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Summary: Planners gathered in Salt Lake City last week for NAPFA's annual spring conference, hearing the latest thinking on behavioral finance, student debt, practice management and more. Here are a few of the smartest things that Financial Planning's staff and contributors heard at the conference.
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Summary: Fresh off of adding a new platform earlier this year, HighTower Advisors chief executive Elliott Weissbluth now compares the firm's growing reach to perhaps an unlikely rival — Raymond James Financial Inc. HighTower launched its Alliance platform in early March. The fee-for-service offering allows firms such as credit unions or registered investment advisers to rent HighTower's compliance, back office and technology platforms.
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Summary: Dan Heath, a senior fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship and co-author of “Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work,” gave attendees at IMCA’s annual conference on Monday four reasons their decisions and their clients’ fail.
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Summary: Countless books and movies have been written about the point at which computers shift from being our friend to becoming the enemy. For financial advisers, the battle lines are being drawn right now.Over the course of our careers, computers have helped elevate the services we provide to clients and have driven down costs.
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Summary: Advisers spend a lot of time thinking about their growth strategies. Two years ago, when InvestmentNews fielded the 2012 InvestmentNews/Moss Adams Financial Performance Study of Advisory Firms, we identified a subset of firms that were deemed “top performers." These firms were defined as the top quartile of participants across a range of metrics including revenue growth, cost control and profitability. The study found that the fastest-growing and most profitable firms sometimes take an unconventional approach to their business models.
