Ron Carson partners with Fidelity to launch practice management program

Ron Carson's coaching program, Peak Advisor Alliance, is partnering with Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions to offer a new practice management program for Fidelity's RIAs and broker-dealer clients. Called the eLearning Exchange, the new program will offer access to Peak's online resource portal and one-on-one coaching, along with peer learning opportunities, the companies announced Thursday. The program will be open in January for firms and advisers that use Fidelity as a custodian. The online and peer-learning programs will be free. The first six months of coaching are also free; if advisers want to continue using the coaching program, they would pay $300 per month, a discount from the standard $695 per month Peak charges for that service. More than 20 Fidelity advisers have used the program in its pilot stage, Mr. Carson said. A registered representative with LPL Financial since 1989, Mr. Carson's firm, Carson Wealth Management Group, is routinely ranked by Barron's as one of the leading independent advisers in the country. With $7.4 billion in client assets, Carson Wealth uses three firms to custody client assets: LPL, Fidelity Clearing & Custody and TD Ameritrade Institutional. Peak Advisor Alliance is an adviser-focused coaching business and separate from Carson Wealth. (More: Ron Carson sells 29% stake in his firm for $35 million) It took Fidelity and Peak nearly two years to get the new program off the ground, Mr. Carson said. David Canter, executive vice president for practice management and consulting with Fidelity Clearing & Custody, approached him with the idea of working together. “We've been approached by a lot of people, but they don't appreciate the effort that goes into this kind of offering,” Mr. Carson said. “In our industry, sometimes a lot more is said than gets done. Nobody had the content or the bandwidth like Fidelity to work with us to put Peak's available programs out there.” Topics of interest for advisers could range from learning how to structure a retreat for a firm's staff to how to hire a chief operating officer at a growing firm, Mr. Carson said. The new platform focuses on three areas: self-directed learning through an online platform; executive coaching, which is personalized and tailored to advisers' individual needs; and group learning, which is collaborative and gives advisers the opportunity to share best practices. “We view practice management as a key difference in our business,” Mr. Canter said. “Custody and clearing is becoming more commoditized. So we regard ourselves as a clearing platform and as a consulting company in the platform business.”