About RIABiz
If at all possible, we aim to provide people of the RIA business with the brainfood they need to be among the in-the-know and on-the move of the industry.
We founded RIABiz in August of 2009 and started by throwing out the thou-shalt books that tell how to run magazines, newspapers, blogs, news websites, directories and research services. We wanted the color, captions and quality of The Economist, the timeliness of Bloomberg, the personality of your favorite blog and the online destination that doesn’t look like a makeshift way of putting print content onto a website.
When we get a pile of research we want to share, we try to put it into English. We are competitive people and want to break every useful story. We are intellectually vain and want to introduce every new angle. We want to be part of the Google+ generation that puts information with faces and we use them at every opportunity.
Will we succeed in all this with our modest staff and chimp-sized brains? Not always. But hopefully the debris of our efforts will continue to give you a dynamic stopover on your daily meandering of the Internet and instill you with similarly hyper-charged idealistic business objectives that – when they fall short – still stand taller than what’s typically out there.
Also see:
Dear Reader,
RIAs are on the march.
Registered investment advisors are faster-growing, better automated, better appreciated and have more market share than ever before. They are becoming magnets for assets.
Not only are hundreds of brokers becoming RIAs as a means of better serving clients, but clients are taking matters into their own hands. They are withdrawing assets from brokerage accounts at UBS, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and moving them to RIAs with names like Hokanson Associates and Portland Global Advisors. This is not all happening by accident. RIAs embody careful planning and ethical dealings, and Wall Street’s failings have made this far more apparent.
At the same time, however, RIAs are chronically challenged by being fragmented into 15,000-firms. They have no single voice and this gives them their own public-relations problem. Nobody knows what they are -- or how to describe them. The best description I found is more than 700 words long. RIAs call themselves wealth managers, financial advisors, investment consultants, investment managers and other tags that prove next to nothing. Brokers use all these names, too, and then some. This is important to note: It’s often easier for RIAs calling themselves wealth managers to relate to an RIA called an investment manager than to a broker called a wealth manager. The reason for this is that, unlike many brokers, RIAs tend to make a plan for clients and then hold themselves accountable for sticking to it.
Though RIAs have detailed plans for their clients, there’s no comprehensive plan for their industry as a whole. The principals of 15,000 RIA practices interact through various asset custodians, trade publications and associations in an ad hoc manner. While these forums engender good discussions, better ones are needed. Five years from now, brokers don’t want to be discussing how they missed the RIA boat. RIAs don’t want to be discussing how they allowed wirehouses to return to prominence or how the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, brokers’ self-policing body, snuck in and made their lives miserable. RIAs want to be able to say they have found ways to achieve scale, execute succession plans and bring aboard breakaways.
It’s vital that real discussions start now while assets are in motion and the post-crisis attitudes of brokers and their clients are unfixed. RIABiz believes it has a place in this process. We believe that other publications share characteristics with the old party lines that I grew up with in rural Maine. You literally shared phone service with your neighbor. RIABiz is a dedicated line where all communications are intended solely for your RIA family. We hope you find this a useful and refreshing change for realizing the strength of RIAs as a distinct industry.
Sincerely,
Brooke Southall and the RIABiz team
415.389.8207
The Team
Brooke Southall
Managing Principal, Reporter
brooke@riabiz.com
415.389.8207
Brooke is known locally in Sausalito, Calif. as a cyclist, houseboater, and the guy with the huge dogs. On the web he's known as a regular voice on the happenings of the RIA business. He started RIABiz in 2009 after deciding the industry could use a more focused channel of information, which has proven to be the case.
He oversees the flow of articles on RIABiz, but still gets to spend a considerable amount of time reporting and writing. Somehow he manages to pump out story after story despite his frequently crashing Windows laptop and his hunt-and-peck typing method.
Frank Noto
Chief of Business Affairs
frank@riabiz.com
office: 415.389.8206
mobile: 415.246.5006
Frank, who hails from Jersey, is a serious Yankees fan despite our proximity to San Francisco. When asked if he cheers for the Giants, he laughs and says "Yeah, the New York Giants!"
Coach of one sport every season for his three daughters, Frank spends the first half of his day managing advertising inventory and finances for RIABiz. He's been working in the advisor industry since he started at InvestmentNews in 2000 one month before Brooke.
Nevin Freeman
Chief Technology Officer
nevin@riabiz.com
503.952.6184
Nevin writes emails, code, and articles for RIABiz, in that order. Drawn to the Bay Area by the circle of artificial intelligence researches there, he spends his evenings planning how to smoothly transition the world to non-human minds.
Lisa Shidler
Chicagoland Reporter
lisa@riabiz.com
219.988.4653
Lisa has been a reporter for 14 years and has been covering the financial services industry for five years -- she also comes from the world of InvestmentNews. She's been with RIABiz since November 2010.
Lisa is based in the middle of the country on the northwest corner of Indiana, about an hour from Chicago. She's married with two young children – Liz, 7, and Chance, a toddler.
Dina Hampton
Managing Editor
dina@riabiz.com
917.270.5745
Dina is a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and has worked for more than a decade as a reporter and editor for publications including The New York Times, the New York Daily News, Investment News, Stage Directions and Oxygen.com. Her book, “Little Red: Three Passionate Lives Through the Sixties and Beyond,” was published in March 2013 by PublicAffairs Books. Dina lives and works in New York City and Miami Beach.
Kelly O'Mara
Reporter
kelly@riabiz.com
Kelly is the latest addition to the RIA Biz team, coming on board in the spring 2012 after working as a local news reporter for the last few years. She finds financial news more interesting that following small-town police cars around. Along with RIABiz, Kelly writes for a number of running, cycling and triathlon magazines.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kelly also spends a lot of time running, cycling, and racing triathlon. It's always nice weather in Marin County.
Heather Underwood
Tech Reporter
heather@riabiz.com
Heather is our head advisor technology reviewer. She started writing for RIABiz in April 2010 when she was still in Sausalito, and has kept it up while pursuing her PhD in applied computer science at CU Boulder.
When she's not writing for us or working on research, Heather is an avid runner, hiker, and cyclist. Her most recent challenge is climbing all of the 14,000 ft. peaks in Colorado before completing her degree.
John and Dawn Kodin
Directory Sales
john@riabiz.com
dawn@riabiz.com
360.714.8662
John and Dawn live in the Northwest in Bellingham, Washington, are avid outdoors people, and are really into bicycles, kayaking and motorcycles. They are new to the RIABiz world but are quickly learning that there are a lot of great people in the financial advisory business.
They are excited to see the rapid growth of RIABiz and the Directory in the past few months and the future looks even better.
© 2009- RIABiz LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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