Nerd's Eye View blog

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Apr 13-14)

April 12, 2019 02:59 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that Envestnet is adding a new "Credit Exchange" to its platform, where advisors will be able to assist clients in getting (pre-qualified) loans for everything from buying real estate to borrowing for their business, as Envestnet tries to facilitate a wider range of holistic advice for advisors on its platform (and expand the range of products available on/through its platform in which Envestnet itself can participate!). Also in the news this week is the announcement that Betterment is partnering with DFA to offer DFA funds through Betterment's RIA platform... and without any trading fees (beyond Betterment's own platform/wrap fee), applying even more pressure to traditional RIA custodians that still charge higher ticket charges to advisors' clients who want to buy DFA.

From there, we have a number of articles about the increasingly contentious domain of brokers and advisors switching firms, from a new Regulatory Notice 19-10 from FINRA cautioning broker-dealers not to bad-mouth former brokers and in fact requiring them to give the former broker's contact information to their former clients still at the firm, recent lawsuits from both Schwab and Edelman Financial Engines to pursue departing brokers and advisors as the tactics of Temporary Restraining Orders and injunctions historically used by wirehouses to retain their brokers' assets are now increasingly being employed in the wealth management and RIA channels, and the rise of forgivable loans as recruiting tools in the independent broker-dealer channels (as wirehouses themselves are cutting back the growth pace since UBS and Morgan Stanley left the Broker Protocol).

We also have several articles on personal finance habits and decisions, from a discussion of how "Concierge Medicine" works and whether it's really worth the cost, what it really means to be "financially healthy" (beyond just the dollars and cents of your household cash flow and balance sheet), and a discussion of some "unconventional" financial planning strategies that even financial advisors themselves sometimes engage in (e.g., taking money out of a retirement plan to invest in a startup... their own newly-launched advisory firm!).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of the benefits of writing and journaling (and how to do so more effectively): the first explores some of the benefits of establishing a writing habit for yourself in the first place (not merely as a form of communication and expression, but your own learning and self-discovery process); the second provides some good tips on how to write more effectively and "eloquently" when trying to communicate and make a point; and the third explores the benefits of simply writing for yourself, in the form of journaling, and how to adopt an effective journaling habit by simply creating a structure for yourself to journal just one sentence per day (and then look back and see your sense of progress after a month or few!).

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 05: Do Clients Really Value Getting Help Managing Their Behavior Gap

April 11, 2019 07:03 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication Kitces & Carl Podcast

One persistent struggle for financial advisors has been to find ways to communicate the value that they bring to the table. Fortunately, several recent studies have tried to quantify that value - down to a specific number of basis points annually – and have generally shown that financial advisors can more than cover their advisory fees with a wide range of value-added benefits… most significantly, by helping clients overcome the dreaded “behavior gap” that exists between the returns of the market, and the (lesser) returns that investors would otherwise realize on their own due to their behavioral biases.

Unfortunately, however, a recent Morningstar survey of almost 700 individual investors found that the advisor’s ability to help “control their emotions” is perceived as the least valuable service an advisor can provide from the consumer’s perspective… even as it’s the most valuable benefit from financial advisors according to the advisor research! Yet this ironic gap in the value of getting help with the behavior gap actually makes sense, since investors themselves often don’t see that their behaviors are a problem in the first place.

Nonetheless, this gap between what the research suggests is a benefit of working with a financial advisor, and what consumers state they actually value, raises the question: Does the real gap lie between market and investor returns, or between what investors actually value and what advisors think they value?

In our fifth episode of “Kitces & Carl”, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication guru Carl Richards sit down to discuss the question of whether advisors should even bother trying to communicate the value they provide when helping clients manage their “behavior gap”, why attempting to convince prospects that you can help them manage their behaviors is perhaps an uphill battle, and how maybe the best way to overcome the behavior gap (and the perceived value of getting help with the behavior gap) is by shifting a client’s perspective altogether.

The starting point is to realize that most clients don’t initially seek an advisor’s help because they suddenly decide they need help clarifying their life goals or making better decisions at key junctures; they come to an advisor first and foremost because they have an acute pain point they need help with. And while for some new clients, that pain point may be due to devastating decisions in the depths bear market - which then prompts them seek out an advisor because they (or more often their spouse) realize that they do need guidance when it matters most – for many consumers, the pain point that drives them to a financial advisor is about some other non-portfolio issue in the first place.

Furthermore, even if many people do undermine themselves by making poorly timed decisions, it’s nearly impossible to “sell it” as a benefit of entering into an advisory relationship, since a client will first have to admit to themselves that they are so bad at making financial decisions that they have no other choice than to hand the task off to someone else! And denial about our own failings – even if it’s true – can be quite powerful. Which is why, in general, trying to position yourself as someone who can help clients “control their emotions” or change their “bad” behaviors is challenging at best. Which is not to say that managing those clients’ behaviors isn’t beneficial… it simply means that people who are in most need of that help will likely have a hard time admitting it.

Ultimately, the bottom line is that advisors do truly add value for their clients by managing the “behavior gap”… but selling that as a key feature of the relationship probably isn’t going to get most advisors very far. Instead, the best way to help clients close that gap is by connecting their use of their capital with what they say is important to them in the first place. And the only way to help a client down that path is to absorb with empathy where they are presently, and then gradually help them understand continuing to make them same decisions that they’ve made in the past won’t get them different results. Which creates the real opportunity for financial advisors to demonstrate their value!

How Divvying Up Household Financial Responsibility Impacts Financial Knowledge Over Time

April 10, 2019 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

Financial knowledge plays an important role in enabling individuals to engage in good financial behavior. However, like other forms of knowledge, financial knowledge is subject to decay if we don’t apply and reinforce that knowledge regularly. While this may seem fairly obvious, the reality is that the many decisions we make – including the decision to retain (or delegate) responsibility for making financial decisions – may influence our development and retention of financial knowledge.

In this post, Derek Tharp – lead researcher at Kitces.com, and an assistant professor of finance at the University of Southern Maine – delves into the recent research on how financial knowledge may increase or decrease over time based on how a couple allocates responsibility for making financial decisions.

A recent study from Adrian Ward and John Lynch provides some interesting insights into how the divvying up of financial decisions among couples may influence financial decision making. Contrary to what many may expect, the authors found that the initial assignment of financial responsibility was not influenced by levels of financial knowledge at the beginning of the relationship. While this may seem counterintuitive, from an economic perspective, it is the individual with the comparative advantage (rather than the absolute advantage) that we would expect to take on a larger share of financial responsibility in an efficient outcome. For example, despite a CFO’s potential absolute advantage over a stay-at-home spouse’s financial knowledge, it may be the case that it is better for the household financially if the CFO focuses on their work rather than managing household finances. Because all households have limited time and resources, the reality is that some trade-offs in all areas of life are ultimately inevitable.

Long-term, the assignment of financial responsibility appears to influence financial knowledge, with spouses who take on 100% of the responsibility becoming most knowledgeable, whereas those who take on no financial responsibility (i.e., delegate those responsibilities to their partner) actually experience a reduction in their financial knowledge over time. Furthermore, while those who share responsibility do appear to each see modest knowledge gains with time, those gains are much smaller than the gains experienced by households with one member specializing in financial responsibility.

Overall, this finding has important implications, as it suggests that there is both risk and opportunity associated with sharing or delegating financial responsibility. On the one hand, those who delegate may benefit from the higher levels of knowledge gained by the specializing spouse. On the other hand, should the specializing spouse experience disability or premature death, a spouse with less financial knowledge than they may have had if they were involved in making financial decisions could be thrust into a role as a financial decision-maker without being prepared. Moreover, it’s possible that financial knowledge of those who delegate responsibilities to a financial advisor could similarly experience a decrease in financial knowledge over time. While this is not explored in Ward and Lynch’s study, it is nonetheless important for financial planners to help clients understand both the risks and rewards associated with divvying up responsibility between members of a household… and between a household and their financial advisor!

#FASuccess Ep 119: Career-Changing Into Financial Planning By Creating A Niche Serving Your Former Profession, with Kenneth Robinson

April 9, 2019 07:11 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 119th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kenneth Robinson. Ken is the founder of Practical Financial Planning, an independent RIA in the Cleveland, Ohio area with 2 advisors who work with 55 clients on an ongoing annual retainer fee that varies from $5,000 to $25,000 a year.

What's unique about Ken, though, is his decision to focus into a niche of working with Ohio public sector employees, having been a public sector professional himself before career-changing into financial planning 20 years ago, and the way he's been able to make his practice so efficient by developing a specialized knowledge of Ohio public sector employee issues, from the state of fundedness of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and its pension plan, to coordinating Ohio public sector retirement planning for those who are also eligible for federal FERS benefits from a spouse, as well as coordinating Ohio public sector employee pensions with the Social Security Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset rules.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Ken formed his niche in working with Ohio public sector employees as a career changer from the public sector himself, why he chose to focus on a niche not only because he felt he'd be more credible with them, but also because it increased his own confidence that he could add enough value to justify as fees in the early years, the way he got started in his niche by going back to some of his former colleagues to form what he called a Founders Club, where he asked for their feedback on his new advisory business venture, and then invited them to become clients for a first year discount.

The way he developed a specialized website that acknowledges right away his niche with Ohio public sector employees so that at least anyone who did arrive on his website would immediately know about his specialized expertise, and the way he adopted his financial planning process over time, from simply doing a full comprehensive financial plan for every client upfront, to instead always focusing the planning process on whatever the one most pressing issue was for the client first and only then circling back to cover the rest of the modules of financial planning.

We also talk about the annual retainer fee structure that Ken uses, adopted from the Alliance of Comprehensive Planners and based on a combination of the client's investible net worth, income, and complexity, and why and how Ken decided to modify and even raise his retainer fees over time, including for his existing clients who started with him early when the fees were lower, and the way that Ken explains his retainer fees to clients to justify his value proposition by focusing on how financial planning is an ongoing process and not just the upfront plan alone.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Ken talks about some of the marketing challenges and mistakes he's made over the years. What he's learned along the way, and how working with a coach has helped him to stay grounded through the inevitable ups and downs of running an advisory firm.

How Much Does A (Comprehensive) Financial Plan Actually Cost?

April 8, 2019 07:02 am 5 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

It is a simple question: how much does it cost to get a comprehensive financial plan? Yet despite the rising popularity of financial advisors offering financial planning services, remarkably little has actually been published about what financial advisors charge for the service. Which is striking for both consumers – who want to know what a plan might cost – and for financial advisors themselves, who may want to benchmark whether the pricing for their financial plans is “reasonable” relative to their advisor peers and competitors (rather than solely setting the price based on its time-and-labor cost to the advisor).

In our latest Kitces Research survey on “What Financial Advisors Actually Do”, we found that the average cost for a standalone comprehensive financial plan is $2,400 (up from $2,200 in a 2012 study from the Financial Planning Association). Notably, though, our research finds that more and more advisory firms who offer financial plans actually are charging for them separately – rather than merely bundling the plan into their AUM fees – and in fact there is a growing rise of financial advisors who are charging for financial plans solely in a “fee-for-service” manner (hourly fees, monthly subscription fees, or annual retainer fees), rather than blending fees with AUM at all.

In addition, not surprisingly, financial plan fees did vary significantly from one firm to the next, although as it turns out, the biggest driver of financial planning fees is not the cost (i.e., how long it takes) to produce the plan, nor even how comprehensive the plan is, but the affluence of the client themselves paying for the plan in the first place. In other words, clients with more financial means to pay for a financial plan tend to pay more for a financial plan. Opening a debate of whether more affluent clients pay more for financial plans simply because they can afford to do so, because they tend to use more experienced advisors with deeper expertise (even if “the plan” itself is the same), or simply because their higher net worth and affluence means they perceive more value in the financial plan, to begin with.

On the other hand, it’s notable that, because financial advisors only spend about 50% of their time on client-facing activities in the first place, advisors are still greatly limited by how many financial plans they can do and how many clients they can support, which ultimately limits their ability to charge for their time and generate revenue. In the end, the average advisor generates a fee of about $150/hour for their client-facing activities… even as they only spend about 50% of their time on client activities that generate fees in the first place.

On the other hand, the research does indicate that advisors who have advanced professional designations, and more years of experience, do manage to command higher financial planning fees in the marketplace. Though, again, this appears to be less a function of advisors with greater credentials and experience charging higher fees, per se, and more the result of experienced and credentialed advisors being more effective at attracting the more affluent clients who are willing to pay higher fees and perceive greater value in the financial plan in the first place. Which means in the end, when it comes to setting the cost and determining value, the answer to “what should a financial plan cost” truly is in the eyes of the beholder.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Apr 6-7)

April 5, 2019 02:52 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 buzz that there's some new retirement legislation winding its way through Congress, known as the SECURE Act, that is showing promising signs of passing later this year, and would make a number of notable changes to retirement accounts, from eliminating the age limit on IRA contributions, pushing back Required Minimum Distributions from age 70 1/2 to age 72, and curtailing stretch IRAs as a revenue-raiser to "pay" for the other changes.

There were also a number of regulatory news headlines this week, including the death (at least for now) of Maryland's proposed fiduciary rule, a new simple one-page Fee Disclosure form under consideration in Massachusetts (even as debate continues over the SEC's proposed four-page Form CRS disclosure), a discussion of whether the recent fiduciary momentum at the state level means that it may actually be a better way to enact improved regulation of advisors (if only to eventually force federal regulators to then create a uniform national law), and a fascinating (and painful) look at how the rise of forgivable-loan recruiting bonuses amongst broker-dealers may be causing consumer harm (and a rising number of broker bankruptcies).

From there, we have a number of articles around practice management, including: what advisory firms should focus on if they're struggling with growth; how to better measure a firm's AUM and revenue over time to ensure the firm will know if/when it has a growth problem; how advisory firms are shifting from revenue-based compensation to team-based and firm-based compensation to promote a more team-oriented growth environment; and what owner-advisors should be thinking about to increase the valuation of the business if there's a plan to sell the firm in the coming decade.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of repetition and breaking the boredom routine: the first looks at how adopting deliberately repetitive habits is a key to helping us change our behaviors for the better (and to simply make it easier to do what we know we need to do, without being forced to spend so much time and energy thinking about it!); the second looks at how we as human beings tend to bond by sharing our stories... except when our stories get too repetitive that no one wants to hear them, though ironically acknowledging the repetitiveness of our stories can actually still build trust after all; and the last explores how to relieve the boredom that often comes with routines, not by ending the routine behavior itself but simply by recognizing the benefits of choosing to deliberately break the routine (or as the saying goes, "everything in moderation... including moderation!").

Enjoy the "light" reading!

How Business Owners Get Preferential Tax Rates With 199A QBI Deduction-Production Income

April 3, 2019 07:06 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Taxes

One of the most significant changes made by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was the creation of new IRC Section 199A, which provides small business owners with an up-to-20% deduction on the profits of their business. High income business owners have a number of complicated restrictions and/or “tests” that can reduce or eliminate that deduction, but for taxpayers with income below the start of their applicable phaseout range ($160,700 for single filers / $321,400 for joint filers) the deduction calculation is far more straightforward. Taxpayers “simply” receive a deduction equal to 20% of their (combined) qualified business income. Or, if lower, simply 20% of their taxable income (less capital gains and qualified dividends).

Notably, this potentially-lower 20%-of-taxable-income limit on the Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction means that small business owners need to have some level of non-QBI income, to absorb the various tax deductions (e.g., the standard deduction or itemized deductions) they claim on their personal return, or they may not get the “full” QBI deduction on their business income. And while some business owners do have substantial amounts of non-qualified-business-ordinary-income, enabling them to receive the 20% deduction on the full amount of their Qualified Business Income, other business owners’ incomes are completely (or, at least, substantially) comprised of only Qualified Business Income. In such situations, the business owner’s deductions effectively get applied against their Qualified Business Income, reducing their QBI deduction (to “just” 20% of taxable income after those deductions).

However, not all deductions claimed on the personal tax return create this QBI deduction “problem” for small business owners. Some above-the-line deductions, such as the deduction for SE tax, SEP IRA contribution, and self-employed health insurance reduce both qualified business income and taxable income. Other above-the-line deductions, such as the deductions for IRA contributions, HSA contributions, and student loan interest, along will below-the-line deductions (either itemized deductions or the standard deduction) reduce only taxable income, potential limiting what could be a higher QBI deduction to 20% of taxable income.

Thankfully, though, this complication also presents taxpayers with a significant tax planning opportunity. By accelerating income, a portion of the tax liability that would normally be attributable to the increased income can be covered by a corresponding increase in the taxpayer’s 199A QBI deduction. And ultimately, this can lead to the “Deduction-Production” income being taxed at “just” 80% of the otherwise-applicable tax rate. And this Deduction-Production income strategy can continue to produce favorable results until a taxpayer’s total ordinary income, which is not qualified business income, equals the total of their deductions that reduce taxable income, but not qualified business income.

Of all of the ways in which a taxpayer can accelerate their income and engage in 199A QBI Deduction-Production, the “best” way will most likely be via Roth conversions. Not only do such conversions allow the business owner to reap the benefits of the “discounted” (via Deduction-Production) effective tax rate today, but they also help manage future taxes via continued tax-deferral and future tax-free distributions from the Roth account. Roth conversions are also easy to initiate and allow the business owner to precisely control the amount of income generated.

For those business owners who would benefit from Deduction-Production income, but who cannot make Roth IRA conversions, other options include earning additional W-2 wages, transitioning qualified dividend-producing investments to investments that generate ordinary income, taking distributions from non-qualified annuities, and simply timing deductions so that they occur in other years.

Of course, generating Deduction-Production income only works when the addition of more taxable income would increase the business owner’s 199A deduction. For high-income (taxable income of more than $160,700 for single filers, and more than $321,400 for joint filers for 2019) owners of specified service trade or businesses (SSTBs), additional income may reduce the current QBI deduction further, even if it’s currently constrained by the taxable income limitation, making Deduction-Production income a moot point. The same issue may also present itself to high-income owners of non-SSTBs if their QBI deduction is impacted by the wage or wage-and-depreciable-property tests.

In the end, though, the important thing to remember is that tax planning is first and foremost about trying to pay taxes at the lowest possible rate… something that is a lot easier to do when 20% of your income is effectively tax-free thanks to a deduction that increases in tandem with your income. Thus, for business owners who have their QBI deductions restricted by the taxable income limitation, accelerating “Deduction Production” income must be given adequate and careful consideration.

#FASuccess Ep 118: Passion Prospecting To Small Business Owners Through A Niche With Bass Fishermen, with Jared Reynolds

April 2, 2019 07:04 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 118th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Jared Reynolds. Jared is a partner in Wilkerson & Reynolds, an advisory firm in Columbia, Missouri that oversees nearly $160 million in assets and/or management, with a heavy focus in working with small business owners and their 401(k) plans.

What's unique about Jared, though, is the way that he's grown his business with small business owners by forming a niche in working with bass fishermen, for whom he organizes fishing and hunting trip expeditions, and gets an opportunity to spend hours or even days at a time in close proximity with small business owners to form relationship and then, eventually, share a little bit more about what he does for his clients.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Jared formed his niche with bass fishermen, in what started out as a family connection through his father into the bass fishing community. And then, morphed into attending bass fishing trade shows and tournaments. And then, developing an expertise in working with bass fishing tournament winners on tax strategies for their prize winnings and how to negotiate their endorsement deals and TV contracts.

And, ultimately, evolved beyond just working with competitive bass fishing professionals and into those who engage in bass fishing as a luxury sport, many of whom are also very successful small business owners. We also talk about how, exactly, Jared was able to turn his hobby and passion into an actual prospecting activity. The way he organizes fishing and hunting trips with prospects is an opportunity to form new relationships.

While he has a firm policy of not branding his advisory firm as part of the expeditions, to downplay his own background as a financial advisor, and allow the conversation of how he can help prospective small business owners to occur more organically. How he's found that more extreme marketing activities actually tend to develop the best prospects. And his advice on how any advisor can turn their own hobby into a passion prospecting strategy to attract their own clients.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Jared talks about the hockey stick of growth that emerges as you focus into a niche. How it often takes three years to really get established with a specialty, but the way it compounds exponentially further after 10 or more years, to the point that Jared's biggest regret is that he didn't focus even earlier on just trying to do business with, as he puts it, his people, the fishermen and hunters that he enjoys working with the most anyways.

The Latest In Financial Advisor #FinTech (April 2019)

April 1, 2019 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the April 2019 issue of the Latest News in Financial Advisor #FinTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors and wealth management!

This month's edition kicks off with the blockbuster deal of the decade in advisor technology: Envestnet acquiring MoneyGuidePro for a whopping half a billion dollars, or nearly 10X its forward revenues… though ultimately, the purchase may not merely be a testament to Envestnet’s expectations for growing MoneyGuidePro’s software revenue, but the potential to link its new Insurance Exchange to MGP as a means to facilitate the distribution of fee-based insurance and annuity products to independent advisors through the software as well.

From there, the latest highlights also include a number of interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

Schwab adds a new “Premium” option to its Intelligent Portfolios robo-advisor, that will offer human CFP professionals providing personal financial planning… not for a traditional AUM fee, but a financial planning monthly subscription fee instead.
AdvicePay announces half a dozen new partnerships with broker-dealers and signs 17,000 advisors under Enterprise contracts as fee-for-service financial planning models expand deeper into the RIA and hybrid broker-dealer communities as well.
Hidden Levers signs a 7-figure deal with Focus Financial in a pivot from portfolio stress testing software into a business intelligence platform that can stress test the revenue and profits of an entire advisory firm (or an aggregated collection of them).
Economic Laurence Kotlikoff rebuilds his popular-with-consumers financial planning software platform ESPlanner into a new web-based solution dubbed MaxiFi Planner and rolls out a financial advisor version for “just” $499/year.

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including the winners of the recent TD Ameritrade Innovation Quest FinTech Competition, the opening of submission for the latest (4^th Annual) XY Planning Network FinTech Competition, a recap of the recent ScratchWorks FinTech competition at the Barron's Independent Advisor Summit, and the arrival of Harbor Plan, a new player in the world of digital marketing automation for financial advisors with a unique tool specifically to help advisors send timely follow-up messages to prospects without allowing any to accidentally slip through the cracks while servicing their existing clients as well.

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular new “Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map” as well!

I hope you're continuing to find this new column on financial advisor technology to be helpful! Please share your comments at the end and let me know what you think!

*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Mar 30-31)

March 29, 2019 02:53 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 news that Charles Schwab is launching a new financial-planning-for-a-monthly-subscription-fee solution as a new "Premium" version of its Schwab Intelligent Portfolios solution, providing full access to a CFP professional for ongoing financial planning advice, and accelerating consumer awareness of the new and increasingly popular financial advisor business model (particularly for 'next generation' clients who are willing to pay for financial advice but don't have investment accounts large enough to merit a financially viable AUM relationship).

Also in the news this week was an announcement that FINRA is considering whether to modify or even just consolidate its suitability rule once Regulation Best Interest comes out, noting the similarity and overlap between the two... and ironically showing, by FINRA's willingness to consolidate the suitability rule into Regulation Best Interest, that Reg BI apparently really isn't a material improvement or change to broker-dealer standards in the first place (or it would be deemed 'too disruptive' to the industry to even try to consolidate the standards!).

From there, we have a number of articles around practice management, and specifically how to attract and retain top talent, including one article looking at the rise of "student loan repayment" as a popular new employee benefits to attract young talent, a second highlighting that more flexible paid time off (or flex time in general) is also an increasingly popular perk, best practices in how to structure interviews for prospective hires, and a fascinating look at how digital-media-savvy Ritholtz Wealth Management has been able to leverage its blog and social media presence to attract good advisors to the firm.

There are also several investment-related articles, from a look at the potential recessionary implications of the recent inversion of the yield curve (from the researcher who first pioneered the study showing how inverted yield curves can foreshadow recessions), to a new BlackRock study suggesting that there might not actually be an "illiquidity premium" after all (but that there is a premium for complexity and more challenging due diligence and governance in private markets that also often happen to be illiquid), and a discussion of how structured products are once again making a resurgence, not to the levels they peaked at in 2007, but driven this time not only by investors who may be nervous about markets and want more downside protection, but also a number of new technology platforms that are trying to make it easier for advisors to shop more efficiently for structure note solutions in the first place.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of how to be more efficient and effective when running meetings: the first looks at some of the scientific research studies on how to run better meetings (along with a study that shows the leader of the meeting is not actually very good at judging the quality of their own meeting!); the second provides some tips about how to carve out or break up meetings that may have gotten "too big" (as invitee lists tend to expand over time!); and the third provides a series of detailed tips on how to not just make meetings more efficient, but to literally make them more effective, from how the meeting itself is run to be inclusive of all participants, to more carefully considering the invitee-list to the meeting, and simply being especially cognizant of why the meeting is being called, its ultimate purpose, and whether it really needs to happen in the first place (or if another medium, from email to company intranet, would be better to accomplish the same meeting goal).

Enjoy the "light" reading!