IPS AdvisorPro® Blog
Learn about Investment Policy Statements at FPA Retreat
IPS AdvisorPro® co-founders Norm Boone, MBA, CFP®, and Linda Lubitz Boone, CFP® will be speaking on:
After the “Crisis”: Managing Client Expectations Using Investment Policy Statements
When: April 22–25, 2010
Where: Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort, San Antonio, TX
An IPS Pro: Norman Boone’s expertise on investment policy statements powers his software product-and his advisory practice.
February 1, 2010
Norman Boone has an impeccable resume. Founder and president of Bay Area-based Mosaic Financial Partners, Boone earned his CFP certification in 1984 after an undergraduate degree from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard. He served in the first class of directors elected to the national board of the FPA. And he has been included as one of America’s Best Financial Advisors by the Worth/Robb Report every year since the list’s inception in 1994. Read more
New Functionality Released: Additional Template Control
As part of our commitment to continuing to enhance the IPS AdvisorPro® platform to make it even more useful, we are pleased to introduce a new set of functionalities. With these new functionalities you will have increased flexibility when customizing your templates AND you will have increased options when tailoring each of your client IPSs.
The new features include
- Compare a paragraph of your template to the latest version in the default IPS AdvisorPro® template
- Add a paragraph to all your IPSs
- Remove a paragraph from all your IPSs
- Restore an IPS to its original verbiage as configured by template
- Add new or pre-existing paragraph to an IPS
For instructions on how to use this functionality please refer to our HELP MANUAL. Additionally, please take a few moments to view the video below that will provide a visual illustration of the new functionalities. For better visibility, you can click “Full Screen” in the video player. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact our Help Desk at support@IPSAdvisorPro.com.
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As always we thank you for your continued support of IPS AdvisorPro® and would like to remind you that we appreciate and value your feedback. If you would like to provide feedback and/or suggestions regarding this improvement or others you are interested in then please contact us at support@IPSAdvisorPro.com.
We wish you a Happy and Healthy holiday season!
The IPS AdvisorPro® Team
ASN Summit Successful-Norm & Linda Boone, session hosts
The Advisor Solutions Network (ASN) held its first Practice Management Summit in November in Atlanta, Georgia. Sixty participants were treated to a world-class line-up of speakers who delivered two full days of thought-provoking content. The program agenda was designed to achieve three key objectives:
- Help render appropriate advice in a post-Black Swan Era
- Help advisor regain client confidence
- Help advisor rebuild or win new business
Thirteen (13) sessions held during the Practice Management Summit included, but was not limited to, the following:
- Investment Management Consulting in the 21st Century: Craft or Trade? Ron Surz, President, PPCA
- To Be or Not To Be: Fiduciary Landscape Under Regulatory Reform; Kristina Fausti, Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs, fi360
- Using Public Relations to Turbo-Charge Your Marketing Plan; Marie Swift, President, Impact Communication
- Dynamic Asset Allocation: Rx for a Post-Black Swan Era; Rex Macey, Chief Investment Officer, Wilmington Trust
- Providing A Comfortable Ride for Your Clients (and Your Practice); David Loeper CIMA, Wealthcare Capital
- In Search of Manager Alpha: Does Active Management Still Make Sense? Larry Sinsimer
- The Value Gap: In Search of Advisor Alpha; Steve Barger, Consulting Partner, Advisor Solutions Network
- The Art of Conversation: Your Leading Advantage; Lewis Walker, Founder, Life Transitions Advisors
- Rebuilding Your Business and Managing Client Expectations with Investment Policy Statements; Norm Boone and Linda Lubitz-Boone, IPS AdvisorPro®
- How Personal Legacy Planning can Differentiate Your Practice and Drive Your Production; Mark Colgan, President / Plan Your Legacy
- Audio recordings and speaker presentations are available at www.asn360.com.agenda.asp
VSR Financial Services, Inc. Selects IPS AdvisorPro® for Investment Planning Technology
~ Innovative Platform Will Provide VSR’s 200+ Advisors with Web-based Tools for Creating Investment Policy Statements
Miami, FL and Overland Park, KS – August 26, 2009. VSR Financial Services, Inc. announced today the selection of IPS AdvisorPro® to provide their over 200 financial advisors with advanced investment planning tools for developing Investment Policy Statements (IPS). Read more
Coming Soon:
IPS AdvisorPro® integration with Redtail ( CRM).
Cape Ann Savings Bank – Trust and Financial Services
How a leading community bank and trust is reducing risk in its delivery of investment advice through the technology platform of IPS AdvisorPro®. Read more
IPS AdvisorPro®: Go online and save time on investment policy statements
By Davis D. Janowski, technology reporter for InvestmentNews, this article was originally published July 31, 2009 in IN: TECHbits. I got a sneak preview of a white paper from IPS AdvisorPro® that sheds light on the time, costs associated with creating investment policy statements.
By one estimate, it can take the typical financial adviser 155 minutes to create an investment policy statement from scratch using a word-processing program such as Microsoft Word.
To refresh your memory, an IPS is a written document agreed to by both an adviser and client that outlines goals, policies and procedures to be used by the adviser for managing investments.
Such statements are required these days where a fiduciary relationship exists.
The above estimate is by Norm Boone, president of San Francisco-based Mosaic Financial Partners Inc. and co-creator of the popular IPS AdvisorPro® software and online application from BLIPS Partners LLC in Miami.
While the white paper is clearly meant to urge advisers to buy the firm’s software, the estimates included in the white paper, “Investment Policy Statements: The Technology Return on Investment for Financial Advisors,” seem reasonable and should be of interest to advisers in terms of comparing their current procedures and the time involved in preparation of policy statements. Read more
Investment Policy Statements: The Technology Return on Investment (ROI) for Financial Advisors
Download a PDF version of this white paper here.
Executive Summary
The financial services industry is undergoing rapid change due to recent financial crises on Wall Street and the impacts of a prolonged recession. Market volatility has increased, creating uncertainty and angst in investors’ minds. The demand for transparency has increased, as have the expectations for better “prudent practices.” As a result, there has been a renewed focus for investment planning by financial advisors and the use of the time-tested approach of Investment Policy Statements (IPS).
Considered a “best practice” in modern wealth management, documenting advisor-client agreements in an IPS provides a systematic discipline for decision-making, bringing transparency, clarity and shared understanding to the advisor-investor relationship, helping to build an increased level of trust.
Many financial advisors are using word processing software solutions combined with manual processes to perform the related tasks of creating, updating and maintaining IPSs and the resulting inefficiencies cause higher costs and lack of controls, which result in declining profitability.
Industry experts all agree that the best solution is to adopt technology to increase efficiency, streamline operations and enable rapid response to market changes. New advances and innovations in technology specifically designed for financial advisors to provide web-based investment planning tools for creating Investment Policy Statements that allow advisors to meet these challenges head on and provide a substantial return on investment (ROI) is now available.
“If we tried to create our own Word document, the problem we see is that it would be extremely difficult to maintain consistency, what with re-entering and re-casting the allocations for hundreds of clients. By using the templates in IPS AdvisorPro® we know that we are achieving a big time savings and ROI.”
David Strege, CFP®, CFA®, Co-Founder and Senior Wealth Coach, Syverson Strege & Company
Syverson, Strege & Company
How a Leading Wealth Coaching Firm is using Investment Policy Statements (IPS) and the technology platform of IPS AdvisorPro® as a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining individual investors and small endowments, foundations and charities. Read more
