If providing fee-based advisory services is not already a part of your practice, you may be missing out on the full range of opportunities that offering them affords both you and your clients. With more and more consumers interested in a relationship focused on advice rather than products, offering these services can not only enhance your client base, but strengthen relationships with current clients. After all, the heart of an advisory relationship is the solid financial and investment advice that will help them reach their long-term financial goals.

Fee-based advisory services also reward you with the comfort of a regular revenue stream and greater opportunities for cross-selling.

(and the help to keep you from going over it)

Whether you are a seasoned Investment Adviser Representative (IAR) or a registered representative looking to start offering fee-based advisory services to your clients, we have the products, tools and training to help you forge and maintain the more meaningful and substantial client relationships that are part and parcel with delivering investment planning services. Your clients will appreciate your disciplined, long-term approach and dedication to helping them achieve their investment goals, and you’ll appreciate our commitment to making it easier for you to spend more time in front of your clients administering advice, and less time on administrative activities.

In an environment where consumers are faced with a dizzying array of investment options and increased demands on their time, having a trusted advisor provide periodic account maintenance on their behalf is becoming more and more prevalent. Through our robust advisory services platform integrated within ING SmartWorks^®, you’ll be able to design a portfolio, set up an asset allocation, implement your plan, and update your clients on their progress with full-color, consolidated quarterly reports, all from within the same easy-to-use environment.

Through regular meetings with your client (strengthen that relationship!), you’ll revisit and possibly revise that Investment Policy Statement over the years. This will keep your client on track toward his or her goals as needs and circumstances change.

To help your clients realize their goals and suit your style, you have access to four Advisory programs.

These flexible, advisor-directed wrap programs offer over 40,000 securities, including no-load and load-waived mutual funds, closed-end funds, exchange traded funds, stocks, bonds, UITs, and certain variable annuities. You also have the choice of seven different accounting methods, free transfer of cost basis information, and access to our Research team for portfolio customization.

This sophisticated turnkey mutual fund wrap program allows you to outsource asset allocation, trading, monitoring and rebalancing on an ongoing basis to professional mutual fund managers. Ten model portfolios are available (five taxable and five tax preferred). We do the research and due diligence while you focus on the client relationship.

For qualifying advisors, our advanced separately managed account program (MAP) allows you to outsource management of clients' assets to institutional money managers while taking advantage of additional tax flexibility. You retain full control of the client relationship—we do the rest.

So we give you plenty of opportunity to acquire all the knowledge you need to get a firm foundation when transitioning your business from commission-based services to the Preferred and Prime programs, and numerous occasions for additional learning as your business grows.

Our Advisory University Bachelor’s Course, offered throughout the year, is a three-day educational session that shortens the learning curve if you are new to advisory services so you can hit the ground running. In addition to hearing advice from top advisory producers, you’ll attend workshops on:

The Advisory University Master’s Conference gives top advisory producers a chance to mingle and share best practices, as well as attend workshops on:

Additional training is available every month through conference calls with advisors, quarterly conference calls with money managers, quarterly online training sessions, and Microsoft PowerPoint training presentations. From the point you decide to transition and throughout your career, you’ll get the support you need to make offering fee-based services easier.