It is no surprise that advisors from all sectors of the financial services industry have the same ideas about what’s important to them. Ethics, the freedom to make objective product choices for their clients and their firms’ ability to delivery on promises are among advisors’ top priorities in Investment Executive’s 2007 Advisors’ Report Card.

And, in some of IE’s survey categories, firms share the advisors’ priorities. But in others, there are significant gaps between what the advisors say is important and how well they perceive their firms are performing.

In the previous four Report Cards — for the brokers in May, the planners in June, the account managers in July and the insurance advisors in August — regardless of channel, firms got high overall scores for their performance on freedom and ethics. And advisors are pleased that firms are listening to their concerns.

“Freedom is the foundation of our company, that we are able to help our clients in every possible way,” says an advisor in British Columbia with Winnipeg-based Wellington West Capital Inc.

Advisors from all channels report that they want to be able to put their customers first, whether they are selling a product or investing a client’s money.

“Sometimes we come to a roadblock, such as when a client wants something and we end up looking like a lemon,” says an RBC Dominion Securities Inc. advisor from the Prairies. “It’s important to have the freedom to offer clients the best value and what they are looking for.”

As for ethics: “A firm’s ethics start at the top and go right down to the bottom,” says a Richardson Partners Financial Ltd. advisor in the West. “I don’t think anyone who is unethical would last here.”

While firms are performing when it comes to ethics and freedom of product choice, delivering on promises seems to sit well below satisfaction levels. Delivering on promises ranked sixth in performance, yet it is the third most important quality for advisors.

“Show me; don’t tell me,” says a Manulife Securities International Ltd. advisor in Ontario. “Eventually, whatever they promised will arrive, but in a diluted form with results with which nobody is happy.”

“They are pretty good at overpromising and underdelivering,” says a BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. advi-sor in Ontario. “It’s always about what is new this quarter, but then they tend not to deliver it. When you get used to that, delivery is no longer important. You just lower your expectations.”

It’s clear that, in some cases, advisors don’t think firms “put their money where their mouths are.” Issues of compensation, number of clients advisors serve, technology enhancements and product launches are among the promises advisors are not seeing fulfilled.

“Rollout times are extremely poor,” says a Western advisor at managing general agent PPI Financial Group Inc. “I’ve trained myself not to get too excited when they say they are going to roll something out. Whatever timeline they give me, I usually add about a year to it.”

There are other inconsistencies between what’s important to advisors and how they see their firms performing in those areas. While transition support for advisors moving firms ranked eleventh in importance, advisors placed it near the bottom in performance — at 22nd.

Dan Brintnell, executive vice president and co-head of the retail division at Toronto-based DundeeWealth Inc. , realizes that last year his firm did a poor job in transition support. The firm decided to take action and, at the beginning of this year, implemented a transition-support “SWAT” team.

“We wanted a team in place to help with transition to the point at which we’re so effective at it that we could move a $500-million practice in two weeks,” Brintnell says. “We were able to do that this year.”

There were other gaps in the performance vs importance spectrum. In fact, in the top 15 categories by importance, not one performance score beats the importance score. The back-office and administrative-support category had one of the biggest gaps. Advisors ranked back-office support sixth in importance with a score of 9.0, but their firms’ performances rated 19th — not even cracking the top 15 — with a score of 7.7.

Advisors are concerned about high turnover rates in their IT departments, lack of training and communication breakdowns affecting back–office performance.

@page_break@“They are suffering from lack of training and also a very high turnover rate, which means you end up with a bunch of new people with no experience,” says a CIBC advisor from the Prairies.

“They have the wrong people doing this job, as well as a weak training program,” adds a Bank of Nova Scotia advisor in Saskatchewan. “Combine the two and it is just a disaster.”

PFSL Investment Canada Ltd. scored the highest in back-office support in the Planner’s Report Card, with a 9.2 in performance. The firm believes that the key to a successful back office is to keep up with the times. Jeff Dumanski, president and chief marketing officer for Mississauga, Ont.-based PFSL, has observed a large number of young advisors entering the business. He believes that, with a technology-savvy generation, you constantly need to update and upgrade technology.

“Many of the younger advisors have been brought up on new technology, so we’re moving to keep pace with what’s going on,” says Dumanski. ”The goal is to keep it simple. We provide the technology and then let the advisors decide where, when and how it will help their businesses.”

PFSL launched its new back-office system, from RPM Technologies Corp., in October 2006. Dumanski says the program features point-and-click access that effectively places reports and statements at the advisors’ fingertips. PFSL spent two-and-a-half years and $3 million developing the program, converting its database and customizing a Web-based application.

Meeting advisors’ expectations is obviously important to firms, but some firms are going out of their way to try to understand their advisors’ needs.

Wellington West received top scores in this year’s Brokerage Report Card. Chairman and CEO Charlie Spiring feels it is important to get feedback from advisors.

“We go to our advisors in advance and ask their opinions about what products they would like to see, what works for them and what their clients are demanding,” he says. “Some firms pay lip service to speaking to their brokers. That’s not the case here.”

David Agnew, managing director of RBC Dominion Securities Inc. in Toronto, also believes a firm needs to obtain feedback from its advisors to ensure it is providing the tools and support services they require every day. This year, DS conducted its own employee survey.

“We asked: ‘Where do you think we should be focusing’,” says Agnew. “We went through our technology platform, went through all our product lines, we went through support in terms of wills and estate planning, etc. So, we have some current hard data in terms of what advisors think we should be spending our money on.”

Montreal-based National Bank Financial Ltd. makes sure its advisors are constantly giving feedback. With communication always a challenge in large corporations, executives at NBF believe the best way to know what is going on is by meeting advisors in person.

“The mission, from the CEO down, is to be out at the branches on a regular basis,” says Gordon Gibson, senior vice president and managing director at NBF. “We’re always out there talking to the branches. And it’s from those face-to-face interchanges that some of the best ideas come to us.”

In this year’s Brokerage Report Card, Toronto-based Blackmont Capital Inc. showed immense improvement, increasing its performance scores by more than 0.5 in 21 categories. Bruce Kagan, president of the wealth management division for Blackmont, which has 183 advisors, says the small-firm work environment contributes to a feeling among advisors that their opinion matters and that they can make a difference.

“Independence for us really means that we provide an environment in which advi-sors and all of our employees feel that they can be heard,” says Kagan.

If advisors have ideas or suggestions on how to improve the client experience, they are able to go right to the top of the company. Blackmont has set up a group called Advisors Counsel to Management, in which advisors are able to communicate their opinions. “They can also come straight to me,” says Kagan. “I spend a substantial amount of time travelling around the country and meeting all our advisors. It’s an important part of my job.”

Small is a quality many of the regional dealers share, and they generally scored well on delivering on their promises. IE