Advisors Excel feedback

[Tampa Bay Rep]

Anyone here have any experience with Advisors Excel or know anything about them?

Plus what are your thoughts about their IRA College they have for their agents. They say they are NOT doing the Stretch IRA pitch and instead are doing a completely different IRA approach than other FMOs that actually benefits the client while they are still living, which they say has been highly effective in getting much larger accounts than the typical annuity pitch does.

Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[padthaiforlunch]

O what is the other IRA concept that helps clients while they are alive?

--Convert to a roth to avoid RMD?

 

[Charpress]

I assume you either participated in the Advisors Excel webinar on Friday or maybe you are starting an AE interest building thread.

The basic premise is that seminars have beaten the interest out of stretching in the last few years. There is some merit to that. The proposition then would be to talk about ways to save money while the IRA owner is alive rather than talk about how much money the beneficiary is going to save in a stretch.

The logical way to talk about saving money would be to address strategies that save taxes. So, the AE seminars focus more on moving money from a deferred bucket (IRA) to a tax-free bucket, which (according to AE) can only be done three ways: muni bonds, Roth, or life insurance. Except they don't exactly call it life insurance. If you starting talking about life insurance in a seminar as a strategy, I think you would lose your audience quickly. The IRA college, I assume, gives you the details on how the life insurance fits in as the "strategy" of choice once you have an appointment.

 

[padthaiforlunch]

I suspect they talk about life insurance using the income tax-free and estate tax-free bucket -- place the life insurance in a revocable trust which converts to irrevocable upon death.

 

[Mr. Bill]

Stocks-to-cash, or "emerging money". If anyone can make the math work on that, let me know. Options, loans, annuity, makes me think that once again, everyone except the client makes money. Hmmm...

 

[cloisbarton]

Padthaiforlunch is correct
Advisors Excel uses advisors that have taken an IRA certification course to present at their IRA college. There is some great information at their IRA college. But, you can take the IRA certification courses yourself and be a certified IRA Advisor. However, it is a great idea to team up with an advisor who knows how to leverage the knowledge that you gain from certification and turn that into sales.

 

[Freddie]

Anyone here have any experience with Advisors Excel or know anything about them?

Plus what are your thoughts about their IRA College they have for their agents. They say they are NOT doing the Stretch IRA pitch and instead are doing a completely different IRA approach than other FMOs that actually benefits the client while they are still living, which they say has been highly effective in getting much larger accounts than the typical annuity pitch does.

Any feedback is appreciated.

I saw your other message about Covenant and Advisors Excel. I know one guy who checked out Covenant and was not too impressed. Advisors Excel seems to be a pretty good group. This is just my opinion I know a bright adviser who contracted with AE and liked what he saw. Do your own DD.

 

[cloisbarton]

Padthaiforlunch is correct
Advisors Excel uses advisors that have taken an IRA certification course to present at their IRA college. There is some great information at their IRA college. But, you can take the IRA certification courses yourself and be a certified IRA Advisor. However, it is a great idea to team up with an advisor who knows how to leverage the knowledge that you gain from certification and turn that into sales.

I recruited the last agent they had dong their IRA College. He does share some really good concepts and ideas at his workshops that will help you make more sales out of the IRA market. So, I would say that any IRA training that you can get will help you in your sales process.

 

[cgfoster34]

As one of the founders of Advisors Excel, let me clear up just a few things. I will NOT promote our company on here, but just want to make sure you don't listen to information that isn't accurate. Talk to other advisors about us (i'd encourage you to do the same with anything you are considering) and ask them what they think.

With that said, we do not do any gimmicky IRA certifications. Our previous speaker at the IRA College wanted us to make up and promote a gimmicky certification and we have no interest in that. I think we've all seen that this is a recipe for disaster. As Jason said, he "recruited him away from us" or something like that.

Second, we do NOT promote or talk about emergin money or stocks to cash. Mike Reese did that for awhile but when he started working with us, we told him it was a strategy we didn't like and were not comfortable with.

Outside of that, other posts are pretty accurate.

Hopefully you'll get the information you need to make an informed decision. There are some good FMO's out there to choose from.

 

[joeblow]

Stocks-to-cash, or "emerging money". If anyone can make the math work on that, let me know. Options, loans, annuity, makes me think that once again, everyone except the client makes money. Hmmm...

"Emerging Money" went from a limited-recourse LOAN structure (loan recipient was on the hook for the stock-as-collateral only) to an option ("collar") structure, after, I presume, their credit line dried up. I wouldn't touch it w/ a ten-foot pole, now.
[Somebody] still does limited recourse loans on the portfolio. I find that concept intriguing, especially if using ETF's as the stock portion. (Relatively) low-cost hedge if the loan proceeds are safely placed elsewhere.