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April 27, 2012 at 10:39 PM
“It’s like drinking from a fire hose.”
Forgive us for using the cliché (again), but it really is the best way to describe a conversation with Chip Roame. The managing partner of research and consulting firm Tiburon Strategic Advisors employs a rapid fire delivery of critical information that industry leaders want; so much so that in addition to purchasing his services, they clamor to attend his twice-annual CEO summits, a who’s-who of the best and brightest that financial services has to offer.
He’s been named to lists of top industry thought leaders and influencers so many times that it must be old hat.
“It is, until I go home to my family and I’m reminded that I’m no big deal,” he says.
Although Tiburon intends to remain a mid-sized, boutique management consulting firm, Roame is looking to the future in how its information is delivered.
“We used to send our reports to clients, but no longer,” he explains. “We’re building out our research topics and now sending links to our reports. We want to blanket financial services in terms of researching industry trends, as well as specific companies. The client will have live access to updates as they occur, some of which are updated daily and others that are updated maybe five or 10 times a year.”
He also has a growth strategy at the senior management level, one that most recently involved hiring well-known broker-dealer executive Matt Lynch away from Capital Analysts.
And, of course, there are the CEO summits.
“These are the other people your readers read about,” he says before adding in typical Roame style, “They’re the studs of the industry.”
Asked about near-term trends that most affect advisors (his specialty), he doesn’t hesitate.
“The trends are perfectly clear, and each has its own inflection point,” he says. “The first is the issue of breakaway brokers and the differing views of how substantial it is currently and how much bigger it will get. I don’t mean the ‘broken’ breakaway brokers; the guys at the bottom of the Merrill training class that got fired. I mean the guys that are leaving on their own.”
Roame says the overall number of breakaway brokers might not be big, but the assets they take with them certainly are, which have an outsized impact when moved because of the independent channel’s smaller size.
