It’s taken on faith by some — and most certainly not by others — that wealth management cannot be “scaled.” Putting aside for a moment that scaling is something that Norwegians do to fish, it seems early in the game to be making such broad pronouncements. Still, we can all agree that it’s exceedingly difficult to provide useful, accountable, life-encompassing financial advice to multiple thousands of people all from a single company under a single brand.

What has been discredited less quickly is whether a single company, single brand can be the sort of national electrical grid of tens of thousands of financial advisors who become the embodiment of the quality control of a single well-managed company.

On the fairly short list of companies that have a running start at making a bid to establish themselves in that light is Envestnet Inc. So we keep a close eye on it. Thankfully, it is a publicly traded firm, so there is a growing plentitude of information flowing from the mouths of its chief officers — if you’re willing to search for it. With Wall Street analysts sticking microphones into their faces ...

Brooke’s Note: Let’s face it. Half the fun of owning gold — just ask King Midas — is being able to count it. But amazingly enough in 2013, the ability of reporting software to account for the ownership of real bars of the stretchy mineral is still fighting to get out of the Stone Age. Even after being mired for a few days on this subject with Lisa I am not entirely clear what makes it so terribly difficult. I get it that, unlike common stock, you can’t store gold essentially on a silicon chip. But still! So here we write an article to cite a small advance in gold counting that is none the less a potentially big improvement from where it’s been. Just keep the children at a safe remove from your touch.

A New York based startup packed with luminary board members such as former Citigroup and Merrill Lynch exec Sallie Krawcheck and former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt — and supported by at least one high-level Goldman Sachs guy — has broken through a major barrier to doing business with RIAs.

Gold Bullion International LLC, founded in ...

Brooke’s Note: Genworth’s TAMP has long been the company with the marketing brains. It starts with people like Ron Cordes and Gurinder Ahluwalia. But the company has added Michael Kim from Fidelity, Frank Pizzichillo from MarketCounsel and Myra Rothfeld from CitiGroup (and formerly Schwab.) Well, the company has added a new host of experts — private-equity guys from New York and San Francisco. Now the question is whether all those smarts will result in a product line and sales pitch that will convince RIAs to buy more heavily into what the TAMP has to offer. That could be harder than writing a check for $412 million.

After having it on the market for more than a year, Genworth Financial Inc. has finally found a buyer for its turnkey asset management program, Genworth Financial Wealth Management.

Aquiline Capital Partners LLC, a New York-based private-equity firm investing in the financial services sector, and Genstar Capital LLC, a middle-market private-equity firm based in San Francisco, today announced that they have agreed to acquire the TAMP for $412.5 million. The price commanded was on the low side, sources say, considering that if ...

Brooke’s Note: As often as not, real life follows the fable of the mouse and the lion teaming up. But when two big-maned lions join forces, you know it’s because they’ve got wildebeest hunting on the mind. Fidelity and BlackRock appear to be two lions thinking along those lines as they try to control the ETF market before the hyenas multiply and overwhelm the savannah.

Fidelity Investments’ semi-covert effort to build a de novo ETF company in Denver is apparently more of a joint venture with BlackRock’s iShares.

RIABiz has written in some detail about Fidelity’s SelectCo mission in Denver, Colo., which was the early name for this initiative that was known to be focused on sector-based exchange traded funds. See: Fidelity launches major division in Denver with an 'ETF quarterback’ calling the shots.

Since then, industry observers have wondered what rabbit Fidelity could pull out of its hat to ensure that its efforts achieved scale and prominence commensurate with the company’s brand and do-it-big-or-go-home modus operandi.

Brooke’s Note: If you’re going to have a most-influential list in a realm as dynamic as the RIA business, you really want a crowning example that somehow brings together the myriad ways that RIAs are succeeding and combines them in one tidy package. Last week we gave you our picks, six through 10, of our top 10. See: 10 most influential RIA figures going into 2013 and how they’re reshaping the industry, Part 1. We’ve found our No. 1 pick. You’ll see that his fairly mind-blowing success greedily uses an all-of-the-above strategy that includes big use of a roll-up, a TAMP, DFA, Silicon Valley’s wealth, the untapped potential of the accounting profession, social media and even the mass affluent. Oh, and the CEO is about age of some red-shirted college athletes. Further up on the list at No. 5 we have a happy-go-lucky advisor who counts turtle-riding among his feats. How does he rate so high? Remember the song with the refrain: “You’ve got to fight for your right to paaaaarrrrty.” It’s true. I believe that anybody who makes success look super-easy ...

Brooke’s Note: As previously indicated, we are finding more and more Silicon Valley ventures cropping up with new RIA ideas or new wrinkles on older ideas. Kelly O’Mara is burning up the keyboard keeping up with them all. This one, Motif, is running the gauntlet of skeptics but Hardeep Walia seems to have the right teflon shield to make it work — if it’s workable.

Born out of a plan to create theme-based do-it-yourself investing, backed with $26 million in venture capital and with some (financial) household names on the board of advisors, San Mateo, Calif.-based Motif Investing was launched last year as a retail platform aimed at end-clients.

But RIAs have responded so well to the $9.95 trading program that Motif is now piloting an advisor version of its indexes. It now allows end clients and advisors to build up their own portfolios, brand them, and allow other people to buy into them — with the original builder getting $1 per sale.

“There isn’t another financial product like that out there,” says Hardeep Walia, co-founder of Motif and a former executive at Microsoft Corp.

It turns out Wall Street folks need as much help with their wealth as other investors. Working on that premise, Chicago-based RIA Relative Value Partners has increased its assets by $100 million in assets last year alone fueled by a client base heavily weighted with executives who have held various jobs at investment banks.

Gaining a niche of Wall Street clients was a natural fit for co-founders Maury Fertig, 52, formerly a managing director at Salomon Brothers/Citigroup Inc., and Bob Huffman, 53, also formerly a managing director for Salomon Brothers. Fertig was the head of Midwest institutional corporate bond sales at Solomon/Citi, working there for 17 years, and Huffman worked there for 20 years in various roles — including in corporate bond sales — until becoming head of Midwest institutional-fixed-income sales in 1999. Fertig is chief executive of the RIA and Huffman is chief investment officer. See: The six key points about Wall Street’s surprising employment picture.

Even though neither man had worked with individual clients, it only made sense when they decided to form Relative Value Partners LLC in Northbrook, Ill. in 2004, to build out their client ...

Brooke’s Note: Rebalancing has come so far so fast that we are still getting to know all the names — even big, well-entrenched ones. FolioDynamix is one that keeps popping up on some big stages.

In a move aimed at beefing up its hybrid offering, LPL has signed on to use the up-and-coming technology FolioDynamix.

Despite having spent big bucks to purchase top tech provider Fortigent nearly a year ago, the No. 1 independent broker-dealer opted to go with FolioDynamix because of its integrated trading and rebalancing platform. See: LPL makes big advance into the RIA business with Fortigent acquisition.

LPL is also making use of some of Fortigent’s technology. It will use FolioDynamix’s trading and rebalancing software only, and will continue to build out plans to make more of Fortigent’s performance and research capabilities available to its advisors.

Brooke’s Note: I’m a huge skeptic of social media strategies. See: Early adopters of social media, RIAs are growing disenchanted with its power to drum up new business. But this one seems to be showing results. I think an obvious reason it’s working is because it’s about people with quality ideas at its core. In short, BAM Alliance hires bloggers with killer Google page ratings who get found by the smart set that do independent research on the web. If these smart people are then affiliated with an RIA and that information flows through social media — then a virtuous cycle is created.

Buckingham Asset Management LLC is doubling down on the marketing approach that’s already helped it nab 50 flush Facebook clients. See: Why sudden wealth at Facebook is gushing into a $17-billion RIA and triggered a merger of two DFA giants.

The St. Louis-based firm with an office in Silicon Valley recently announced that it had brought aboard bestselling author and financial blogger Dan Solin as part of the BAM Alliance, the overall group that includes both Buckingham’s TAMP and RIA. Solin is ...

Orion Advisor Services LLC finished off a hot year on a high note — with big help from its investment in building its own bridge to Salesforce Galactica.

The Omaha, Neb.-based provider of web-based portfolio accounting software won the accounts of The Pacific Financial Group Inc., a turnkey asset management program and wealth manager with more than $500 million in assets under management as of Nov. 30 and Southwest Securities Inc., an independent broker-dealer in Dallas whose reps manage about $1.4 billion. Both of these firms formerly were users of Advent Axys software. Advent Software Inc. did not respond to requests for comment.

The addition of these two clients brings assets managed and advised by Orion’s clientele to an aggregated $89 billion. The growth resembles the other high-flier, Envestnet | Tamarac, which built up its assets administered to $70 billion or more from $25 billion this year just through its portfolio accounting product. See: Tamarac picks second Microsoft partner to handle spike in demand from big RIAs.

Self-integration

According to its president, Eric Clarke, Orion got a big boost toward its record year of growth from its increasing connections ...