The bigger the advisor, the more likely they are to prefer wholesaler meetings to mutual fund company websites.

That's one of the findings included in a new research report released this week by Advisor Perspectives and covered by the Wall Street Journal. The report draws from an online survey from January that included 282 advisors across multiple channels.

Nina Eisenman of Eisenman Associates and Jeff Briskin of Advisor Perspectives found that 54 percent of advisors with less than $50 million in assets preferred gathering information via a mutual fund shop's website, versus 46 percent who preferred meeting with a wholesaler or talking to one on the phone. Yet the percentages reverse for bigger advisors: 55 percent of those with $50 million to $100 million in assets prefer the wholesaler, as did 59 percent of those with $100 million to $1 billion and 60 percent of those with more than $1 billion.

When naming key resources for such resource gathering, third party sites like Morningstar (54 percent), meeting or calling wholesalers (53 percent) and fund company web sites (48 percent) dominated. The other choices included: emails from fund shops (20 percent), other advisors (16 percent), conferences (13 percent), advisor study groups (6 percent) and consultants (3 percent).

The report offers a variety of other findings about advisors' research on mutual funds. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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