Category: COO Best Practices
67 posts categorized as "COO Best Practices"
How Top RIA COOs Are Responding to COVID-19
March 27, 2020
Every RIA needs a Business Continuity Plan (it’s SEC-required) and most RIAs are good about updating it every year when they perform their annual compliance review. Unfortunately, many firms focus on the document itself, and not the actual plan. If the document is complete, they can check the box and move on to more pressing…
Pivoting Quickly To A “Work From Home” Model: What Advisory Firms Need To Know
March 23, 2020
With the coronavirus pandemic triggering widespread quarantines, many advisory firms are implementing measures to set up their operations as a Work-From-Home (WFH) environment. We partnered with Kitces.com to provide practical steps firms can take to maintain operations and provide seamless customer service during this unprecedented time. Read the full article here.
Client Portal: Build or Buy?
March 12, 2020
RIA publications and the conference circuit are filled with articles and breakout sessions titled, “The Digitization of Advice” or “The Amazon and Netflix Effect on Our Industry” – all discussing the on-demand culture we find ourselves now living in. As we have written about previously in this publication, “In our on-demand driven era, clients are…
Operational Excellence Drives Sales Growth
February 11, 2020
There is a friction that commonly exists within many organizations, and it occurs between the sales department and the back-office operations department. Both feel underappreciated by the other – Operations thinks Sales doesn’t realize that no product or service could be delivered to clients without their hard work; Sales thinks no one would even have…
Mark Tibergien Provides RIA COO’s 6 Metrics to Define Their Value
January 29, 2020
I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Mark Tibergien and Karen Novak of BNY Mellon Pershing, Advisor Solutions for Episode 12 of our podcast, The COO Roundtable. One of the main goals of the podcast is to promote the notion of professional management within the RIA industry and reverse the belief that professional managers are…
Post-Merger Integration: “Yes” is Nothing Without “How”
January 13, 2020
In his book on negotiation, “Never Split the Difference,” former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss states that, “’Yes’ is nothing without ‘How.’” Voss, who made a living brokering some of the most high-stakes negotiations, where lives were literally on the line, states, “Your job as a negotiator isn’t just to get to an agreement –…
PFI Advisors’ 2019 Top Blog Posts
December 30, 2019
As 2019 comes to a close, we pause to reflect on the past year we’ve had here at PFI Advisors. We added two new employees to our team late Summer and our Director of Transition Amusement started first grade around the same time! Over 400 people came out to support Layla Paige’s Nature Walk, hosted…
What is Advisors’ Time Worth?
December 12, 2019
Following the success of our COO white paper and personal enjoyment of interviewing the profiled COOs at the end of 2018, we at PFI Advisors declared 2019 to be “The Year of the COO.” We launched our COO Roundtable podcast in January and have spent the entire year speaking with advisors about the benefits professional…
Top 5 Lessons Learned from Episodes 6-10 of The COO Roundtable
November 4, 2019
With ten episodes now under our belt, we’d like to once again thank everyone who has listened, subscribed, and given feedback on The COO Roundtable. We’ve enjoyed having these discussions and hearing your responses on them. Our interviews to date have included fourteen operations professionals at twelve multi-billion dollar RIAs across the country accounting for…
High Tech vs. High Touch: What Are Clients Really Asking For?
October 18, 2019
Technology isn’t developed to replace human interaction, but rather to enhance it. At the Envestnet conference this past May, the late Jud Bergman was asked about his thoughts around technology’s place in our industry. He astutely concluded, “It’s counter-intuitive that [by building a digital connection with the client] great technology can contribute to a stronger human…
