The term “financial planner” is used by many financial professionals. You should ask any planner what qualifies him or her to offer financial planning advice.
A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ must have passed a rigorous CFP certification process that includes significant education and experience requirements, as well as pass a comprehensive exam that tests their personal financial planning knowledge and skills.
Additionally, CFP registrants must meet regular continuing education requirements (30 hours/2 years) and ethics requirements. You may visit www.CFP-Board.org to check whether your financial planner is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™.
Both Jill Powers and Steve Hess are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS.™
Every investment product has some sort of investment management cost associated with it – even so-called “no load” mutual funds inside retirement plans. These management fees vary widely and can range from a few basis points (fractions of a percent) to nearly 2 percent per year. This management fee is deducted from your account’s return every year. You don’t see it, but you do pay it by a reduction in return.
When Trilogy Wealth Advisors manages money for a fee based on the asset value, we use low-cost index funds called Exchange Traded Funds or ETFs. These are very low cost index funds that have internal management fees ranging from as low as 0.09% to 0.60%. The average cost is about 0.30%. When we add our fee for managing qualified retirement plan money, the total cost is often very competitive when compared to the rate currently paid inside a typical 401k plan.
We feel that the value of our full financial planning and investment advice is a valuable and worthwhile option – especially when you can get it for a price similar to what you now pay to self-direct your 401k. Why not get professional help with the investment that, next to your home, is probably the largest financial asset you own?
As a part of our wealth planning services, Trilogy Wealth Advisors directs the placement of customer investment assets, however, we do not actually CUSTODY, or hold, those investment dollars. Your assets are invested in one of two places – either at a CLEARING FIRM (Schwab, Bear Stearns, Pershing) or directly with the FUND COMPANY (Templeton, Pacific Life, Putnam, etc.) Each of these entities insures client accounts against employee fraud or theft. In addition, Trilogy Wealth Advisors and NRP Financial carry similar insurance to protect customers against fraud or theft. Additionally, every account is protected by SIPC for up to $500,000 ($100,000 cash) in the event of broker/dealer insolvency. As you know, none of these policies insure your account against market fluctuation or loss.
Every employee of Trilogy Wealth Advisors and NRP Financial who has access to customer funds has been fingerprinted and had a complete FBI background check, per industry regulations. Every time a change in your client data (for example: address, investment objective, occupation) is made, this change should be reported to your financial advisor for documentation. This change will generate a regulatory-required letter stating that the change has been made to your account. This helps protect you in two ways: in the event of unauthorized changes to your client account, you will receive written notice to alert you, and if a key-stroke error or typo has created an input error, you will also have the opportunity to correct your account. If no such changes occur, you will receive a letter every 3 years just to verify that the information on file is still accurate.
For more tips on avoiding investment-related fraud, go to the FINRA Investor Information Center.
NRP Financial, Inc. is a national independent broker/dealer. As a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), NRP Financial is subject to the rules and oversight of FINRA, as well as the states and the Securities and Exchange Commission. NRP Financial is also a member of Securities Investor Protection Corp. (SIPC). Every individual who provides brokerage services must be licensed and registered appropriately with the FINRA as well as the appropriate state. In order to sit for the securities licensing exam, an individual must be sponsored to do so by a FINRA-registered broker/dealer.
Generally, broker/dealers are responsible for the oversight of their brokers and their brokers actions as they relate to their business and their clients. Broker/dealers are held accountable for their oversight efforts and are audited by not only the state securities department, but the FINRA and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well. Additionally, if insurance products are sold by licensed members of the broker/dealer, the state insurance commissioner will also be overseeing the broker/dealer.
Trilogy Wealth Advisors is an independent branch office of NRP Financial, Inc. This means that the compliance and oversight of our office is performed by NRP Financial. In addition to the securities work, our advisory work is through the NRP Financial Registered Investment Adviser, an RIA registered and overseen by the SEC. Thus, you will also see NRP Financial on your fee-based account statements.
Trilogy Wealth Advisors is a fee-based financial services provider. “Fee-based” means that we can charge either fees or commissions for the work we do, based on the needs of each client we serve. You can click on our Client Services Menu for more details.
