Inside Chuck Failla’s RIA crusade

investmentnews.com:

One might think wirehouse operators consider Chuck Failla, CEO of Sovereign Financial Group and host of goRIA, as public enemy number one.

 Not that it bothers him much.

“I would consider that a compliment and certainly a badge of honor,” said Failla.

Failla started his crusade to steer more advisors towards the independent route about five years ago when he dropped his series 7 and series 24 licenses and went full on RIA, leaving the broker dealer world behind. At first his goal was to simply bring other folks into Sovereign Financial, using educational marketing as a tool.

Eventually that small outreach turned into a full-on crusade. He set up a media franchise called GoRIA.com to provide education to advisors looking to leave the broker dealer (BD) world. And now he hosts forums, both in person and virtual (often in tandem with InvestmentNews for full disclosure) with the goal of opening the eyes of BDs to the RIA world – and maybe even taking the same leap he did.

So what’s Failla’s pitch?

It’s pretty simple actually.

“More money, more freedom,” said Failla.

“The higher payouts are generally what piques advisor interest in the RIA space at first,” said Failla. “However, while talking with RIA’s that made the jump, I found that the additional freedoms to run their business as they want, have the technology that they want, to sell the products that they want proved to be almost equally as important.”

In response to the old Wall Street question “Where are the customer’s yachts?” Failla says the clients prefer RIA independence as well, something they may not have noticed much in the past.

“What’s really driving this in large part is more clients are demanding fiduciary advice, and the RIA space is the home of fiduciary