CLS launches best-practices primer for advisers

Third-party money manager CLS Investments LLC is expanding its practice management footprint through a free adviser education series, CLS AdvisorIQ. With a succession of white papers and industry reports, the new series will inform advisers about innovative business management, marketing, and investment planning strategies. AdvisorIQ works to provide tangible lessons in practice management by presenting examples of successful advisers and their step-by-step approach to winning new business, creating operational efficiencies, and enhancing the service they offer to clients. CLS, a subsidiary of NorthStar Financial Services Group LLC, recently began work on a best-practice guide alongside fellow NorthStar subsidaries Orion Advisor Services LLC, a back-office administrator, and Gemini Fund Services LLC, a mutual fund manager. “We wanted to start documenting best practices to share within NorthStar,” said Todd Clarke, chief executive of CLS. “Then we decided we really ought to distribute this information beyond the NorthStar family.” Though the education series will include reports on effectively utilizing third-party entities like CLS, AdvisorIQ will cover a much broader range of financial advisory issues through the use of both traditional reports and new multimedia formats such as videos, podcasts, and webinars. “This could come back to benefit NorthStar management,” Mr. Clarke said, “but it's really about advisers taking advantage of the best-practices we've observed over the last ten years.”