Series 7 & RiverSource

        I felt I learnt a lot in the office today as well as being given some more responsibility. The day began with an explanation of the Series 7. This is an exam that allows a registered representative to be licensed to sell securities and have the legal power of an agent in the United States of America. To become a registered representative, you must be sponsored by a broker-dealer firm and pass the FINRA-administered Series 7 examination, which must be renewed every three years. Passing the Series 7 exams gives authorization to sell a large array of securities such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds and variable annuities. I think this is a really valuable qualification to have and if I was lucky enough to return to the United States for my working career I would defiantly hope to take this exam.

             The next nugget of information I learnt was the new insurance option that Mr Pippitt picked up at the RiverSource conference in Florida last week. RiverSource is an insurance company owned by Ameriprise Financial. The new product option was called the “Nine circles calculator” insurance strategy. This allows an advisor to put the clients following information in:

a)     IRA/401(K) – future value

b)    IRA/401(K) future value with insurance premium

c)     Life insurance death benefit – assumed tax rate: Federal tax at 15%, State tax at 5%

The calculator then produces three options:

1)    Current Strategy

2)    Family Strategy

3)    Family & Social Strategy

This allows the client to clearly show the amount he would pay in taxes, charitable contributions and tax home amount depending on what options they decide upon.

            The next part of my day was really exciting. I was given the responsibility to look through client’s portfolios that were to come in for a review meeting soon and see which investments should be kept and which should be changed. The software on the Ameriprise Financial database called investment view allowed me to do this. I checked to see how the fund compared with the index and how it performed in its classification rank, which went through 1,3,5,10 and 15 years. As I haven’t got my Series 7 qualification I could not change the funds myself but as I was able to put my suggestion on file to Mr Pippitt it gave me a fulfilling feeling of having some influence on the clients portfolio management.