Investment dealers should get out of the content business

The September print edition of Investment Executive hits the mail next week. It includes our annual Dealers’ Report Card, featuring advisor feedback on seven full-service and four mutual fund-only dealers. The report went online Friday. The digital version of our September issue goes up Monday. Katie Keir, our research and special projects editor, writes that advisors in this space “are searching for ways to upgrade and grow their businesses, even if that change sometimes triggers short-term operational challenges.” Advisor feedback on most of the firms held steady relative to our 2024 Report Card. That’s good news in categories like “support for remote system access & transactions,” “quality of product shelf” and “freedom to make product choices,” all of which received high performance and importance ratings from advisors. Consistency is less welcome at the other end of the spectrum. The lowest-rated category — in performance and perceived importance — is “social media training, content & rules.” Advisors rated its importance at 7.4 out of 10 and gave their dealers an average performance score of 7.1. Twenty-three years after the launch of LinkedIn, Canadian advisors either think they know better than the social media experts employed by their firm, or they simply don’t believe in the medium. The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) regulates social media activity as part of its oversight on advertisements, sales literature and correspondence. “It is essential for dealers to establish and maintain sound policies and procedures regarding the use of social media for business purposes by their approved persons, including advisors,” CIRO explained in an emailed statement to us. “[A]dequate supervision must be in place to ensure that social media interactions are conducted in a manner consistent with regulatory standards and the dealer’s internal policies.” CIRO requires dealer oversight of advisor posts, but that does not mean firms have to create content for social media distribution. Nor should they. Social media has never been a place in which investment dealers could manage advisors’ delivery of marketing and business development messages. It was never intended to work in a centralized manner. Social platforms are for personal news and opinion, mostly. Using it for corporate messaging has never been a best practice, not even on LinkedIn. Dealers would be better off providing guidance on social media usage, reviewing posts as required and focusing on their core business. A big part of getting better is tossing the things that don’t work.