United Capital calls its partner firms to Berkeley to help execute ambitious plan

United Capital has an exciting mission and Morningstar Office is proud to be part of its software and technology solution.

WILL UNITED CAPITAL PROVIDE THE MARKET LEASERSHIP WE ALL ARE LOOKING FOR IN SUPPORT OF ADVICE?

Joe has done an incredible job in establishing a core business model that adds value relative to the advisors former practices. United Capital advances a consistent advisor value proposition built around a centeralized CIO function which not only creates scale beyond the ability of the under resourced practitioner but generates superior client performance which is even more rare.

If United Capital were to formalize its asset/liability study, investment policy and portfolio construction and management functions by creating an audit path to statute, case law and regulatory opinion letters in support of fiduciary standing going beyond the 40 Act for managers to UPIA and ERISA for advisors, it would defacto become the leading firm in the industry in advisory services, importantly with the means to prove it.

Presently all major financial services firms have put their advisors in an untenable position where the firm maintains the advisor does not render advice and considers it a violation of their internal compliance protocol for their advisors to acknowledge their fiduciary obligation to act in the consumer’s best interest.

If United Capital were to safely bring fiduciary standing within the reach of every advisor in a scalable easy to use and manage format, every advisor in the industry whether an established RIA or a disenfranchised broker would clamor for it without hestitation.

Market leadership is not comming from FINRA or the SIFMA who represent convention and status quo, it will come from firms like United Capital which view disruptive innovation as a means to win market share.

SCW

Brooke,

I have two questions for you:

1) Why do “roll ups” typically not work?
2) Is the United Capital event closed to the public?

Thanks,

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

Yes, the United Capital event is only for its own financial advisors.

The question of why roll-ups don’t work is an even better query than you think. The term roll-up is associated with an aggregating entity that does nothing but take a series of autonomous businesses and puts them under a single ownership umbrella. They fail because they lose the entrepreneurial edge of being small companies without gaining the efficiencies of being part of a big company. The failure rate is very high historically.

The roll-ups that succeed tend to integrate the businesses that they acquire culturally and otherwise. But the companies that pull off this feat do not consider themselves roll-ups.

So it’s a tricky semantic issue. Journalists covering financial advisors call the various serial buyers of RIA practices roll-up because it is a short, descriptive word. Words like consolidator, aggregator and holding company sound like the companies that buy railroads or shipping lines to me.

Brooke