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Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Feb 22-23)

February 21, 2020 03:00 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the big industry news that wirehouse Morgan Stanley is acquiring E*Trade for $13B, in a major shift for the wirehouse to move (back) towards the mass affluent with a more online digital offering via E*Trade, which opens a new pathway to E*Trade's significant business of administering employer stock plans (that can now be referred to Morgan Stanley's own advisors)... and that raises significant questions about whether E*Trade will even remain in the RIA custody business (and/or whether independent RIAs would want a custodian owned by a wirehouse competitor), and in turn, whether the potential loss of E*Trade as an RIA custody option could put even more pressure on the Department of Justice's view of the prospective Schwab-Ameritrade merger (which may have even been a factor in Morgan Stanley's timing to announce the E*Trade deal in the first place?).

Also in the news this week is a new FINRA exam sweep of how brokerage firms (including the ones serving as RIA custodians) plan to make their money in a zero-commission future and whether the prospective conflicts of interest in their alternative revenue streams are being sufficiently disclosed to clients (and their advisors), and the emerging surge in a new kind of "Registered Index-Linked Annuity" (the "RILA") that is becoming an increasingly popular risk-managed variable annuity alternative to the living benefit riders of old.

From there, we have several practice management articles, including a review of the big themes from the recent T3 advisor tech conference (from more mobile apps and integrations to an outright focus on advisor time efficiency), the ongoing rise of virtual firms (from young advisors to more senior, small firms to large), and a fresh look at other ways to measure what constitutes a "good" advisory firm (beyond just rankings of their AUM and recent growth).

We also have a few investment-related articles, from a look at the new SOFR rate that is expected to replace LIBOR in two years (and the complications that loom between now and the end of 2021 for that transition to happen), the concerns of a recent proposal from the mutual fund industry to shift more of their disclosures to be online (instead of mailed or emailed out directly), and a candid look at whether direct indexing is really a threat to the ETF industry (or "just" a kind of alternative product for certain client needs... albeit one that might still soon become a trillion-dollar AUM opportunity?).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of better communications with clients: the first looks at what it takes to finally see clients who are difficult to schedule for meetings (recognizing that the real problem may be that the advisor's 'check-in' meetings aren't really actually all that valuable to the client and that a better purpose is often necessary!); the ways that advisors sometimes unwittingly damage their empathy with clients in an attempt to prove or defend their own professionalism; and some tips on how to have and get through the sometimes-difficult conversations with clients that arise (and how best to introduce a difficult conversation where there's never a 'good' time to bring it up)!

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Strategies To Mitigate The (Partial) Death Of The Stretch IRA

February 19, 2020 07:04 am 13 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Passed by Congress in December 2019, the “Setting Every Community Up For Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act” introduced substantial updates to long-standing retirement account rules. One of the most notable changes was the removal of the ‘stretch’ provision for certain non-spouse designated beneficiaries of inherited retirement accounts and the introduction of a “10-Year Rule” requiring those beneficiaries to deplete the entire balance of their inherited retirement account within ten years after the original owner’s death.

Notably, though, not all beneficiaries will be impacted by this new “10-Year Rule”. Instead, the SECURE Act identifies three distinct groups of beneficiaries: Non-Designated Beneficiaries (i.e., non-person entities such as trusts and charities), Eligible Designated Beneficiaries (i.e., individuals who are spouses of account holders, those who have a disability or chronic illness, those not more than 10 years younger than the decedent, and minor children of decedents or certain “See-Through” trusts benefiting such persons), and Non-Eligible Designated Beneficiaries (i.e., any individual or “See-Through” trust that qualifies as a Designated Beneficiary but is not an Eligible Designated Beneficiary). While Non-Designated Beneficiaries and Eligible Designated Beneficiaries are generally subject to the same rules that were in place prior to the SECURE Act (either the 5-year rule or stretching over life expectancy, respectively), Non-Eligible Designated Beneficiaries are now subject to the new 10-Year Rule, from trusts to adult children and more.

Given these substantial changes, there are many strategies that advisors can use to help their clients impacted by the new more-restrictive stretch rules, whether they be the (Non-Eligible) designated beneficiary of an inherited retirement account (trying to manage the compressed time window for distribution) or the original account owner themselves still planning for the future (to minimize the tax burden of account distributions in what is now a non-stretch world for many).

Some options available to Non-Eligible Designated Beneficiaries include spreading distributions out across a time frame for as long as possible to reduce annual income from the account, strategically timing withdrawals such that larger distributions are made in years with lower taxable income (e.g., after retirement), or simply leaving the account balance alone for as long as possible (and withdrawing everything at the end of the tenth year when required to do so).

Account owners themselves also have options to mitigate the tax impact for their heirs, including increasing the number of beneficiaries on their accounts to spread out and therefore decrease taxable income received by each beneficiary, and strategically allocating account shares based on beneficiaries’ anticipated income tax brackets to maximize the tax efficiency of those distributions. Alternatively, lifetime partial Roth conversions of tax-deferred retirement accounts can reduce (or eliminate altogether, if converting the full account) the tax burden on beneficiaries, though a careful analysis should accompany this strategy to determine how much of the original accounts should be converted to begin with (to avoid simply causing an even-higher tax burden today). Charitable Remainder Trusts can also be used to provide a potentially steady income stream for the beneficiaries (along with providing a gift to a qualified charity at the end of the trust’s term).

Ultimately, the key point is that, while Non-Eligible Designated Beneficiaries must now contend with the new SECURE Act 10-Year Rule for inherited retirement accounts, advisors can use several strategies to help clients minimize the tax impact of distributions from those accounts. Some can be implemented for the beneficiary after they inherit the account, while others can be used by the account owner themselves during their lifetime before the account transfers to the beneficiary. Although, in some cases, the best strategy may be simply to accept the 10-year rule as is, leave the account alone for as long as possible, and liquidate the inherited retirement account as required at the end of the 10-year window!

#FASuccess Ep 164: Making The Hard Transition From Financial Advisor To Business Owner Of Your Advisory Firm, With Julia Carlson

February 18, 2020 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 164th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Julia Carlson. Julia is the founder and CEO of Financial Freedom Wealth Management Group, a hybrid RIA based in Newport, Oregon, that oversees nearly $300 million of assets under management for almost 1,000 client households.

What's unique about Julia, though, is the way that an unfortunate car accident that her daughter was in led Julia to transition very quickly from being the lead advisor that ran her own firm to expanding her staff and becoming the business owner of the advisory firm instead, if only out of sheer necessity of finding the time she needed to support her daughter's recovery, but in a way that allowed the firm to more than quadruple in the eight years since.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Julia's journey through her advisory career. From her challenges early on gaining professional credibility as a young female advisor where a prospect once told her she was too pretty to be a financial advisor to the way she got her foot in the door talking to small local business owners about their retirement plans and building wealth outside of their businesses. How reading Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" launched Julia's path towards a more holistic planning-centric approach to clients and the way that she built her client base in the early years with Ramsey's Endorsed Local Provider referral program, now known as SmartVestor Pro.

We also talk about the transformation that Julia's business had to go through, almost literally overnight, when she got the call from her own client appreciation event that her daughter had been struck by a drunk driver and was being airlifted to the hospital in critical condition. How the pain of being forced to try to run her business from the ICU while being with her daughter during recovery led Julia to hire a president to take over running the firm on a day-to-day basis, the way that shift ended out allowing Julia's firm to double in size from $60 million to $120 million just 2 years later, as her time and focus were freed up for growth, and how the firm's adoption of Gino Wickman's Entrepreneurial Operating System has allowed the business to run even more efficiently as it more than doubled again over the past several years.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Julia talks about the real-world challenges of trying to let go of having so much control in your business, or as Julia puts it, how to stay in charge even if you're not in control anymore, the way that she took a hard look at everything that does and doesn't energize her, from week-to-week, to figure out her own strengths and where she should be focusing her time, and how the hardest thing to do in the end was letting go of client relationships but how, once Julia acknowledged that it was a crucial step, the firm quickly figured out how to create an internal training program to ensure that other advisors would service clients up to Julia's standards.

How Advisory Firms Can Leverage EOS To Systematically Manage And Grow Their Firms

February 17, 2020 07:03 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

As the RIA industry’s continued growth has catapulted more and more firms across the $100M (or even the once-unthinkable $1 billion) AUM threshold and transformed many practices into true businesses, many advisors are finding themselves as “accidental business owners” as their firms have grown beyond themselves as the original founders and into professionally managed sustainable enterprises.

The challenge, of course, laid out perfectly in Michael Gerber’s eMyth, is that as our industry has professionalized, it has required many “accidental business owners” and their firms of all shapes and sizes to elevate virtually every aspect of how their businesses are run, now that it’s no longer just the firm owner themselves and perhaps an assistant or associate. Managing even a small RIA of a half dozen individuals and beyond now requires firm owners and/or management to be able to effectively develop and communicate a compelling vision, foster a culture centered on execution of key objectives, build processes for identifying and solving key issues, and, most importantly, implement a framework for managing and leading people.

Enter Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System, outlined thoroughly in his seminal book, Traction. The incredibly simple, yet highly effective framework (if implemented correctly) has gained momentum over the last five years across small to mid-sized businesses, and has specifically gained popularity with RIAs across the country in recent years as a means of professionalizing their businesses as they hit that 6+ employee mark, and drawing focus to the six key aspects of managing any business: vision, people, data, issues, process, and traction.

In this guest post, Matt Cosgriff, Wealth Management Group Leader at BerganKDV Wealth Management, shares his unique insights on how to leverage EOS to professionalize an RIA, having been through the process in his own firm. In his role leading a $1 billion-plus RIA inside of BerganKDV (a regional professional services firm offering tax, audit, payroll, and technology solutions), traction has not only allowed the wealth management business to stay fully integrated with the broader organization which uses EOS, but has produced Traction—sustainable results—over the last ten years of its use.

In his firm, Matt and his team have successfully implemented all six components of EOS starting with “Vision”, by implementing the Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO) tool to clarify and communicate the firm’s core values and focus, long- and short-term organizational goals (including “Rocks”, the important 90-day goals identified each quarter), marketing strategies, and key issues. Focusing on the “People” framework, the firm has been able to identify the right people for the right roles by finding those who “get it” (i.e., they understand the role), “want it” (i.e., they have a genuine desire to do the job successfully), and have the “capacity to do it” (i.e., have the skill and ability to do the work). The “Data” component has been used to create and customize “scorecard” systems for leadership, departmental teams, and individual employees to benchmark performance, which in turn facilitates identifying and addressing the “Issues” that may deter from achieving goals.

The development of documented and agreed-upon core “Processes” in the firm is fundamental to achieving consistent and excellent customer client experiences, which, taken together with the other EOS components, ultimately leads to creating the last EOS component, “Traction” – the continual organizational momentum that allows a firm to grow and achieve its goals – monitored continuously through weekly “Level 10” check-in meetings.

Whether you’re a CEO, Director of Operations, new advisor, or client service associate inside an RIA of any size, Matt’s breakdown of EOS outlines practical insights for how to leverage the key aspects of Traction to professionalize your organization.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Feb 15-16)

February 14, 2020 02:54 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the ongoing industry drama of the prospective "Schwabitrade" merger, with a new public "Pledge" from Schwab that it will accept all RIAs regardless of AUM and without any custody fees, buzz that Fidelity will soon require a larger subset of least-profitable RIAs to begin paying a platform custody fee, and Pershing rethinking its prior $250M AUM custody minimum as it too positions to capture potential "NeverSchwab" RIAs that have been rejected by Schwab in the past when they were small and may not want to return from TD Ameritrade to Schwab in the prospective merger.

Also in the Schwabitrade news this week is the fresh revelation from a recent Schwab mid-quarter Business Update to Wall Street that, for the sake of acquisition expediency, they will not likely retain TD Ameritrade's popular (and most open architecture) VEO platform and instead anticipate keeping their own Schwab systems at the core, simply augmenting them with TD Ameritrade technology as it deems appropriate, amidst the latest buzz of what's worrying the advisor community as the Schwabitrade deal continues to ripple (beyond just RIAs themselves on the TD Ameritrade platform, and the broader potential impact to the entire advisor technology ecosystem).

From there, we have several articles on industry regulation, including some pushback from advisor industry associations about the SEC's proposed relaxing of the RIA advertising rules as being a welcome change but one that may put too much compliance burdens all at once on RIAs (as virtually all client communication may be scooped up as being 'advertising' under the new rules), a newly approved model regulation from the NAIC on a "best interests" standard for annuity agents that in practice simply repeats FINRA's existing non-fiduciary suitability requirements, positive progress on NASAA's recent model rule to prevent financial exploitation of seniors (making it easier and safer for advisors to intervene on their clients' behalf), and a new proposal from NASAA to potentially require all advisors under an RIA to obtain 12 hours per year of continuing education credits.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of trying to clean up the advisor industry: the first highlights how lobbying firms representing Wall Street brokerage firms and insurance and investment products continue to drastically outstrip the spending of actual financial advisor advocacy organizations like the IAA, FPA, and NAPFA; the second looks at the emerging regulatory challenge of 'fake comment letters' that create the impression of widespread support or opposition for proposed regulation but in reality are simply fake spam (and may have played a role in the DoL fiduciary rule); and the last is a frustrating profile of an "advisor" who has repeatedly been barred and fined (by both an individual state and then nationally by the SEC), and even convicted of a felony for securities fraud, with an obligation to pay more than $4M in restitution that hasn't been repaid, yet still continues to maintain a state insurance license for the past several years, and holds out to the public as a financial advisor providing retirement income plans to clients to facilitate annuity sales... begging the question of when the various regulators that oversee financial advisors will finally ever get better about coordinating to ensure that bad actors already convicted repeatedly under one regulator don't simply set up shop again as "financial advisors" under a different regulator and continue doing potentially-problematic business with consumers?

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 27: Handling The ‘Required Minimum’ Conversation Without Being Awkward

February 13, 2020 07:11 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

Many financial advisors have asset minimums to ensure that they generate enough revenue from each client to be compensated appropriately for the value they provide (and the business cost to deliver it). But when it comes to having conversations about net worth with prospective clients to find out if they qualify for those minimums – especially those who are friends and family - the situation can quickly become awkward given the highly personal relationship individuals have with their money.

In our 27th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication expert Carl Richards talk about some ways to broach the sensitive and potentially difficult conversation about assets and net worth with prospective clients, and how to gracefully defer from taking on prospective clients who don’t meet the firms’ requisite minimums. Because even while the natural inclination for many financial advisors is to help anyone who asks, regardless of net worth, doing so often becomes increasingly difficult as an advisor’s firm grows and the capacity to spend time with clients who don’t actually meet their minimum fees becomes smaller and, in many cases, non-existent.

The first issue to consider when requiring asset minimums is simply to recognize that it’s not always apparent who may qualify (or not), which means it’s crucial to meet with prospects, conduct an initial discovery meeting to learn about goals and values, and to get a rough idea of the prospect’s balance sheet to safeguard against making premature assumptions about what the client is really worth. And in the event that a client does not meet the firm’s minimums, the advisor can still conduct a brief follow-up meeting to provide a few basic recommendations and resources to the prospect without much effort, and then describe to the prospect what the firm’s typical clientele generally looks like and what the minimum fees are… a simple act of goodwill to help the client, and also an effective marketing strategy, as prospects who are grateful for the guidance they received from the advisor may still be able to refer people in their network who are appropriate clients (having been given a description of who the firm does work with, in the process of being helped themselves)!

However, while spending time with prospective clients and running through a complete discovery meeting can be a rewarding process for both the client (for the free guidance they receive) and the advisor (for the opportunity to help someone in need and the creation of a new, potential referral source), it is also a time-consuming process and an advisor’s capacity may not often permit them to meet with all prospects without some screening mechanism in place. One potential remedy is to help people better understand who the firm works with before even reaching out to the advisor… which can be achieved through the firm’s website. Details about the typical clientele or specific niche served by the firm, together with the firm’s asset minimums and fees published directly for all to see, can help deter unsuitable prospects from reaching out to the firm in the first place (effectively allowing them to self-select out themselves). And including some potential resources (e.g., books, white papers, etc.) for individuals who may not be a good fit can again leave the individual with something of value from the firm, even though they may not be a suitable client.

Ultimately, the key point is that even though the ‘required minimum’ conversation can be awkward, there are ways for financial advisors to have these discussions as a meaningful discovery process that can even serve as an effective marketing strategy… and even (briefly and time efficiently) help those who might not be ideal clients in the process. Furthermore, maintaining a website that includes a profile of the ‘ideal client’, together with a clear description of the firms’ fees, can also keep discovery meetings with prospects who are unable to meet the firm’s required minimums to a manageable minimum!

The (Partial) Death Of The Stretch IRA: How The SECURE Act Impacts Inherited Retirement Accounts

February 12, 2020 07:08 am 33 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Passed into law in December 2019, the “Setting Every Community Up For Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act”, introduced a plethora of substantial updates to longstanding retirement account rules. One of the most notable changes was the elimination (with some exceptions) of the ‘stretch’ provision for non-spouse beneficiaries of inherited retirement accounts. As prior to the SECURE Act, beneficiaries of inherited retirement accounts were able to ‘stretch’ out distributions based on their own entire life expectancy, but now most non-spouse beneficiaries will be required to deplete their accounts within ten years after the original owner’s death. (Unlike RMDs, though, the new 10-Year Rule offers flexibility around the timing of distributions, as it does not require annual withdrawals – funds can be withdrawn in any amount, at any time over the course of the 10-year term – as long as the entire amount is withdrawn by the end of the 10^th year.)

However, not all beneficiaries will be impacted by this new “10-Year Rule”. Instead, the SECURE Act identifies three distinct groups of beneficiaries: Non-Designated Beneficiaries (i.e., non-person entities such as trusts and charities), Eligible Designated Beneficiaries (i.e., individuals who are spouses of account holders, those who have a disability or chronic illness, those not more than 10 years younger than the decedent, minor children of decedents, or “See-Through” trusts), and Non-Eligible Designated Beneficiaries (i.e., any individual who qualifies as a Designated Beneficiary but is not on the list of Eligible Designated Beneficiary).

This distinction matters because Non-Designated Beneficiaries and those who are part of the newly created Eligible Designated Beneficiaries group are generally subject to the same rules prior to the SECURE Act (either the 5-year rule or stretching over life expectancy, respectively), it is the Non-Eligible Designated Beneficiaries that are now subject to the new 10-Year Rule, from trusts to adult children and more. Fortunately, the 10-year rule does still facilitate at least some flexibility – as the rule simply requires that all funds be distributed by the end of the 10^th year after death of the original account owner, but the beneficiary has discretion over when to take the dollars out over that time window – though such a mandatory distribution window may introduce new challenges for certain types of See-Through trusts (where the flexibility eliminates ‘automatic’ annual conduit distributions to beneficiaries and could trigger the sudden liquidation of both the IRA and trust at the end of the 10-year window).

Ultimately, the key point is that, while there are now three distinct groups of beneficiaries under the SECURE Act, only one of these groups (i.e., the Non-Eligible Designated Beneficiaries) must now contend with the new SECURE Act 10-Year Rule for inherited retirement accounts. For the other two groups (i.e., Eligible Designated Beneficiaries and Non-Designated Beneficiaries), very little has changed for Non-Designated Beneficiaries, and Eligible Designated Beneficiaries still follow the same rules (with few exceptions) as the pre-SECURE Act Designated Beneficiaries.

#FASuccess Ep 163: Building A Fast-Growth Practice Without Prospecting By Working Under A Credit Union, with Michael Gennawey

February 11, 2020 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 163rd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Michael Gennawey. Michael is a financial advisor and program manager for SoCal Wealth Management, a hybrid advisory firm in Southern California that oversees $260 million of assets under management for nearly 1,800 clients.

What's unique about Michael, though, is the way he's been able to build SoCal Wealth Management under the umbrella of the Credit Union of Southern California, which itself has nearly $1.6 billion of credit union assets serving almost 120,000 members across 18 branch locations and feeds a continuous flow of prospect referrals to Michael's advisory firm, with the caveat that as part of the credit union, they have to take every client that is referred to them.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the unique structure of credit unions as customers or, rather, member-owned financial institutions, and how the member-centric culture of credit unions can be so complementary to the client-centric culture of advisory firms. The way that Credit Union of Southern California structures its referral program and trains its Member Service Officers across branches to identify members with client needs and steer them towards SoCal Wealth Management at a pace of nearly three new clients per week, and the way SoCal Wealth structures its offering on the LPL platform to keep it efficient enough to run this kind of high-volume client business.

We also talk about the way that Michael's firm uses an internal team member supporting the financial advisors to both set initial appointments with referrals but also to help screen them to ensure they're a fit for the firm in the first place, SoCal Wealth's financial planning process and their two-meeting approach that delivers the plan interactively with MoneyGuidePro, not only to engage clients but to save significant time in the plan preparation process, and the way that Michael's firm segments clients for ongoing services, given the incredible range of who the credit union refers to them, from multimillionaires to those opening their first IRA.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Michael shares how to figure out which credit unions have the right client-centric culture and which are just offering wealth management as a product-based profit center, the typical payouts that advisors receive in a credit union environment in exchange for having to do little or no business development, and the unique structure that SoCal Wealth has built for its advisors where clients that are referred through the credit union must stay behind, but advisors can still have their own personal clients that the advisor can take with them if they leave in the future.

The Most Efficient Financial Advisor Marketing Strategies And The True Cost To Acquire A Client

February 10, 2020 07:03 am 21 Comments CATEGORY: Marketing

For more than 20 years, industry benchmarking studies have helped financial advisors understand how to manage the profitability of their businesses, and ensure that the costs to service clients are in line with the fees they’re being charged. However, remarkably little research has been done into the costs that must be incurred to actually obtain those clients in the first place and the cost-effectiveness of various client acquisition strategies that financial advisors use.

And it turns out those client acquisition costs are substantial! In our recently released Kitces Research report of more than 800 financial advisors who participated in a survey, the average total cost for a financial advisor to acquire a new client is $3,119 per client. Notably, though, a significant portion of that cost is the ‘time cost’ of the financial advisor themselves (an average of $2,600 worth of time spent, or 83% of the total cost of client acquisition), while only $519 is typically spent on hard-dollar marketing costs themselves. Which suggests that while early-on it may be cost-effective for advisory firms often to substitute advisor time for firm dollars when it comes to marketing efforts, especially for those who don’t have a lot of money to invest into growing their business in those initial years, that advisory firms may be overly reliant on an advisor’s (less-and-less-cost-effective) time to grow the business, rather than allocating marketing dollars to grow the business in a more scalable way.

The significant upfront cost to acquire a client is especially salient for financial advisors with recurring revenue models, as the cost to acquire a client may often be equal to or more than the entire revenue generated by the client in the first year – and the equivalent of several years’ worth of profits – which results in a “J-Curve” of client profitability (where aggregate profitability of a new client is negative in the early years and only turns positive over time). Which is important, as overzealous marketing efforts can cause a steep negative J-Curve dip, which in turn can cause the firm to overextend its growth capacity and ‘grow broke’ even if otherwise on a long-term path to profitability. Though on the other hand, the depth of the J-curve of advisor profitability, when coupled with firms that often have 20-30+ year-average client retention (at 95% to 97% annual retention rates), suggests that most advisory firms may be grossly underspending on marketing relative to the astonishing lifetime client value of an individual new client.

To maximize marketing spending – and minimize Client Acquisition Costs (CACs) – our Kitces Research Report identified the most cost-effective (measured by the actual CAC) and cost-efficient (measured by the revenue generated from the client relative to CAC) marketing strategies in use by the financial advisors surveyed, which included both ‘traditional’ methods (e.g., client referrals, networking, and Centers of Influence), but also underappreciated alternatives (albeit with more upfront cost) including SEO, writing a book, webinars, marketing lists, and paid third-party website listings. Interestingly, the most cost-effective strategies differed for firms with the highest marketing efficiency (books, direct mail, paid web listings, marketing lists, and SEO) versus the most efficient strategies for firms not as ‘marketing-inclined’ as others (paid advertising, paid solicitors, seminars, and general networking).

Examining marketing strategy efficiency relative to advisor adoption rate also reveals that some of the most commonly used strategies are actually among the least efficient (e.g., social media, blogging, and client appreciation events), whereas some of the lesser-used are still very efficient (e.g., marketing lists, radio, solicitors, online ads, and paid websites). This suggests an inherent inefficiency when it comes to marketing strategies chosen by financial advisors. The biggest driver behind this inefficiency appears to be the strong advisor preference for strategies that rely on the advisor’s time (versus hard dollars invested in the strategy), and an overweighting on strategies that produce a high quality of leads over those that produce a scalable quantity of leads or are actually the most cost-effective (which may help to explain why larger firms are outgrowing smaller ones, as they are able to accommodate scalable hard-dollar marketing strategies that smaller advisors might not otherwise be able to afford or be willing to invest into).

Ultimately, though, the key point is that while there is a wide range of marketing options available for advisors, effectiveness and efficiency are important criteria that need to be considered to ensure that resulting growth is sustainable, as initial costs may be recouped only after a client has generated revenue for the firm over several years. In fact, with an average CAC of $3,119, this Kitces Research Report suggests that perhaps the primary reason that advisory firms struggle to serve mass affluent clientele and the broader population is not because it is cost-ineffective to service them, but that it’s too cost-ineffective to market and gain a scalable number of them as clients in the first place! Though on the other hand, with recent reports suggesting robo-advisors have ‘just’ an average acquisition cost of $500 - $1,000, it seems clear that an opportunity exists for advisors to reduce the overall cost of their marketing efforts (and/or for third-party providers to scale their own lead generation services for advisors)… which may both improve the profitability of advisory firms, and allow them to grow more scalably and reach a wider range of clientele.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Feb 8-9)

February 7, 2020 02:58 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the industry news that TD Ameritrade's RIA custody business is continuing with business as usual despite the looming Schwab merger, in what appears to be a combination of both a legal obligation to do so until the deal is finalizing... and a growing possibility (which markets are now handicapping at 30%) that the Department Of Justice may intervene and prevent at least the RIA portion of the merger from going through (e.g., by requiring the RIA business to be spun off if the TD Ameritrade retail business is acquired).

In the meantime, though, the advisor industry is also still adjusting to the potential of the merger, from firms preparing for the possibility that TD Ameritrade's VEO platform may not survive the merger if it does go through (necessitating a substantial restructuring of advisor technology for many firms), and musings about whether the loss of TD Ameritrade's open architecture platform may hinder the emergence of new advisor technology solutions (that in the past decade often built first to TD Ameritrade to go to market) or simply spawn a competing platform to become more open architecture to fill the void and take on VEO's open-architecture mantle.

From there, we have several other articles of notable industry news this week, including an SEC Investor Alert that fraudsters are engaging in pump-and-dump schemes around the coronavirus (have you warned your clients?), Vanguard is making a somewhat-surprising-but-sort-of-not push into offering a private equity fund (but potentially only for institutions using Vanguard and consumers who engage a Vanguard Personal Advisor directly), and a prediction from Cerulli that the dam of advisor retirements is about to break with outright declines in advisor headcount in the coming years that could culminate in nearly 1/3rd of all today's financial advisors retiring in the decade of the 2020s.

We also have a few articles on marketing, including a look at how firms that pay for online lead generation platforms are finding ways to make it work (based on their geography and by hiring business development associates), the challenges in finding and paying for the 'right' marketing software or service providers for financial advisors, and how Schwab is upping the ante on paying outright cash to attract new investor accounts (primarily to compete against other brokerage firms engaging in similar practices, but at the risk of catching financial advisors in the crossfire?).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of the (real) value of a financial advisor in the future: the first explores the ways that financial advisors can provide value beyond just highlighting their type of compensation; the second examines the lost art of being a better listener to help clients on their own journey; and the last explores the unique challenges that arise as financial advisors increasingly shift away from simply being "the experts" and instead try to become a Knowledgeable Guide to help clients feel heard, understood, and supported on their own journeys instead.

Enjoy the 'light' reading!