Nerd's Eye View Articles On Financial Planning Profession

How Diversity Initiatives Often Fail In The Financial Planning Profession By Neglecting To Consider Inclusion

August 10, 2020 07:03 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

Over the past several years, despite numerous programs from a wide range of organizations encouraging women, people of color, and minority groups to join the profession, the financial planning industry has struggled to increase diversity among its ranks. Which appears at least in part to be due to the fact that, while a 2019 CFP Professionals Survey showed strong job satisfaction among women, Black, and Latino CFP professionals, those satisfaction levels are still materially lower than for ‘traditional’ white male CFP professionals, signaling that the financial planning profession may be attracting more diversity but is also losing diverse CFP professionals at a faster rate… such that the overall diversity among CFP professionals has not increased despite a steady rise in both the total number of certificants and the number of diversity programs targeting them. Because the reality is that the problem is not necessarily one that can be addressed by increasing diversity efforts alone, and instead appears to be that increasing inclusion efforts is the key to increasing (and maintaining!) a more diverse pool of financial planners.

Whereas diversity efforts can be thought of as sending invitations to (more) guests to attend a party, inclusion efforts are separate from those of diversity and can be thought of as asking the guests who arrive to actually dance and engage with other guests. Inclusion involves helping individuals feel safe, involved in the group, respected, and valued. It also recognizes and honors cultural diversity, supporting individuals to express themselves authentically and as valued members of the organization. Furthermore, researchers have found that without efforts to facilitate inclusion, diversity policies can actually be damaging to an organization by upsetting the racial majority, who can tend to feel that the diversity programs are set up to unfairly discriminate against them.

Importantly, effective diversity and inclusion training programs are dynamic and necessarily take into account the unique potential prejudicial viewpoints of their participants, which can range from blatant (openly expressing prejudicial opinions) to symbolic (veiled but deliberately expressed) to aversive (subconsciously expressed). Depending on the participants involved and their respective viewpoints, good training programs can simply encourage individual self-reflection, or can incorporate philanthropic community engagement to give participants opportunities to interact with individuals from more and different cultural backgrounds.

Financial advisory firms looking for ways to increase diversity and inclusion can start by developing mentorship programs to support new financial planners of all backgrounds and by investing in scholarship programs to help aspiring CFPs meet their education and exam requirements. Even compensation can be structured to be more supportive of diversity and inclusion efforts, adopting different compensation models such as monthly or hourly subscription fees to help newer advisors who may initially lack the social structures to thrive on commission-based or AUM-based compensation models (that have disproportionately relied on new financial planners coming from backgrounds and ZIP codes that already have significant financial affluence to turn ‘friends and family’ into initial clients).

Ultimately, diversity and inclusion are important aspects of the financial planning industry that can only help businesses succeed. Not only does a diverse industry workforce better serve a diverse client base, it also helps firms retain diverse employee pools and gives them access to a richer pipeline when recruiting new talent. Despite the shortfall of diversity efforts in our industry so far, a growing focus on inclusion – particularly including mentoring, and organizing/attending conferences and events dedicated to supporting specific groups – can help the industry work towards achieving a net increase in diversity, and not simply bringing in more diverse financial planners only to continue to lose them a few years later.

Self-Care And Self-Compassion In Times Of Financial Stress And Anxiety

March 18, 2020 07:54 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

In these stressful times, as we deal with fears arising from the coronavirus pandemic and market volatility, many financial advisors are being inundated by scared and panicking clients worried about how their assets (and financial goals and futures) will fare. And while advisors have a responsibility to try to calm their clients and talk them off the ledge of these scary market conditions, advisors have their own health and emotional well-being to care for, as well. Because in times like these, clients who are worried about the resources that advisors may be managing for them often take their fear and anxiety out on their advisor, despite the advisor’s best efforts and intentions to help them weather the storm. And for advisors who deal with fearful, stressed-out clients day after day, meeting after meeting, the emotional toll that they experience can itself be traumatizing and, without taking time for self-care, can have serious adverse effects on the advisor’s own physical and emotional well-being.

As while clients may experience stress from painful events they experience directly (i.e., “Direct” trauma-related stress), advisors are more prone to “Indirect” trauma-related stress when dealing with so many of the same client fears and concerns (not to mention the direct trauma-related stress of what the market decline may be doing to the advisor’s own business). After all, when advisors take on one fearful client conversation after another, it’s often difficult not to start internalizing their clients’ concerns, whether in the form of “vicarious traumatization” (when the advisor begins to identify with the client’s concerns personally as if those concerns were actually their own), or through “compassion fatigue” (when the advisor begins to personally experience the emotional pain and suffering that they perceive the client is actually experiencing).

And unless the stress is somehow dealt with, a range of adverse symptoms can result – from physical changes to emotional, behavioral, and relationship changes. On top of being harmful to the advisor themselves, this stress can also have an adverse effect on the client relationship, because if left untreated, prolonged stress can result in an individual isolating themselves to avoid relationships (and the stress they’re inducing). Which in turn can halt the communication process between the advisor and client, ultimately leading to the client straying from their financial plan and even leaving the advisor altogether.

An effective remedy to cope with traumatic stressors is to practice self-care through self-compassion, which is a person’s ability to comfort and soothe themselves. Research has shown that self-compassion, unlike self-esteem, has been a key factor for individuals to motivate themselves through pain, failure, and feelings of inadequacy. Some simple suggestions to practice self-care include protecting personal time and setting hard boundaries on when to start and stop work, to communicate those time boundaries to others, and to create short ‘white space’ breaks throughout the day to mentally recharge. Additionally, meeting with clients outside the office can create a change of scenery and avoid an environment (e.g., the advisor’s office) that might trigger a stressful response, reducing (or stopping) the amount of news watched or listened to, and working collaboratively with a partner or in teams to share the load of client meetings that may be potentially emotionally charged.

Ultimately, the key point is that for financial advisors whose clients are currently experiencing high levels of fear and anxiety due to the current market environment, the stress of dealing with those traumatized clients can elicit severe trauma-related stress for advisors, and the symptoms of that stress, without proper care, can ultimately compromise the advisor’s ability to communicate effectively with their clients. Accordingly, advisors should practice self-care and self-compassion so that they can continue helping their clients stay the course of their financial plans, and without themselves suffering from the adverse effects of vicarious traumatization or compassion fatigue.

Is The CFP Board Finally Ready To Enforce The Standards Its Public Awareness Campaign Promotes?

August 8, 2019 07:03 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

On July 29, the Wall Street Journal published an article which reported that nearly 10% of the certificants included on the CFP Board’s “Let’s Make a Plan” website, which the CFP Board makes available to consumers to find a CFP professional, have material public disclosures listed on the FINRA BrokerCheck site (including several with felony charges!). Notably, though, exactly zero of those “red flag” disclosures are included on the CFP Board’s own website. Which raises the question: How effectively does the CFP Board ensure its own professional standards of conduct are really being upheld, especially as it trumpets a consumer public awareness campaign advocating that those with the CFP marks are the “Gold Standard” that consumers should look for?

In this episode of #OfficeHours with Michael Kitces, we discuss the main issues raised by the WSJ article (as well as the CFP Board’s response), how the CFP Board’s public awareness campaign has unwittingly amplified the issues, some potential challenges the CFP Board faces in addressing these challenges, and explore what it might take for the CFP Board to close the gap between what it promotes in its public awareness campaign and the standards its CFP professionals are actually meeting.

While the CFP Board promotes its “Let’s Make A Plan” site as the “go-to” resource for finding qualified financial planners, the WSJ report pointed out that they have failed to disclose important background details (which even FINRA discloses on its own BrokerCheck website) that would be relevant to a consumer seeking a trustworthy professional. To which the CFP Board was quick to respond, referencing limited staffing and budget resources (70 employees and a $30 million budget, compared to FINRA’s 3,000 employees and $1 billion budget) and non-profit status (meaning that they can only certify and set standards for its certificants, as opposed to a regulatory agency’s official authority to investigate allegations against advisors), as reasons that the WSJ shouldn’t necessarily hold their “Let’s Make A Plan” site to the same standard as a bona fide regulator like FINRA.

The CFP Board also maintained that it is not their policy to publish allegations of wrongdoing, especially if the CFP Board hasn’t investigated them itself, and will only publish disciplinary actions against prohibited activities fully investigated by the Board (as contrasted with FINRA, that sometimes will publish information about client complaints, even if there was no ultimate finding of wrongdoing). Yet historically, disciplinary action against a CFP certificant has been taken by the CFP Board only after another regulator has found them guilty. And ironically, other regulatory bodies generally have less stringent rules of conduct. Which means in essence, the CFP Board is claiming a higher standard of conduct, but often only taking enforcement action based on other regulators’ lower standards… raising the question of how exactly the CFP Board can ever ensure its CFP professionals actually will uphold its proclaimed higher standards?

Despite this, the CFP Board acknowledged it could do better, promptly established an independent task force to “strengthen and modernize enforcement”, and has pledged to begin checking third-party regulatory records (e.g., FINRA and the SEC) every time CFPs renew their certification, instead of conducting an initial one-time background check and relying on self-disclosure in subsequent years.

Still, though, the question remains of how can the CFP Board possibly enforce the higher standards they have been advocating for nearly the last decade with their $10 million annual awareness campaign, if the CFP Board doesn’t have the capacity or authority to fully investigate allegations made against CFP certificants?

Perhaps the most straightforward path is, to the extent that promotion of CFP Board’s higher standards and enforcement of those standards are inextricably linked, the CFP Board’s public awareness budget itself could be (partially) reallocated to support efforts to uphold and enforce CFP standards as well? Or alternatively, the CFP Board could also be more proactive about collecting information already available from third-party regulators, make it easier for fellow CFP professionals to identify peers who violate the Board’s Standards of Conduct, and devise an improved investigative process to actually be able to review complaints and disciplinary issues.

Ultimately, the key point is that the CFP Board needs a mechanism to enforce the high standards CFP professionals are required to follow and that the CFP Board is so proactively marketing to consumers through its own public awareness campaign. And the need for better enforcement mechanisms is especially critical with the new CFP Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct going into effect in October, 2019, which will only increase the stakes further. Proactively reporting all disciplinary records and creating tools for consumers and CFPs to easily register complaints are simple steps, at least initially, towards improving oversight of financial advisors, until the new independent task force releases its recommendations for strengthening and modernizing enforcement of CFP standards.

The Great Convergence And The Death Of Fiduciary Differentiation (For RIAs)

July 15, 2019 07:03 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

For the past several decades, RIAs have increasingly differentiated themselves and their advice from competing broker-dealers by the “best interests” fiduciary standard that RIAs owe to their clients, from outright marketing themselves as fiduciaries, to signing “Fiduciary Oaths” for clients (that other broker-dealers wouldn’t and couldn’t sign).

The fiduciary distinction for RIAs wasn’t originally intended to be a marketing differentiator for advice, though. Its roots lie in the fact that RIAs were created from the start to be providers of investment advice, while broker-dealers originally were created to play a vital role in the capital formation and capital markets process (which included selling investments, in the form of stocks and bonds to prospective investors, often underwritten by the broker-dealer’s investment banking division). For which RIAs were subject to a fiduciary standard – as the providers of advice – while broker-dealers were subject to a lower suitability standard consistent with the sales-centric role they were created to fulfill.

But over the past several decades, as technology has increasingly commoditized the core functionality of broker-dealers, from “discount” brokerage reducing the price to execute trades (without a stockbroker to facilitate them), to online platforms making no-load funds available to consumers directly (without a broker-dealer to sell them), the RIA and broker-dealer channels have gone through a Great Convergence. To the point that today, a consumer may pay 1%/year for ongoing financial advice in the form of a fee-based wrap account, a C-share mutual fund trail, or an advisory fee, and not even make a distinction between the choices. Except from a regulatory perspective, these remain substantively different choices, given the (originally) different roles that broker-dealers and RIAs play.

In recent years, the Great Convergence has led to a flurry of proposals on new standards, as regulators have recognized that as the gap between broker-dealers and RIAs has been reduced over the years, so too did the gap in the standards of conduct between them need to be narrowed as well. Resulting in the release earlier this summer of the SEC’s new Regulation Best Interest, lifting the standard of conduct for broker-dealers to a “Best Interest” standard when making a recommendation to their customers.

Notably, in practice, the new Best Interest standard under Reg BI is not a full-scale fiduciary duty and only applies at the time of the broker’s recommendation itself (and not to the overall relationship). Nonetheless, Reg BI will grant – and in fact, require – that broker-dealers now explain their standard of conduct as being an obligation to act “in the best interests of the customer when making a recommendation.”

Which leaves little room for RIAs to market their fiduciary obligation to act “in the best interests of the client” as a differentiator when broker-dealers will be able to use substantively identical words. Raising the question: how will RIAs differentiate themselves in the future?

On the one hand, some RIAs may point out that there’s still a difference between being a “fiduciary at all times,” versus "just" being held to a Best Interest standard at the time of recommendation alone. Others may pursue and highlight voluntary designations like CFP certification, which itself has its own “fiduciary at all times” obligation (applicable to not only RIAs but those at broker-dealers as well). Some may even choose to pursue new terms of distinction, like “stewardship” as a higher standard above merely being a legally-obligated fiduciary.

In the long run, though, arguably the best path forward for most advisors will simply be to actually differentiate on their services and what they actually do for clients, rather than their standard of conduct in the first place. As the irony is that, the more fiduciary advocates push for higher standards across the industry… the less likely it is that being a fiduciary with higher standards will ever be an effective differentiator again in the future.

Kitces & Carl Ep 11: What Do You Call Yourself? Planner, Advisor, Industry, Profession

July 4, 2019 07:05 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast Planning Profession

Outside of telling someone that you sell used cars, there aren’t many ways nowadays to shut down a conversation faster saying that you’re a financial advisor. Because, after years of being constantly bombarded by headline after headline about the plethora of misdeeds committed by so-called financial advisors, combined with so many personal experiences with high-pressure sales tactics of unscrupulous salespeople, the public’s trust levels are understandably low.

And while other professions have specific education and ethical requirements (e.g., doctors, lawyers, and accountants), sadly, there are no rules around whether or not someone can call themselves a financial advisor (or any derivation thereof). Which only makes it that much more challenging for “real” financial advisors, who not only have to differentiate themselves from all the other advisors that claim to offer comprehensive financial planning, but also have to separate themselves from literally every other person who wants to call themselves a financial/investment/wealth advisor/consultant/planner… whether or not those jobs have anything to do with the actual delivery of financial advice. Which, in turn, leads to the question: what should financial advisors call themselves… without having to start making excuses immediately afterward?

In our eleventh episode of “Kitces & Carl”, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication expert Carl Richards sit down to discuss the roots of various industry titles, why you might want to break the mold and call yourself something completely different (or not), and why the choice ultimately boils down to whether or not what you call yourself resonates with your target clientele.

From a historical perspective, the title of financial advisor originated when the industry was still very product-focused, as a way to differentiate from ‘just’ salespeople with a more consultative approach, as comprehensive financial plans themselves were originally a vehicle through which advisors could recommend (and then sell) their products. As the industry evolved, however, titles such as “wealth manager”, “investment consultant”, and “financial planner” came into the mix, as more advisors and their firms sought out new titles to differentiate and stand out from the crowd, and to sound more “high end” as advisory firms themselves have moved further up-market.

Understandably, then, many professionals in the industry would prefer stricter regulation around who can and can not call themselves any number of titles that imply that they’re providing financial advice (until/unless they’re actually in the business of advice and not product sales). Except that efforts to do just that have simply fallen flat given the vast resources and lobbying might of an industry still dominated by companies that manufacture and distribute financial products.

In the absence of any successful title reform, some advisors have decided to go with whatever standard title that most closely describes what they actually do and own it the best they can. Meanwhile, in an effort to break the proverbial mold, some advisors, particularly those with well-defined niches, have taken it a step further and adopted more creative titles that help them connect with the target audience that they want to reach (think “financial architect” or “financial physician”).

Ultimately, the key point is to make sure that your title accurately reflects the services that you provide, doesn’t get you into any regulatory trouble, and resonates with your target market. Because, in the end, what matters most isn’t what you call yourself, it’s that you’re comfortable and confident when you say it… and if you can invite people into the conversation along the way, then all the better!

FPA Revamps Its OneFPA Network Initiative But What’s Their Actual Goal?

May 13, 2019 07:05 am 8 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

Last November, the FPA National leadership made its bombshell announcement that it was planning to dissolve its 86 independent chapters and nationalize them into a single consolidated entity. The new initiative, dubbed the “OneFPA Network”, was being rolled out under the auspices of trying to create better alignment and integration between National and its chapters… by literally integrating them into a single unit.

Yet while the FPA’s independent chapter structure arguably is a relic of a bygone era – when the association’s predecessor was first being founded, there were no computers or fax machines, so chapters had to be decentralized – the backlash from the membership was fast and fierce. Some raised concerns that the shift would amount to a power grab by National. Others suggested it could be a money grab for the cash in chapter coffers. Few trusted the way that FPA was unilaterally rolling out its chapter dissolution plan.

And so after a nearly-4-month “Listening Tour” for chapter feedback, the FPA has now announced “We Listened. We Learned. We Adapted.” And is rolling out a new second iteration of the OneFPA Network plan... that does not include a requirement for chapters to dissolve, and will instead begin to more gently “beta test” some of the integrated technology, accounting, and staffing initiatives. But only after a 45-day Public Comment period, that gives all stakeholders an opportunity to share their thoughts and concerns.

Yet while the second version of the OneFPA Network plan is certainly more palatable than the first, its "Participatory Governance" structure is literally not participatory governance at all (as it doesn't actually give any governing and oversight power to its chapters in the first place), and it’s also sparser than the prior version on many of the key details, from what the Key Performance Indicators will be for the chapter beta test (and whether it’s even possible for the test to “fail” or if the OneFPA Network is still a fait accompli), to what the Master Services Agreement will be that the chapters must sign in the future (a key point of contention in the original plan), and even what the overriding goals and key metrics of success are for the entire OneFPA Network in the first place… so members can provide feedback on whether or not they believe the OneFPA Network really is the best path to making FPA more viable, strong, impactful, and relevant.

Though perhaps the greatest concern is simply that as a culmination of its Listening Tour, the FPA leadership observed that “Stakeholders want a greater voice”, “Better technology is required”, “Chapter autonomy is paramount”, and “Collaboration among FPA and its communities is needed”. All of which were actually previously cited in a key 2014 Consultant’s Report to FPA. Which, ironically, was used by the FPA to justify the OneFPA Network in the first place… despite now recognizing that its OneFPA Network proposal failed to achieve any of those objectives as stated 5 years ago (and still today).

All of which raises the question of whether the FPA is still jumping the gun by asking for feedback in a Public Comment period about how best to implement the OneFPA Network in the future… when the real question should be whether the OneFPA Network is the right step to take in the first place, what goals the leadership is really trying to accomplish, and whether there might be a better way to get the same results… without spending $1M of FPA’s cash reserves and thousands of hours of volunteer energy for an initiative that may not substantively solve any of the problems that FPA actually faces.

At a minimum, though, it’s time for the FPA National leadership to get clear and concrete about what their goals actually are, and how exactly the OneFPA Network may accomplish them. Or not. So if the FPA once again fails to grow as a result of the OneFPA Network, the leadership will at least, for once, be held accountable for its results.

Financial Planning Research Highlights From The 2019 CFP Board Academic Research Colloquium

March 27, 2019 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

From February 19th through February 21st, the CFP Board’s Center for Financial Planning hosted their third annual Academic Research Colloquium (ARC) for Financial Planning and Related Disciplines in Arlington, VA. This year's event saw a 20% increase in attendance, bringing together roughly 230 attendees, of which about 35 were practitioners, to share and discuss research relevant to the financial planning profession, as a part of the CFP Board Center’s longer-term goal of establishing itself as the “academic home” for the financial planning profession.

In this post, Derek Tharp – lead researcher at Kitces.com, and an assistant professor of finance at the University of Southern Maine – provides a recap of the 2019 CFP Academic Research Colloquium, and highlights a few particular research studies with relevant takeaways for financial planning practitioners.

The 2019 CFP Academic Research Colloquium again had a strong showing from CFP Board-Registered Ph.D. programs, with scholars from Missouri, Texas Tech, Georgia, and Kansas State producing nearly 32% of all research (when weighted by type of presentation and authorship rank). Additionally, Ohio State, Alabama, and the College for Financial Planning contributed another 13% of total research. Despite the concentration among top programs, the ARC remains an academically diverse event, drawing in scholars from a total of 69 institutions, including Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford.

The colloquium featured a wide breadth of topics. Some particularly relevant themes for financial planning practitioners included a number of studies on financial psychology of both clients and practitioners, including measuring brain activity during financial conversations to determine whether planning or emotional areas of the brain were activated during financial conversations, examining the tools that do (and do not) work for measuring risk-taking behavior, assessing perceptions of success and satisfaction among female advisors, and identifying gaps between perceptions of both financial planning graduates and employers regarding student preparedness for a career in financial planning. In addition, there was research on the impact advisors may have on clients- both good and bad - including differences in financial decision-making among households that use a financial planner versus a transactional advisor, the use of municipal bonds among advisor-assisted investors, and the characteristics of those who report being victims of investment fraud.

Overall, the third Academic Research Colloquium again brought together a strong mix of academics and practitioners to present and discuss financial planning research. However, some considerable challenges and opportunities going forward include continuing to develop Financial Planning Review into a high-impact journal, dealing with (potentially) declining institutional and sponsorship support, and the Center’s general push to continue to establish the ARC as the “academic home” of financial planning. Only time will tell if the Center for Financial Planning will be successful in their pursuit, but the ARC continues to be a conference worthy of attending for both academics and practitioners who wish to engage in academic research.

How FPA Could Constructively Address Its Financial Accounting Concerns

March 21, 2019 09:30 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

Last week, this Nerd's Eye View blog highlighted a series of discrepancies between the published Audited Financial Statements of the Financial Planning Association (FPA), and an alternative version of FPA's finances that were presented to chapter leaders in its recent "Overview of National Finances" webinar. With a gap of nearly $8M between what FPA's Audited Financials reported in the past, and what the FPA was currently reporting, the discrepancy raised concerns about both where the "missing" dollars actually were, as well as why the FPA would be reporting financials to members that differed from the organization's already-published Audited Financial Statements.

In a response to members, the FPA has clarified that (as predicted in the prior blog post itself) the financial reporting gap can be largely explained by a change in FPA's method of accounting with respect to how the chapter portion of annual dues are collected and remitted to chapters, which led to a previously undisclosed and unpublished restatement of FPA's financials for 2007 to 2012. Such that, fortunately, it appears there is no "missing" money.

However, rather than following up by proposing changes to adjust FPA's financial and audit controls to ensure that, in the future, members do have access to all relevant financial information about FPA's financial health, the FPA leadership chose instead to personally attack this blog, questioning the accuracy of our numbers (even though all the numbers were quoted directly from FPA's own Audited Financial Statements!) and our integrity for not "fact-checking" those Audited Financial Statements. Apparently forgetting that the organization's Audited Financial Statements are supposed to be the factually accurate statement of record in the first place, such that "fact-checking" them should never be necessary, and that it is not a best practice - nor consistent with FPA's own Information and Transparency Policy for members - to keep a second, unpublished, undisclosed set of restated books for prior financial years. Even if those books are otherwise financially accurate.

The FPA also objected to the fact that our prior article pointed out how non-standard and non-transparent financial reporting practices can also lead to, or be associated, with fraud, and in turn interpreted the article as an accusation of fraud. Yet the reality is that the article was not an accusation of fraud - thus why it correctly posited an alternative explanation about the financial discrepancy in the first place - but nonetheless, engaging in non-standard and non-transparent financial reporting is a fraud risk for the organization. Which is why it is standard practice (and indeed, part of FPA's own Information and Transparency Policy) to procure and publish Audited Financial Statements to members to begin with. In other words, pointing out that poor accounting practices can lead to fraud isn't an accusation of fraud; it's an explanation of why adopting best practices in accounting standards is so important to maintain the financial integrity of the organization in the first place. The entire foundation of an organization having its own financial statements audited is to trust... but also verify.

Accordingly, in today's blog post, we have published a "hypothetical" response - that I would have hoped to see from the FPA leadership to acknowledge the changes that it still needs to make with respect to its financial and audit oversight controls to ensure better financial transparency to members - along with the FPA's actual response to our previous article (for those FPA members who wish to understand the finer details). Because in the end, I am still first and foremost a dues-paying member of the FPA, and the only reason I take the time to raise concerns about the organization is that I believe it's crucial for the profession for the FPA to succeed as an organization. Which starts with being financially transparent and accountable to its members in the first place, in accordance with accounting and audit best practices, and FPA's own Core Value of Stewardship.

How Can FPA National Account For Its Chapters When It Can’t Account For Itself?

March 14, 2019 01:55 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

When the Financial Planning Association recently announced its OneFPA Network initiative to consolidate its chapters, a key aspect was to gain operational efficiencies and leverage the FPA’s economies of scale by fully centralizing the accounting of all 86 of its chapters. The systems overhaul would require a substantial initial investment – estimated at more than $300,000 – but with the end result of all chapters being relieved of the burden of chapter accounting and instead simply receiving monthly financial reports directly from National.

Yet part of the controversy of the OneFPA Network initiative is that FPA has been experiencing its own deterioration of financials over the past decade, with revenue down by millions of dollars since the financial crisis impacted the financial advisor community, raising questions of whether the FPA is simply trying to consolidate its chapters finances so it can get access to available chapter cash reserves and annual surpluses.

To rebut concerns about FPA’s financial state of affairs, the organization conducted in late January a first-ever “Overview of National Finances” to its chapter leaders, which did candidly acknowledge that the organization’s revenue has dropped by nearly $4M from a decade ago, but noting that membership revenue is actually up over that time period, and emphasizing that FPA’s finances have stabilized since the downturn. Except, as it turns out, the historical trends that the FPA presented didn’t even match its own published Audited Financials, to the tune of nearly $1.5M revenue per year for several years, and a cumulative mismatch of nearly $8M of 'missing' revenue over the past decade.

In addition, it’s notable that since 2015, the FPA stopped distributing its Audited Financials to members altogether – ironically a self-violation of the FPA’s own “Information and Transparency Policy” – and only began distributing a more limited financial summary in its Annual Report. Which itself was excluded from its just-released 2018 Annual Report, leaving FPA’s own membership entirely in the dark about its current financial state (except, again, for a recent webinar that reported numbers failing to match FPA’s already-published Audited Financials to the tune of $8M of missing revenue). Even as the webinar did concerningly highlight a substantial $700k drawdown in FPA’s available cash over the past year, which appears to be attributable primarily to a significant decrease in the FPA’s deferred revenue… a potential signal that its actual revenue is about to deteriorate further.

Fortunately, the reality is that the FPA does have a demonstrated track record of managing its expenses (i.e., cutting staff and costs) in-line with its revenue, and as a result, its available reserves have remained stable throughout its financial turmoil of the past decade. Which suggests that the FPA may not literally be in any kind of “financial distress,” but simply that the organization’s revenue is declining more substantially than it has previously implied… which should be a concern for a National Board that, thus far, has not held its staff leadership accountable for the decline.

More broadly, though, the key question is simply this: how can the FPA move forward with the OneFPA Network and confidently and transparently account for its chapters – which is at best an extremely time- and labor-intensive tasks when committed to monthly reconciled reporting – when the National organization can’t even effectively (and transparently) account for itself?

Navigating the Financial Planning World as a Person of Color

March 11, 2019 07:07 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

Despite the financial services industry’s ongoing efforts at improving racial diversity, only 3.5% of CFP professionals are black or Latino… a revealing statistics for not only the underrepresentation of people of color in the industry but that simply trying to expand awareness of financial planning and invite more diversity into the industry is not enough to move the needle.

In this guest post, Eugenié George, a prospective new financial advisor studying for her CFP certification to enter the industry, shares her own perspective on the real-world challenges in entering financial planning as a person of color. Starting with the understanding that, due to a history of financially-related racial discrimination in the US over the past 200 years, many communities of color do not have the same accumulated wealth and positive connection to the financial services industry in the first place. And it’s hard to enter financial planning – and have support from family, friends, and your community to enter financial planning – when the community’s history with the financial services industry is so negative in the first place.

In addition, Eugenié shares her own path and journey into the financial services industry, how she has built a “network map” of people to reach out to and connect with to mentor and find opportunities, how to identify your own “superpower” skills that will help you get your foot in the door for a job opportunity, how to navigate the financial challenges of taking one step back to take two steps forward into the industry, and how to manage the fact that, as a person of color, you will inevitably “stand out” in an industry that is still more-than-90% white.

Fortunately, though, a growing understanding of the historical context and challenges of communities of color with the financial services industry provides a foundation for today’s existing advisors to become “allies” and help to build more effective pathways and support for people of color to become CFP professionals of color in the future.