BrightScope backs away from adviser reviews

BrightScope Inc. has put on hold plans to launch an online forum where consumers can write reviews about their financial advisors. The financial information company will instead launch a Q&A service where consumers can write in financial questions and Brightscope member registered investment advisors can answer them on the company’s website, said Mike Alfred, co-founder and CEO of BrightScope.

“One of the challenges of doing reviews is that they have a compliance paradigm in the financial services industry, which is out of touch with the way the world is going,” Alfred said. Consumers use Facebook, LinkedIn and other Web-based services to make decisions about what products and services they want to buy, but regulators “are telling advisors they can’t use those things,” he said. “The whole world is moving toward more online interaction and decision making on what people find online, but regulators are saying, you can’t do that.”