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The Best of the Best from the Q4 FA Vision Benchmarking Survey

by Lee Kowarski

While firms shouldn't mimic what they see competitors doing, it is always important to understand best practices and see what can be learned from those efforts that resonate in the minds of advisors. To that end, kasina's 4th quarter FA Vision benchmarking survey gathered responses from 3,003 financial intermediaries between October 19th and November 12th, 2009. As we do twice per year, we asked intermediaries about their investment behavior and asset allocation, as well as firm-specific topics, such as wholesaler effectiveness and brand perception.

Among myriad other findings, some of the firms that scored the highest in the Q4 survey were:

• Most Advocates for the Firm (highest % of intermediaries that would strongly recommend the firm to a colleague): Ivy Funds
• Most Advocates for the Firm's External Wholesalers (highest % of intermediaries that would strongly recommend the firm's externals to a colleague): MainStay Funds
• Most Advocates for the Firm's Internal Wholesalers (highest % of intermediaries that would strongly recommend the firm's internals to a colleague): BlackRock
• Best Value-Added Programs: JPMorgan Asset Management
• Best Sales Literature: American Funds
• Best Conference Calls with Investment Experts: Ivy Funds

If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to subscribe to the FA Vision "Nugget of the Week" newsletter where we share additional findings from FA Vision each week. Also, if you are interested in understanding how your firm ranked (or being included in future FA Vision surveys), send me an e-mail.