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THE SUMMARYThis time on The Pulse:Kelly Kelleher, VP of Marketing for Chalice, interviews Maria Petroni from Oasis Outsourcing. In line with the recently launched #ChaliceCares movement, Chalice is waiving its annual membership fee for new members who are in need of quick access to affordable health insurance. Oasis is also matching this offer with 3 months waived admin fees for new member sign-ups. Listen in to learn about Oasis’s ability to provide you huge costs savings and high-quality plans at competitive rates, leveraged uniquely through their large group buying power.

This time on the Pulse: Advisor/client communication strategies for troubled times; JPMorgan trading desks succumb to a glitch; and an IRA expert urges advisors to scrutinize the dates for 2019 IRA contributions, now due by July 15.

Join Evee Walker, Dan Kreuter Vance Barse and David Brounley as they tell all from their wealth of experience in successful mergers and acquisitions:Evee Walker is currently the SVP of Operations for Succession Link and Chalice Network. She first started with Succession Link back in early 2017 as the M&A marketplace started to really expand at a significant rate. Evee Walker's experience has provided her with an innovative advantage of growing an online marketplace while integrating software and tools to assist in the M&A process. As Succession Link started to grow at roughly 1,000 members a month, she couldn’t see it any more beneficial to continue its expansion with the acquisition by Chalice Network. Prior to, Evee had ended her term as an Air Force veteran and participated in launching and growing multiple start-up businesses, as she completed her bachelors in computer science and pursued her masters in analytics. Vance Barse, AIF® is a Wealth Strategist & Founder of Your Dedicated Fiduciary®. Before becoming a wealth strategist, Vance served as an investment consultant to leading private wealth and retail financial advisers throughout the U.S. for nearly a decade. He saw firsthand that many advisers are constrained in their approach to planning, often leaving clients underserved. Vance dutifully serves high-net-worth individuals, families, and business owners with a full range of wealth preservation, estate planning, and tax minimization strategies that many advisers overlook. Vance founded Your Dedicated Fiduciary®with a simple mission: to be authentic, transparent, and have a positive impact on the lives of his clients.Mr. Barse holds a bachelor’s degree in Neurobiology & Neurophysiology from the University of Maryland where he served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow studying the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s Disease. He was also a member of Golden Key International Honour Society. Vance believes in the value of community. As such, he serves as a voting board member and Vice President of the non-profit Professionals with Purpose. Mr. Barse is also a mentor for Just in Time for Foster Youth, volunteer educator, motivational speaker, and Ambassador for the Financial Awareness Foundation. Vance has been quoted by Investment News, Investment Advisor, CNBC, Bloomberg Radio, and Barron’s.As SVP of Business Development, David  Brounley oversees new market development and the integration of new partner firms. His career started with Ameriprise, where he was promoted to National Director of United Kingdom. In that role, he built sales forces from 0 to 400 Financial Planners and 17 offices in three years.As Founder and Chairman of the Gladstone Group Inc, Dan Kreuter shares in setting firm vision and strategy, works with Enterprise Clients and oversees operational and branding function: Gladstone Associates provides M&A advisory solutions to the national RIA sector, encompassing Wealth Managers and Asset Managers. Dan is also the founder of D.A. Kreuter Associates, Inc. (“DAK Associates”), a national retainer-based executive search firm created in 1979. He co-founded two successful FinTech Businesses, Coates Analytics (now Albridge Analytics) which provides productivity software on behalf of Money Managers and Advisory Platforms; and Gladstone Analytics (now Truelytics), a SaaS solution for Valuation analytics, benchmarking and business process improvement to the RIA space. Dan is Chairman of the Advisory Board for Chalice Financial Network, a national peer-to-peer association group for Independent Advisors based in San Diego; and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Real Assets Adviser, a leading Alternative Investments publication with over 65,000 readers in the wealth management sector.

The Future of Advisors is FinTech – What Will the Next-Gen Advisor Practice Look Like? Dr. Richard Swart explored how advisor practices will evolve and grow during his keynote session at BooST 2020 March 3. The need for effective use of FinTech and WealthTech, staying up on cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence and various new market trends will be key. Listen in to learn which concepts and ideas Dr. Swart deems most impactful to both advisors and their clients over the next five years. Dr. Richard Swart is a globally recognized authority on FinTech and alternative finance.  His work looks at the intersection of technology changes, access to finance and investment capital and social impact. Currently, he is a Strategic Advisor to CrowdSmart.io - the world’s leading prediction platform in early-stage venture capital. He ran a research program on innovation in crowdfunding and platform-based finance at the Institute for Business and Social Impact in UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School and was the director of the Center for Emerging Technologies in the Bill Gates-funded Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at UC Irvine. He has provided expert advice and consultation to the White House National Economic Council, the British Parliament, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and dozens of global universities, think tanks, foundations, banks, governments, funds and family offices.  He also sits on a number of boards and advisory boards for FinTech, blockchain and AI companies. 

THE SUMMARY  This time on the Pulse: Orion exec says Coronavirus will underline the value of business technology; CFP Board nixes consumers’ ability to search for advisors by how they’re paid; Baird’s wealth unit backs away from Alaska’s Iditarod dog-sled race.

This time on the Pulse: Schwab promises to stick with small RIAs; WealthManagement.com issues list of top colleges for financial planning; Wells Fargo Won’t force sexual-harassment whistleblowers into arbitration. 

This time on the Pulse: net-net, wirehouses lost advisors while RIAs gained them in 2019; sovereign funds are showing signs of age; and a look at who’s getting rich in the green economy.

This time on the Pulse: Finra’s efforts to ensure brokerages aren’t confusing their clients when they recommend “sweep” accounts, ways wirehouses are turning their brokers into “company" men and women, and the rise of activist hedge funds.

We discover the secret to happiness according to one famous author.FA industry news coverage:• Former chairman tries to overturn Ladenburg merger• State regulators set to impose new annuities rule• Chalice sells end-client unit to UK roll-up.Succession Link Director of Operations gives us the inside scoop on the top reasons M&A deals fall through and updates us on the most recent business seller listing.Transcript:The Quote ...But before we start, let’s pose a question in this season of solemn resolutions for the New Year. What is the secret to happiness? We’ll get to one famous person’s take on that shortly. THE NEWSFormer Chairman Tries to Overturn Ladenburg Merger Phillip Frost, a biotech billionaire and ex-chairman of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services, wants that company’s merger with Advisor Group halted, WealthManagement.com reports. Frost, who chaired Ladenburg’s board of directors from mid 2006 through late 2018, is suing to stop the firm from merging with Advisor Group, a deal that is scheduled to close at the end of this month. Frost left Ladenburg under a cloud. In September 2018, the SEC charged him with bilking investors out of $27 million in a couple of “pump and dump” schemes. He paid $5.5 million to settle that case “without admitting or denying the allegations,” writes WealthManagement.com. Through one of his trusts, Frost filed suit to stop the merger on Dec. 10, contending the agreement between Ladenburg and Advisor Group “disregards obligations owed” him and the trust in question “as holders of certain notes issued by the company,” according to an SEC filing. Frost and his trust sold most of their Ladenburg holding for $13o million when he left the firm about a year ago. More than half of this payment is “in notes issued to Frost and the trust, paying 7.25% annual interest and due in 2028,” according to Wealthmanagement.com. It’s unclear to published sources how the proposed deal between Ladenburg Thalmann and Advisor Group  impacts the earlier sale agreement between Frost and Ladenburg. Meanwhile, Ladenburg has declared Frost’s suit “without merit,” and vows to fight it. The deal between Ladenburg and Advisor Group is facing a half-dozen others lawsuits filed by Ladenburg shareholders. State Regulators Set to Impose New Annuities Rule The world of insurance regulation is taking an interesting turn with state commissioners expected to OK a new rule to bolster consumer protections around annuity sales, InvestmentNews reports. Late in December, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners greenlighted a new suitability standard requiring annuity sellers to put the interests of consumers ahead of those of the firm or agent doing the selling. If the rule takes hold as thought likely, insurance sellers will be barred from “placing the producer’s or the insurer’s financial interest ahead of the consumer’s interest,” according to InvestmentNews.The proposed rule further outlines standards of care, disclosure, conflicts of interest, and documentation. Under the rule, it would be up to sellers to flag, avoid, “or reasonably manage” conflicts of interest, and keep written records of the rationale behind annuity recommendations. The proposed rule lets annuity-selling stock brokers defer to the SEC’s “Best Interest” as its standard for conflicts and disclosures. Doug Ommen, Iowa’s insurance commissioner, tells InvestmentNews the proposed annuity rule is “in harmony with” the SEC’s Best Interest guidelines, but “goes

How important is confidence to your success in business? In this episode, we will report on some of the FA industry's hottest stories, including features on women in the workplace, hybrids and sweep accounts and how the Fed could be done with trimming rates. Succession Link reports on the industry's M&A landscape with a featured seller in Florida.