Recruiting investment advisory clients from among your own tax return clients can be explosively supercharged with the ProRRT℠.

Here’s how.​

If you are a CPA, accountant, or are otherwise engaged in preparing tax returns, you are now beginning to meet with your tax prep. clients to do their returns.

If you are also an investment advisor, it’s likely that only a small minority of your tax return prep clients are also investment advisory clients.

Here’s why this is a critically important time for new investment client recruitment.

Tax return preparation will give you access to your clients’ brokerage account statements, and you can use that information to score and rank their mutual funds and ETFs against all other available ones in each asset class, while they watch and even participate.

Involving them in the process is very important, since they will have never experienced anything like this. Want a way to distinguish yourself from other advisors? This is it!

In most instances, the top ranked choices will have produced substantially higher average annual returns with often less volatility than theirs. In other words, they’ll often see significant return premiums with no equivalent risk premiums, and those return premiums can often be quite large.

After performing this analysis for several of their holdings, you can say this: “I can do this for all of your investment choices, and we’ll likely get similar results.

But, at this point, one thing is looking pretty clear . . . it looks like ‘you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.’ 

Do you want to stay with your current advisor or would you like to come over to us, where we’ll use this new technology to help keep your investment choices optimized and help you make more money?”     

We know from experience that this will get you new clients,

As good as our new client recruitment strategy is for those with whom you have had no prior relationship (it certainly works), recruiting from among your existing tax clients (with whom you already has a relationship and who trust you) is obviously even better and more powerful.

And you don’t need the purchase the full ProRRT℠ to do this. You can use the free “Checkup” version (which doesn’t show the names of the funds) to do it.

The client doesn’t need to see the names of the fund choices to see that there are much better choices possible.

Try it and see the value for yourself.

Of course, if the client switches to you because of what you’ve showed them, you’ll need the full ProRRT℠ to be able to provide the service you’ve promised them.

As tax season is ramping up, the timing for equipping yourself to do this is very important . . . it’s NOW. 

We thought it important for you to see and benefit from this, or at least pass this along to any friends who are CPAs and/or tax preparers who might also be investment advisors. 

Don’t miss this unique opportunity . . . time passes quickly, so do yourself and your clients a favor and act now. And, if you have any questions or need any help, please contact eric@decisionengines.tech or jack@decisionengines.tech.

On January 10^th, we were surprised to see this brief article on Analysis-Paralysis, stating that: “By 2031, there could be one million managed investment products.” The article also points out that: “As of June 30, 2023, there were more than 742,000 products available.”

Wow! That’s dramatically more that we had estimated.

In many of our earlier posts, you’ll see us point out there are estimated to be well over 20,000 mutual fund and ETF choices. We believed 20,000+ to be a conservative under-estimate.

What we didn’t expect was finding out that we might have been under-estimating by a factor of 10X or more!

The article points out the largest single group of these investment choices is mutual funds and that the number of ETFs is also very large and rapidly growing.

However, whether it’s a total of 20,000 or 200,000+ mutual funds and ETFs, there are so many choices and so much information about each as to make trying to evaluate which ones are best for your clients, especially individually customized recommendations, virtually impossible.

What’s needed is a way to effectively use and benefit from such an overwhelming and growing number of choices and volume of information.

Fortunately, there has been a significant advance in information technology – the ProRRT℠ – that now enables investment advisors and brokers to objectively score and rank any number of mutual funds and ETFs, within any asset class, in mere moments.

Importantly, for Reg. BI compliance, it also effectively filters out all conflicts of interest, both known and unknowable. It gives you the ability to provably demonstrate to regulators that what you are recommending to clients are in your clients’ best interests.

The ProRRT℠ utilizes Decision Technologies Corporation’s patented decision-assistance technology that enables you to select any blend any of 48 different performance parameters and individually weight them to match their degree of importance to your clients and you.

Using this blend of weighted performance factors, the ProRRT℠ will enable you to score and rank all of the funds within any asset class. It will show you (and enable you to show your clients) just how theirs (those you’ve recommended) did compared to all of the other choices you could have recommended and not just to a benchmark index.

It is also important to understand that a simplified version of the ProRRT℠ is now available to individual investors (your clients). It’s called the Retail Investment Tracking Application℠ (aka “Rita℠”).

Why is that important?

Well, with Rita℠ (and the 24 performance factors it provides), individual investors will now be able to score and rank, for themselves, the mutual fund and ETF recommendations you’ve been giving them.

If they see that one you’ve recommended ranks 176 or 227 out of 677 choices within the asset class, with average annual returns (of perhaps 5%, 6%, or more) less than the top ranked funds and with higher average annual volatility over the last 5 years, then what?

Would you be at risk of losing that client?

Would you be vulnerable to another advisor (using the ProRRT℠ to show your client that performance difference) recruiting your client away from you?

It’s important to understand that “The Rita℠ Effect” is real and, from experience, we believe its core lesson is simply this: Advisors cannot afford to have their clients know more about the relative performance of what the advisor has recommended than the advisor does.  

We also believe that as investor awareness and use of Rita℠ grows, so will the benefits of the ProRRT℠ to advisors using it, as will the risks to advisors who do not.

Regardless of the possible effects of Rita℠, in this world of too many choices and too much information about them, the ProRRT℠ was specifically designed to help advisors answer this key question:

“Of all the available choices, which ones are best for my clients?”

It was also specifically designed to help you recruit clients away from your competition.

Take the no cost and no risk opportunity (using the free “Checkup” version of the ProRRT℠) to see just how good the mutual funds and ETFs you’re recommending REALLY are in comparison to others in which you could have recommended.

Try it and see for yourself how much money you and your clients may have been, and perhaps still are, “leaving on the table” by being in poor performing choices – choices that you (and they) have had no meaningful way, until now, to comparatively evaluate.

In a world in which everyone appears to be doing the same things in largely the same ways, it’s time for a meaningful change.

It’s time for you to be able to clearly differentiate yourself from your competition and to benefit from the unique competitive advantage, better investment results, and greater client satisfaction that the ProRRT℠ can uniquely provide.

And, for any special help you may need with your firm’s compliance approval process, please contact us. We’ll be happy to carry the weight of that for you.

Early in our development of our Professional RapidReview Tool^℠, one of the people assisting us in new business development (let’s call him “Albert”) called to ask if I would be willing to meet online with his “significant other” (let’s call her “Rita”) to use the ProRRT^℠ to score and rank some of her mutual fund investments in advance of a meeting with her investment advisor.

I happily agreed since Albert had been of great help in making introductions.

When I met online with Rita, she had her brokerage statement handy. So, I opened the ProRRT^℠ and began to use it to score and rank her mutual fund investments, with her not only watching but also participating in the selection and weighting of performance factors important to her.

We started with the mutual funds in which she had the largest balances. Altogether, in about 45 minutes, we scored, ranked, and discussed her four largest holdings.

One scored well and was relatively highly ranked. So, there was no compelling reason to recommend a change.  The other three, however, ranked way down in their asset classes and it appeared clear that there were choices that had performed much better and better matched her needs, goals, and preferences within their asset classes.

It’s important to understand that Rita, while a very sophisticated and highly educated lady, has been a largely passive investor and was not knowledgeable regarding the comparative analysis of mutual funds and ETFs.

However, she clearly understood what she was seeing.

She stated that she had not seen anything like this . . . nothing that provided her with a way to see for herself the full range of choices and how they compared to her own holdings. 

She pointed out that she had been relying on the recommendations of her investment advisor, with no meaningful way to determine if those recommendations were good, much less the “best,” for her.

At the end of our meeting, she surprised me by asking: “Should I just go ahead and fire him?”

I suggested that she not do so, but to see if he would get her what she wanted. I pointed out that, because her account wasn’t large, if she proved to be too much trouble, he might actually fire her. With that bit of advice, Rita thanked me, we ended the meeting, and I thought no more about it.

Several days later, I was talking with Albert, and, toward the end of our conversation, he asked: “Would you like to know what happened with Rita?” I said: “Sure, I’d love to know.”

He then told me that Rita had fired her advisor. “Really?” was my surprised response. “Yes,” he continued, “she came back and told me that she would be willing to go to a different advisor (one with which Albert was working) but only on the condition that he license and use the ProRRT℠ technology.”

This unexpected result proved to be very instructive. It revealed an additional compelling rationale for investment advisors to obtain a license to use this new technology.

That important “lesson” is this. There is no way an investment adviser can afford to have a client know more about the relative performance and position of his or her mutual fund and ETF investments than the advisor who recommended them.  

A “retail version” of this technology, for individual investors (like Rita), has now been released – it’s our Retail Investment Tracking Application^℠, aka “Rita^℠.” Yes, we named it after the person who I had helped.

With that release, individual investors are now able to score and rank their mutual funds and ETFs for themselves, in virtually the same way I did for Rita. What will they discover when they do?  How will the ones you have recommended stack up?  

Here’s the takeaway: Rita^℠ is now here.

Are you prepared for “The Rita Effect^℠”?  

Can you afford not to be?  If Rita, in the story above, reacted in this way, how will your clients react?  And that highlights a second, less obvious but equally important, lesson.

Rita did not want to do the scoring and ranking herself. She wanted an advisor to do it for her . . . one that has licensed and is using the ProRRT^℠. 

That’s “good news” for investment advisors using the ProRRT^℠ – Rita^℠ could prove to be a source of new clients.

If you are an investment advisor, using the Checkup Tool in this way will help you determine how much room for improvement there is in your investment recommendations.

It will also let you know how vulnerable you may be to losing clients to competing advisors with better recommendations.

While that’s a purely defensive use of the free Checkup Tool, it can also be used “on offense” to recruit new clients, including the clients of your competitors.  In fact, that was one of our original goals in developing the ProRRT℠.

Here’s how it’s done:

• Simply contact the prospective client and arrange to meet; anywhere will do – e.g., a coffee shop.
• Ask him or her to bring their most recent brokerage statement or quarterly investment report with them, explaining that you have something important that you’d like to show them.
• When you meet (and after buying them a cup of coffee, etc.), ask him or her to pull out their brokerage statement or investment report and tell you what their single biggest investment holdings are (you don’t need to see their report or how much money they’ve invested),
• Then open your laptop or pull out your iPad and log onto the free ProRRT℠ Checkup Tool and explain to the prospect how the technology works as he or she watches you score and rank what they are holding against all other available choices within that asset class.
• It is important to show them the factors that can be used, and to ask which ones are most important to them and how much weight should be placed on them.  Involving them in the process is very important, since they will have never experienced anything like this – the transparency, objectivity, and most importantly, the feeling of empowerment in now being included in the review and selection process.
• When he or she is happy with the factors and weightings, compare the multi-period returns and multi-period volatility of theirs against the top scorers.

In most instances, the top ranked choices will have produced substantially higher average annual returns with often less volatility – in other words, they’ll often see significant return premiums with no equivalent risk premiums . . . and the return premiums can often be quite large.

After performing this same comparative analysis for a few more of their holdings, say this:

“I can do this for all of your investment choices and we’ll likely get similar results. But, at this point, one thing is looking pretty clear . . . it looks like ‘you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.’  Do you want to stay where you are (with your current advisor) or would you like to come over to us, where we’ll use this new technology to help keep your investment choices optimized and help you make more money?”     

We know from experience that this will get you new clients.

You don’t need the full ProRRT℠ to do this, and the prospective client doesn’t need to see the names of the fund choices to see that there are much better choices possible. Try it and see the value for yourself.

One advisor recently said this: “If you let me use the tool to make enough money to pay for it, then I’ll sign up.”

Well, that’s exactly what the free “Checkup” version enables you to do. Use it to successfully recruit clients and, when they’ve committed to come to you, then get the paid version so you can deliver on your service promises.

If you recruit just one new client, with $500,000 of investment assets during the course of an entire year using this unique client recruitment strategy, at a 1% fee you will have more than paid for the full ProRRT℠ license.

But there is no reason you cannot recruit many more clients and AUM, generate much more revenue, and better protect your clients from being “poached” by competitors.

Try it and see.

What’s “MONEYBALL”?

It’s not just the name of a very popular movie which, if you haven’t yet seen, you should. It’s the name given to a whole new way of comparatively evaluating baseball players – using performance metrics rather than the subjective opinions of baseball “scouts.”

The movie tells the story of how this occurred, and the struggles involved in changing the traditional system of baseball player evaluation and selection. It’s definitely worth watching.

What’s the connection with DTC’s Professional RapidReview Tool℠ (the ProRRT℠”)? In an almost identical way, we’re improving the way mutual funds are evaluated and selected.

The time-consuming, initial screening process for picking funds for further, qualitative due diligence, is no longer about the size and reputation of the fund companies, or the size of their advertising / marketing budgets, or their name recognition, or the opinion of external or internal experts . . . and it’s certainly not about incentives that fund companies may be offering to have their funds preferentially recommended. NO!

With the ProRRT℠, it’s now (just like in MONEYBALL) purely about performance!

Which of the mutual funds and ETFs, within any asset class, have proven best over time at producing the investment results you’re seeking for any one or more of your clients?

Reference to the movie provides clients with an easy-to-understand description of the process you are using . . . a unique process that clients can both actually watch you perform and in which they can participate.

But that’s only a part of why the ProRRT℠ is better than the system described in the movie.

In the movie, the comparative evaluation had to be done by a hired “Quant”, who created algorithms with which the comparisons were performed. No one but him really understood how to use it and (at least initially) almost no one trusted him or the results and recommendations he was producing.

But, as the movie documents, that ultimately changed.

Why?

It was because of the results – better players, better performance, and lower overall costs.

The proof?

They were winning. They were beating the competition!

How is the ProRRT℠ “better?”

What took who knows how much time for the team’s expert “Quant” to comparatively evaluate baseball players, can now be done for hundreds of mutual funds and ETFs in any asset class in mere moments.

And, most importantly, you don’t need to be a “Quant” to do it. You can easily and rapidly perform the scoring and ranking of the funds yourself.

Just as with the MONEYBALL process, the ProRRT℠ helps you identify and select mutual funds and ETFs that better match the composite investment performance (the desired combination of risk, return, and other factors) you’re seeking and often with lower overall costs.

The proof?

After more than a decade of testing, we saw that the mutual funds and ETFs picked with the aid of the ProRRT℠ were winning. We saw that they were beating the competition!

You can now see and, better yet, experience and prove this for yourself.

The MONEYBALL system has forever changed professional sports.

The Boston Red Sox now have as many as 35 people working on analyzing “sports metrics” for the evaluation and selection of players.

The ProRRT℠, in contrast, enables you alone to quickly and easily comparatively evaluate over 20,000 mutual funds and ETFs (many more choices than there are baseball players) for your clients’ investment “team” (the mutual funds and ETFs comprising their portfolios).

If your RIA or Bank has an internal group comparatively evaluating mutual funds and ETFs for its investment advisors to recommend, the ProRRT℠ will help make them much more time-efficient and much better at their jobs.

Our Goal is to similarly improve the way mutual funds and ETFs are evaluated and selected, by empowering you (and members of your investment advisor team) to do something even more extraordinary than what the movie describes – something never before available.

It’s the best of MONEYBALL and it’s now available to you and your RIA or Bank!

If we look, we can find its negative effects in many areas of our lives. If you are an investment advisor looking to grow your business and better serve your clients, it can be particularly harmful . . . even more so if you are unaware of its existence and its negative effects. Of all of the many things that you ideally should be doing, in this post we’ll focus on just one.

If you are reading this, you are likely aware of the ProRRT℠ , the Professional RapidReview Tool℠.

Are you using it to recruit clients away from your competition?

That’s what it was specifically designed to help you do.

Are you using it to improve your investment recommendations and the investment results and satisfaction of your clients?

It was specifically designed to do that as well. Would you really not wish to have a compelling competitive advantage in new client recruitment and would you also not wish to improve your investment recommendations to, and investment performance of, your clients?

Yet even though this newly available tool was designed to directly assist in doing both, very few investment advisors have made any effort to try it.

Have you? If not, why not?

Your answer, or inability to logically answer, may reveal how and to what extent Cognitive Dissonance is negatively impacting your business development goals and the quality of the services you’re providing, perhaps dramatically.

Cognitive Dissonance is almost always objectively illogical and becoming aware of it is the first step in ending its negative effects.

But there is yet another aspect of Cognitive Dissonance that is more general, less visible, and industry specific that may be affecting you. And because it may similarly affect such large numbers of investment advisors (and industry leaders), the resulting illusion of a “strength in numbers” validation can make it difficult to recognize and even more difficult to remedy.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, describes it in this way:

“Cognitive dissonance, the mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in people is relieved by one of several defensive maneuvers: they reject, explain away, or avoid the new information; persuade themselves that no conflict really exists; reconcile the differences; or resort to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in their conceptions of the world and of themselves.”

What beliefs or assumptions could be at stake here, in the financial services marketplace? How about starting with these:

• There’s nothing truly new within the financial services world,
• There’s no way to determine which mutual funds or ETFs may be best for any client (there are just too many and too much information about them),
• The process I’m using to select mutual funds and ETFs to recommend to my clients is as good as anyone’s, and
• My clients like and trust me, I downplay and don’t focus on returns, and I have no real fear of competitors.

Is there any new information that could contradict these beliefs or assumptions?

The answer is YES, absolutely.

The introduction of the ProRRT℠ and knowledge of its capabilities is the new information that contradicts every one of these, including the last one listed. If you’re not fearful of those using the ProRRT℠, you should be. Advisors using the ProRRT℠ will be recruiting clients away from investment advisors who are not using it.

But what’s coming is more of a threat than most investment advisor might imagine. The recent release of a simplified, individual investor version of the ProRRT℠, the Retail Investment Tracking Application℠ (aka “Rita℠”) will soon provide individual investors with more knowledge about the relative performance of their mutual funds and ETFs than the advisors who (without the benefit of the ProRRT℠) recommended them. The Rita Effect℠ is something virtually no one yet sees coming and for which advisors (other than those using the ProRRT℠) will be woefully unprepared.

The defensive maneuvers that the Encyclopedia Britannica then describes as being employed for the purpose of “preserving stability or order in their conceptions of the world and of themselves,” include: “they reject, explain away, or avoid the new information; persuade themselves that no conflict really exists; reconcile the differences; or resort to any other defensive means . . . .”

If you recognize any of these in your behavior, it’s a safe bet that Cognitive Dissonance is negatively affecting you and your future.

How much of this is intentionally being done, or is simply an uncritical, “go with the flow” acceptance of the status quo, is largely irrelevant. The negative effect is still the same.

So what’s the remedy?

Well, the first step in remedying any problem is to be aware that the problem exists. We hope that the discussion above has helped you to recognize the signs of Cognitive Dissonance and how they may be manifesting in your conscious and subconscious behaviors.

Having that awareness, the next step is NOT to indulge it but to directly act against it. In the present context, that action would be to simply try the ProRRT℠ – to put it and its claims (the truth of the “new information”) to the test.

Cognitive Dissonance and its negative effects fade in those who are willing to do so and are prepared to accept and act on the results that they experience for themselves.

So, what do you want to do?

Do you want to stay trapped in Cognitive Dissonance, where nothing new is possible . . . where you continue to do the same things, in largely the same ways, as everyone else?

Or do you want to try something new and open yourself to the opportunity of better results for yourself and your clients and, in doing so, also help to beneficially change the financial services world?

The choice is yours. We hope you make it a good one. We’ll be happy to help.

Ben’s letter back to Priestley described his decision method, and it is widely accepted as the first written account of a “decision-assistance” technique. You can enjoy reading it below.

When you do, you’ll see him describe some challenges with which we are all familiar, today – challenges that the decision-assistance technology that powers the ProRRT℠ was designed  to help solve. One of the most important of these, as Ben points out, is that “there is often too much information to consider . . . and that makes decisions difficult.” Without the benefit of modern technology, Ben classified “factors” and “weighted” them, and then comparatively evaluated them to help in making his decision. Sound familiar? 

However, Ben mentions that his decision-making process involves three to four days while, with the ProRRT℠ the process  can take you mere moments . . . a key benefit of our patented decision-assistance technology.

So, did Ben Franklin anticipate the ProRRT℠?  In a way, we believe he did. He certainly recognized the problem of having too much information, applied logic to find a way to productively use the information, and articulated a benefit of the use his process (a benefit shared by ProRRT℠ users) – that by doing so one is “less likely to take a rash step.”

Unfortunately for Ben, he was way ahead of his time and didn’t the benefit of ProRRT℠ technology. You do or, at least, you can. We wonder what he would have thought to see the speed and effectiveness of scoring and ranking hundreds of mutual funds and ETFs (and doing multiple “what if” tests, by adjusting factors and weightings) in mere moments. Perhaps he would have been an “early adopter” and might have been able to write a shorter letter.