. These advisors provide a voice of collective wisdom against which you can benchmark your own views and practices.

Our coverage of this year’s survey includes four feature stories, leading off with “Sharp-edged skills” (starting on page 18) in which managing editor Deanne N. Gage explores what it will take for advisors to succeed in an evolving industry.

In “Holes in your practice” (starting on page 23) freelance writer Sheila Avari looks at the lukewarm reception investment advisors have given insurance as an alternative revenue source.

Investments editor Scot Blythe looks at trends in portfolio construction in “Second time cautious” (starting on page 31).

And, learn how advisors are digging themselves out of the mounds of administrative and compliance paperwork in assistant editor Heidi Staseson’s story, “Seeking solutions” (starting on page 39).

Our job at Advisor’s Edge, its French language sister publication Objectif Conseiller, and online with Advisor.ca is to provide you with timely, objective and relevant news, industry trends, practice management tips and strategies. And yes, dare I say it, advice. Like you, we will listen to good ideas no matter where they originate from. But more often than not, we prefer to go right to the source — advisors like you.