Behind the Names
We hope you enjoyed a terrific summer. Now that Labor Day weekend is over, our Fall season is upon us!
Since our recent “home office” name changed from Securities America to Osaic Wealth in June, we have had several questions regarding the entities involved with accounts and Mirus Planning.
With this note, we want to offer more insight into how these different firms work together so that we can best serve your financial well-being and account information.
Mirus Planning: Your Financial Planning & Wealth Management Firm
Our firm, Mirus Planning, is a wealth management and financial planning business founded by Chad Parmenter in 2009.
The critical roles played solely by Mirus Planning for clients include:
Helping people explore, design, and map their financial futures to make thoughtful decisions.
Creating detailed financial plans that are reviewed and updated periodically.
Creating personalized investment strategies and providing ongoing investment management services.
Helping clients track progress toward their life and financial objectives.
We act as a fiduciary continuously operating in the best interest of our clients.
Osaic Wealth: Mirus Planning’s Independent Broker-Dealer (Home Office)
Our firm, Mirus Planning, utilizes a “broker-dealer” to provide us (Mirus) with operational support, compliance oversight, wealth management solutions, and continuing education. We consider them our “back office.” Osaic Wealth serves over 12,000 financial professionals who help to manage over $600 billion in client assets.
Osaic offers these services to Mirus Planning, which subsequently enables us to serve you.
Operations Infrastructure: They assist us with opening new accounts, provide tech tools to help us manage and monitor investments, help with account servicing, client requests, and more.
Compliance Oversight: Osaic Wealth ensures we are appropriately registered and comply with appropriate governmental oversight organizations (FINRA and SEC, for example). They conduct compliance and security audits periodically with Mirus Planning to keep us abreast of ever-changing rules and regulations.
Administrative Support: Osaic Wealth provides us access to administrative support from trained team members to help us with new account paperwork, client updates, and requests. You may have heard from Donna Sommerer and her team members occasionally when she sends documents for signature or completion. Donna is a salaried employee of Osaic Wealth; Mirus Planning pays her hourly as a virtual assistant for our team.
Due Diligence of Tech Tools and Services: Osaic Wealth provides due diligence support on various potential software vendors we may utilize, such as financial planning software, to ensure vendors are safe with client data and have viable options.
Continuing Education & Coaching: Osaic Wealth offers a range of educational opportunities to improve our skills and stay on top of our profession to serve our clients better and continuously improve.
Chad Parmenter has chosen to work with Securities America (since 2007) and now Osaic Wealth because they provide industry-leading support and solutions for our business so that we can best serve our clients. As an Independent broker-dealer, Osaic Wealth does not dictate how we build financial plans, invest client assets, or provide ongoing advice and guidance.
Instead, they offer us support so that our business operations work efficiently and correctly to serve you well.
Custodians: National Financial Services (NFS) or directly at a mutual fund or annuity company
Mirus Planning clients have their investment assets held by third-party entities separate from Mirus Planning and Osaic Wealth. These “custodians” provide clients with their statements and tax documents and are our team contacts when there is a request regarding their accounts.
National Financial Services (NFS) is our primary custodian for brokerage accounts. NFS is a Fidelity Investments® company & a leading global financial services provider holding over $2.1 trillion of global client assets. National Financial Services provides access to Mirus Planning a wide range of investment solutions for our clients, including:
Open architecture to the investment universe. We can buy and sell stocks, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, ETFs, REITs, and alternative investments.
Brokerage accounts which enable us to hold various assets for clients. An example might include owning CDs, a few stocks, some American Funds, and municipal bonds in one brokerage account (a more straightforward way to hold various assets).
Trade executions on your behalf.
Account correspondence and tax reporting; we have access to copies of such correspondence.
Oversight and security of client assets.
Like Osaic, NFS does not dictate how we invest client assets—it merely offers a place for them to be held, owned, and reported on.
Mutual Fund & Annuity Companies: Certain Mirus Planning clients maintain mutual fund investments “directly held” by the company.
In these situations, the mutual fund company or insurance company (annuities) acts as your account custodian, offering trade execution and account servicing and providing statements and tax reporting directly to you, specifically regarding their mutual funds.
Mirus clients' most common mutual fund holdings include American Funds (Capital Group), Calvert Funds, Invesco Funds, Franklin Templeton Funds, and Royce Funds. Our clients' most common annuities are from insurance companies like Jackson National, John Hancock, Nationwide, Lincoln National, and Hartford.
As you can see, the services we provide to clients involve several entities, and we understand how confusing they can be. Otherwise, we hope this clarifies how these entities work together to support Mirus Planning and your financial needs and well-being.
If you have any further questions regarding your situation and the information provided, please don’t hesitate to contact us at team@mirusplanning.com.
