Here's some additional information that was provided by Fabeetle.com founder Brandon Gadoci during the reporting of this week's Tech Update that we could not get into the story.
Where did you get the names?
We have a licensing agreement with Qualified Media, the company that maintains the list. This is the same list that many of the well known financial services firms purchase their leads from for recruiting.
When a financial advisor updates their profile, do you give that information back to Qualified Media?
No we don't. Neither for consumers or for financial advisors.
What does the 650k names you claim to have include?
The list that we licensed from Qualified Media contained approx. 650k Registered Representatives at the time we got the first version. FINRA currently reports that they cover 634k registered reps that they cover and that number has been steadily dropping for the past year. It is purported that about 1/2 of all licensed reps are 'producing'. Common speculation is that there are roughly 300k producing financial advisors in the country which is some what in line with the numbers we have. The non-producing portion of the list includes other financial professionals that might not fit the common definition of financial advisor but are still considered a registered representative according to FINRA. In addition we recently received an update from Qualified Media of 27k RIAs that we will be adding to the database soon.
How do you claim or create a profile?
If you have a CRD that is in our database it is as easy as entering that number and updating your profile. The registration request and profile claim of the advisor stays in a pending status until we approve the account. In the event you do not have a CRD, or you CRD is not in our database, we allow you to create a profile and we will go through the same authentication process prior to approving.
Would a negative review be considered a written complaint?
See Mark Astartita's answer here:
Answers/Question 7
Can an FA ask that a specific review be removed?
If an FA feels that a review on their profile is from a person they haven't worked with, they can submit that review for removal. We will attempt to verify the review came from a person that had indeed worked with that financial advisor. If the person providing the review cannot verify this, we will then remove the review.
Can an FA ask that their profile be removed?
As most of the concern about having a profile on Fabeetle revolves around the reviews capability we will disable the reviews section of the FAs profile at their request. We ask that the FA submit a signed request on company letter head and include their CRD number if they have one. We do this as to protect ourselves to the stipulations of Section 230 of the Communications & Decency Act and further protect us from being considered a content provider. In the event that an FA makes this request, we will simply display a message in the reviews section of their profile saying as much.
What does the site allow you to do right now?
Currently the beta version allows for:
• FAs to claim there profile
• FAs to create a profile if not listed
• FAs to supplement their profile with areas of focus, classification, and designation.
• FAs to answer questions.
• Non-FAs to rate and review FAs
• Non-FAs to ask and answer question
• Searching of financial advisors by multiple criteria and displayed by rating.
• Voting up or down of answers, questions and reviews by the community.
What features do you plan on adding?
We have a ton of great ideas that we are working on but don't like to give guidance about feature releases. We are committed to listening to the community and delivering the most relevant addition to Fabeetle where we can. We interact with our users on the answers section of Fabeetle and also on our
Get Satisfaction page.
What does it cost?
It is free to join Fabeetle as an FA or a client. As we add features we may or may not offer some of those features at a premium.
Why do you think FAs will want to join Fabeetle?
In my time as an FA I became increasingly frustrated at the demands that were placed on me to bring in new assets, while the restriction to do such a thing continued to get tighter (both regulation of marketing activities and the time commitment in properly managing a growing practice and keeping promises). FAs are coming off a tough couple of years and feel the pressure now more than ever to grow their business. The truth is that the best FAs grow through word of mouth and that they should spend the majority of there time doing the things that there clients hired them to do, not prospecting. We think that FAs in this situation could benefit from the emergence of digital word of mouth and the amplification that this medium allows. By taking what is already happening offline and brining it online in a way that is comfortable, accessible and relevant, we think we can help FAs connect with people looking for FAs like them.
