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When dealing with a specific advisor from your firm, does it really matter if I go to an associate in Virginia, New York or Chicago?

Question: I see that you're rated #1 again by Barron's. Congratulations. But when dealing with a specific advisor from your firm, does it really matter if I go to an associate in Virginia, New York or Chicago? Will the advice and management of my account differ?

Ric: No, it won't.

This is an important point. At many other firms in the financial services field (both large and small), each bank rep, stockbroker, insurance agent or advisor provides his or her own ideas and decides what investments to offer to clients.

But at Edelman Financial, my colleagues and I operate as a team. That means we work together in the development of all the advice we offer each of our clients, assuring you complete consistency in our philosophy, strategy, methodology and implementation. As a result, you can be confident that the advice you receive from your Edelman advisor is the accumulated wisdom of all of us — representing more than 700 years of collective experience — and thus is the same advice you'd receive from me personally. We devote substantial time and effort to maintaining this consistency for your benefit, and we believe our commitment to consistency explains much of our success. To our knowledge, no other financial services firm places such importance on developing and maintaining a single firmwide approach to financial planning and investment management.

This dedication to consistency serves as the cornerstone underlying our expansion efforts. As you know, we opened 13 offices in five metro areas in 2010, and we plan to open a few more this year. However, we will open additional offices only if two conditions are met:

• that the advice and service that we have historically provided, and which we currently provide to each client, remains of the highest quality, completely unaffected by the opening of additional offices, and
• that each new client who joins us receives the very same high-quality experience that each of our current clients enjoys. If we cannot deliver the same "wow" experience to every client, we will not expand further.

Why expand at all? The reason is simple: People are asking for our help, and we consider it our duty to help them. We are willing to accommodate the demand only if we can avoid disrupting the services you receive — and that's why we've added new staff. Today, Edelman Financial is one of the largest financial planning and investment management firms in the nation, with 59 financial advisors and 240 employees in 21 offices in seven states.

So, you can be confident that you will enjoy the same experience that all our clients receive.

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