Our independent business model ensures we have the autonomy and discretion to put you at the center of all investment strategies and business decisions. Just as we stand behind you to help you pursue your financial dreams, we have teams standing behind us and supporting our business. These firms also strengthen our relationship with you by providing the resources we need to better serve you. We think it’s important for you to know who these partners are and why we have chosen to work with them.

Our Broker-Dealer: Cetera Financial Specialists

We are affiliated with Cetera Financial Specialists, one of the premier broker-dealers in the industry. As our broker-dealer, they are responsible for executing trades on your behalf. Like all broker-dealers, they must undergo regular auditing, and are required to meet specific net capital requirements to ensure it can meet its obligations to investors like you.

But their support for our relationship goes well beyond its function as trade executor. Our affiliation means that we am not held to a sales quota or tied to selling only proprietary products. We have the independence and freedom to recommend the financial solutions that best suit your needs, ensuring your objectives are what drive all decisions, while Cetera Financial Specialists’ network of people and resources help us pursue your unique goals and vision for the future.

Their Parent Company: Cetera Financial Group

Cetera Financial Specialists is part of the family of independently managed firms of Cetera Financial Group (Cetera). For the past 30 years, Cetera’s family of companies has grown to manage over $110 billion in client assets, delivering award-winning* advisory products and solutions and sophisticated trading and technology platforms to us and other advisors across all 50 states. You can be confident that their tools, technology and support help make us more effective in our relationship with you.

Our Custodians: Pershing and Cetera Investment Services

While a broker-dealer helps supervise and facilitate the trading that converts your cash into invested assets, those assets are actually held by a custodian. Cetera Financial Specialists works with two custodians. Cetera Investment Services LLC custodies individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Pershing LLC custodies brokerage accounts, including the brokerage accounts within IRAs.

Pershing is a subsidiary of the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, which is the nation’s oldest continuously operating bank and one of the world’s leading providers of securities services. Cetera Investment Services is an affiliate of Cetera Financial Specialists, providing brokerage and other services to its own clients in addition to providing IRA custodial services to Cetera Financial Specialists’ clients. Both Pershing and Cetera Investment Services have to meet certain net capital requirements and are subject to regular audits, both internally and by independent firms, to ensure the appropriate handling, segregation and protection of investors’ assets.

Our Most Important Connection: With You

While the firms behind me play important roles in our day-to-day servicing of your needs, the most important relationship we have is undoubtedly with you. We work with these firms to make it easier for us to work for you. Anytime you would like more information about the above firms, please do not hesitate to ask. We want you to feel confident that you understand, to your satisfaction, how we work with and through these firms, why we have chosen to work with Cetera Financial Specialists, and the absolute priority both Cetera Financial Specialists and we place on our relationship with you.

Proactive.Responsive.Consistent

Cetera Research is offered through Cetera Investment Management LLC, a Registered Investment Advisor.

Cetera Research is available exclusively to you through your financial advisor and their broker/dealer’s affiliation with Cetera Investment Management. The Cetera Research Team provides your financial advisor—and you—with tools, resources and insights to help you pursue your goals and carefully manage risk.

Through Cetera Research, your advisor has access to outstanding resources to deliver sound investment advice and insights to you. These include thought leadership on the latest detailed market information and investment perspectives, asset allocation strategies, and investment ideas and recommendations.

Why Cetera Research?

The Cetera Research team is dedicated to producing unbiased research. Your financial advisor benefits from this high level of independent research to help identify the best means for you to reach your financial goals. Cetera Research supports financial advisors by giving them the power to access a large-scale, regimented body of research, including:

• In-depth market perspectives
• Timely economic insights
• Asset allocation recommendations
• Manager guidance
• Model portfolios

Here’s how the cornerstones of Cetera’s Research philosophy help you and your advisor:

Proactive

We provide research to your advisor that uses a broad, forward-looking macroeconomic assessment of the market climate. This allows us to determine which areas of the market hold the greatest opportunity. Cetera’s Research team members cover multiple areas of expertise, to ensure that your advisor has access to a broad range of research resources to fit the individual needs of you and their other clients.

Responsive

Cetera Research’s team of experts is here as a partner, to help financial professionals understand the complexities of the market by supporting them with a disciplined, regimented process focused on their clients’ long-term goals. In addition to numerous publications for advisors and monthly conference calls, the Research team is available for one-on-one conference calls with all Cetera advisors.

Consistent

Cetera Research uses a disciplined, regimented process to support clear long-term goals for your advisor and you. By evaluating a broad range of market indicators, including economic growth projections, market liquidity, volatility, political environment, secular growth cycles as well as potential investment horizon, Cetera Research is able to offer consistent portfolio advice for our advisors to use with you.

Focus on Clients

Cetera’s Research is focused on giving advisors the tools they need to help their clients meet their financial objectives. As a Cetera client, your advisor can provide you with access to a variety of market commentaries, educational materials from Cetera and its strategic partners, and thought leadership on up-to-the-minute investment topics.

The Cetera Research Team

Behind the research Cetera offers is a team of dedicated industry experts, with an average of 21 years of industry experience; with many members having earned advanced degrees and designations such as the Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA). They specialize in providing research and investment analysis for equities, fixed income, and alternative investments, analyzing the nuances of various fund classes, and provide advisors with additional insights through the Monthly Market Monitor and Quarterly Recap Reports, which are made available to clients of Cetera’s advisors.

Cetera’s Research Team also manages the strategic and tactical positioning of Cetera’s asset allocation strategies, diversification, and online equity research platforms, which are made available to advisors through a suite of online investment tools.

They are frequently sought out as media experts whose insights and commentaries have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and on CNBC, Fox News, Marketwatch, and others.