Fast Track: New FundQuest exec has a knack for training

FundQuest Inc. is the brand behind the brand for many companies, including Fidelity Investments, Lincoln Financial Group and FleetBoston Financial/Quick & Reilly.

So when it sought out someone to reinvigorate its quiet marketing of training products, FundQuest needed someone with special skills.

Robert J. Powell III, 43, fits the bill for the company’s newly created position. FundQuest hired the former stockbroker, former personal finance columnist and former website designer in December as director of corporate development.

Clients who have known Mr. Powell in his various capacities recognize his broad skill base.

“He’s a multifunctional individual who has a very keen understanding of the marketplace,” says Paul Saitta, director of national sales for New York brokerage Quick & Reilly, a current customer that also does business with Mr. Powell’s former employer, Dalbar Inc. of Boston.

Mr. Powell will have to use all his skills to create a web-based training program for his company’s 24 mostly high-profile financial advisory clients.

His focus will be to create a program for financial advisers to convert their practices to a fee basis.

Many advisers don’t see a way to complete the process without leaving half their pay lying on the table.

“To make that transition is a difficult one for a lot of reasons,” Mr. Powell says.

Most of his additional efforts are geared toward training advisers on complex products such as mutual fund wraps. Wraps enable an adviser to bundle several financial products under a single fee.

Mr. Powell has also been put in charge of unbundling FundQuest’s products.

Currently, clients cannot purchase FundQuest’s technology offerings independent of its money management.

a series of happenings

It took a succession of rapid-fire events to bring Mr. Powell to his new position.

After a seven-year stint as the editor in chief, he left Dalbar in June when the company sold its publications to Thomson Financial Inc.

He then became editor of MutualFunds.com, where he started an online financial education program.

But when that company went under in September, Mr. Powell began working for FundQuest on a consulting basis and turned that gig into his current job.

Mr. Powell also sits on the board of directors of Boston University’s financial planning program.

Mr. Powell’s financial advisory odyssey began with a two-year stint as a stockbroker at what is now Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co.

He left there in 1986 to become the personal finance and mutual fund columnist for the Boston Herald, where he stayed until 1993.

Since then, he has developed Compuserve’s Wow! personal finance channel and TheRightAdvisor, a joint venture of Dalbar and Microsoft’s MoneyCentral.com.

FundQuest is calling on Mr. Powell’s communications skills to create appealing online training programs and identify good markets for them.

Most competition, he says, is from the “broker-in-a-box” training that comes from in-house departments some of his clients offer.

He believes his offerings have the advantage of being customized to a particular need.

The training covers asset management and practice management as well as encompassing business development.

Eventually, Mr. Powell plans to create training materials that customers of FundQuest’s clients can access.

“I guess that’s why I’m here,” he says. “I have that mixture of consumer and commercial experience.”