Kitces.com - Advancing Knowledge in Financial Planning

#FASuccess Ep 197: Starting Over After A Non-Compete To (Re-)Build The Advisory Business You Really Want, With Ashby Daniels

October 6, 2020 07:08 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 197th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Ashby Daniels. Ashby is a financial advisor with Shorebridge Wealth Management, a hybrid advisory firm based in Pittsburgh, where he personally oversees 38 million in assets under management for 43 retired clients.

What's unique about Ashby though is the way he launched his current practice, breaking away from a major broker-dealer after nearly 10 years in the business in the face of a non-compete and non-solicit agreement, and the path that he built for himself at Shorebridge to give himself enough runway to make the transition without putting his family's financial situation at risk.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Ashby negotiated and structured his unique compensation agreement with Shorebridge to handle the first two years of relaunching from scratch. How he navigated the non-compete and non-solicit agreement to eventually win back at least a subset of his prior clients, how the transition and leaving most of his clients behind allowed Ashby to begin to focus on bringing in the right clients, and the way his business has evolved deeper and deeper into a niche with retirees in the years since.

We also talk about how Ashby has built his current marketing funnel through blogging or what he calls "the introvert’s dream to marketing", the way he initially started his blog anonymously just to see if he could do it and build a readership, how Ashby's blog eventually helped his former clients find their way back to him, why blogging can theoretically attract clients from anywhere in the country, but Ashby is using it specifically to grow his local clientele online. And the reason Ashby has now started launching a series of short paperback books for his retiree niche leveraging his blog articles.

And be sure to listen to the end, where Ashby shares how he manages his own time as an independent advisor. The way he splits his time for mornings to work in the business, conduct meetings with clients, and handle internal business tasks, and the afternoons to work on the business, including blogging and his other marketing efforts. How the book "Essentialism" changed Ashby's own personal time management process, the daily productivity sheet that he now uses for himself to ensure he always spends at least some time on tasks that will "move the needle" for the business, and how Ashby implemented a meeting surge approach to further focus his time and create more flexibility for the rest of the year to grow the business.

So whether you’re interested in learning about how Ashby transitioned from a broker-dealer despite a non-compete and non-solicit, how he finds inspiration for his blog, or why his ideal client changed from government employees to retirees, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

The Latest In Financial #AdvisorTech (October 2020)

October 5, 2020 07:02 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the October 2020 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – 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!

This month's edition continues with new co-author (and AdvisorTech guru) Craig Iskowitz, along with guest contributor Kyle Van Pelt, and kicks off with the launch of eMoney Advisor’s next-generation planning tool “Project Avocado”… which as it turns out, has been pivoted into an app now dubbed “Incentive” to provide financial wellness in the 401(k) channel instead, a boon to advisors looking to compete with the growth of 401(k) providers increasingly offering financial advice to 401(k) participants (before independent advisors ever have a chance at capturing the future IRA rollover), but also a potential competitor as Fidelity signals it may begin to use eMoney’s Incentive itself as a ‘direct-to-consumer’ solution with its own 401(k) plan participants to provide them in-house Fidelity advice before they ever retire out of a Fidelity 401(k) plan to an independent advisor.

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

Facet Wealth follows the path of LearnVest as it raises a $25M Series B to pivot into the employee financial wellness channel
NextCapital raises a $30M Series D as it expands its white-labeled digital advice solution for 401(k) providers
Mega-RIA Wealth Enhancement Group grows impatient with financial planning software and builds its own “Next Best Action” solution
Pershing expands its biometric multi-factor authentication to desktop NetX360 as a passwordless future looms large

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including Envestnet’s Tamarac launching an integration with Flourish as off-platform cash becomes a hot asset class, Edward Jones builds a new matchmaking tool for consumers to differentiate amongst a sea of (its own) similar advisors, Fidelity expands its Integration XChange API capabilities as even single-custodial advisors are increasingly seeking multi-technology-vendors, YCharts expands into SMA analytics, and Executor Assist launches as a somewhat ‘low-tech’ way to compete with other high-tech estate planning tools for financial advisors.

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

I hope you're continuing to find this 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 (October 3-4)

October 2, 2020 02:49 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the announcement that the CFP Board is 'updating and modernizing' its governance structure as an organization, including a revision to its Board terms, and more significantly, an expansion of the Board's role in both enterprise risk management (after the CFP Board's recent PR woes with Wall Street Journal exposes) and enforcement of the new Code and Standards (a further signal the CFP Board intends to further its enforcement efforts of its new standards in the years to come, and perhaps finally begin to clean up its own bad apples?).

Also in the news this week is the announcement that the "Schwabitrade" merger has received its final clearance (from the Federal Reserve, given the sheer size of its affiliated-bank business) with the deal anticipated to close in the coming week (but will still take until as late as 2023 to actually complete the merger integration process), and the revelation that, while most RIAs have been in "wait-and-see" mode about the outcome of the merger, that mega-RIA Edelman Financial has already begun an RFP process to solicit competing RIA custodians to bid for its $30B AUM business (for which the rumored leading contender is lesser-known-but-more-tech-savvy Apex Clearing).

From there, we have several articles on recent regulatory issues for advisors, including the rise of "credential stuffing" where hackers don't try to brute force their way through advisors' passwords but instead find already-exposed passwords from other website hacks and try to use them on the advisor's business websites (which makes it all the more important to regularly change passwords, use different passwords for different websites, and/or enable multi-factor authentication so a compromised password alone is no longer enough for hackers to get through), how the rise of fee-based annuities and advisors extracting AUM fees to manage them may now be permitted by the IRS for tax purposes but could still require an additional (and often not obtained) insurance consultant's license from the state, and why advisors who are managing clients' 529 college savings accounts need to be certain to check the right boxes (literally, on Form ADV) but in most cases still should not be claiming their clients' 529 plans as part of their "Assets Under Management" for regulatory reporting purposes.

We've also included a number of articles on the theme of how advisory firms name and market themselves, including a small study that analyzed how often RIAs today are still marketing with the "fiduciary" label now that Regulation Best Interest has obscured the difference between fiduciary RIAs and broker-dealers (answer: less than 1/3rd of RIAs studied even note that they're fiduciaries on their homepage now), a second that looks at how advisory firms are overwhelmingly using 'generic' names (e.g., "Capital Management", "Wealth Management", "Partners", etc.) and may be amplifying their differentiation challenges, and some tips for advisory firms that are looking to establish a new firm name (either for the first time or as a name change) about what to consider.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of financial planning's pathway to finally becoming a bona fide recognized profession: the first explores what are the 'traditional' hallmarks of a distinct profession; the second examines whether the industry currently has the right regulatory and oversight structure to become a profession; and the last explores the CFP Board's recent efforts to begin developing a "roadmap to profession" for financial planning, and why it may still take a long time to truly achieve recognized "profession" status (and what we collectively must do to get there!).

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

The Biden Tax Plan: Proposed Changes And Year-End Planning Opportunities

September 30, 2020 07:02 am 34 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

When President Donald Trump oversaw the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in 2017, substantive tax reforms were made with the intention of promoting economic growth that affected corporations, small businesses, and individuals. With the upcoming election in November, though, former Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has proposed a tax plan that challenges several aspects of the current system in an effort to increase Federal tax revenues and address income/wealth inequality.

One of the key features of Joe Biden’s proposed plan is for ordinary income brackets to be adjusted for individuals with annual incomes over $400,000 (although whether this threshold applies to individuals or joint filers remains unclear), increasing the top tax bracket to the pre-TCJA rate of 39.6%. The income brackets for those with annual income levels under $400,000 will remain unaffected.

Biden’s plan also includes the elimination of the Qualified Business Income (QBI) tax deduction for pass-through business owners (e.g., partnerships, LLCs, S corporations, and sole proprietors) whose individual annual income is $400,000 or more, in effect, potentially increasing the tax bracket for high earners by 10% (from 29.6% for those eligible for the QBI deduction to the proposed highest rate of 39.6%). The plan would also cap the value of the rate at which itemized deductions can be taken to 28%, which affects those in the tax brackets above 28%, as their rate to determine itemized deductions would be reduced from their income tax bracket.

Another feature of Biden’s tax plan is a flat retirement contribution credit, as determined by a specific percentage (currently anticipated to be 26%) of the contribution amount to replace deductions of those retirement account contributions. This would, in effect, lower the tax burden for taxpayers in tax brackets under the proposed set rate (incentivizing taxpayers in lower tax brackets to contribute to tax-deferred retirement accounts), while increasing it for taxpayers in brackets over the proposed rate. Financial advisors who want to prepare for an expected Biden victory might consider accelerating income and deductions into 2020 for high-income earners because, for this group, income tax rates may be higher and deductions not as favorable if the passage of Biden’s tax plan does come to fruition. Accordingly, year-end Roth conversions may be a good strategy for some high-income earners to forgo the 26% credit in the present for the benefit of tax-free distributions in the future.

Enhancements to personal income tax credits made by the proposal include a higher Child Tax Credit (increased from $2,000 for children under 17 to $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for all other children under 17), Child and Dependent Care Credit (from $3,000 to $8,000 for one child, and from $6,000 to $16,000 for two or more). The First-time Homebuyer Credit would be reintroduced as a refundable and advanceable credit of up to $15,000, and a brand-new proposed Caregiver Credit would provide $5,000 for informal long-term caregivers.

Long-term capital gains and qualified dividend tax rates would increase to ordinary income tax rates for income over $1 million under the proposed Biden plan (with the 3.8% surtax on net investment income to remain in place), and 1031 Exchanges would be eliminated for taxpayers with annual income over $400,000. Some strategies to mitigate the impact of these proposed changes would be to target lower annual capital gains realized, use municipal bonds for their (largely) tax-free character, reduce investments in the portfolio that produce dividends, take advantage of the tax deferral of investment-only variable annuities (for accredited investors, Private Placement annuities can also be a useful option), and use installment sales to regulate annual income levels, keeping them under $1 million as much as possible.

Additionally, Biden’s tax plan proposes to eliminate the step-up in basis rules that currently apply to inherited assets (that are not considered Income In Respect of a Decedent), which would impact both higher- and lower-earners potentially facing a significant and problematic tax bill on inherited assets. Thus, life insurance could see renewed potential as a tool to provide liquidity and/or mitigate the burden of a high tax liability resulting from the inheritance. Alternately, a more structured sale or gifting strategy throughout the owner’s lifetime can be a good way to mitigate taxes for the beneficiary should Biden’s plan pass.

A final key feature of the proposed tax plan would be a 50% reduction of the exclusion amount for estate and gift taxes, from $11.58 million to the pre-TCJA amount of $5.79 million. To be cautious, advisors may want to encourage their clients to use as much of their exemption in 2020 in case Biden is elected to office and his tax plan is approved. Other strategies that can be considered to deal with a smaller exemption in the long-term can potentially include the use of Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), Charitable Lead Annuity Trusts (CLATs), and sales to Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts (IDGTs).

Ultimately, the key point is that even though there is much that can be planned for at this stage prior to the election – regardless of who wins the race – the most important thing for advisors to do in the present moment is to educate themselves (and their clients) about the impact that each candidate’s position will have on them, and to help them plan accordingly as election results come in!

#FASuccess Ep 196: Partnering With A Center Of Influence To Rapidly Grow In A Focused Niche, With Daniel Hannoush

September 29, 2020 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 196th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Daniel Hannoush. Daniel is the co-founder of One & Done Financial, a virtual independent RIA that oversees nearly 70 million of assets under management for almost 350 client households. What's unique about Daniel though, is his firm's niche focus on Chick-fil-A operators, and how by partnering with a key center of influence in the Chick-fil-A community, Daniel's firm has been able to consistently add five to ten new clients per month to get them to those 350 client households in barely four years since launching.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Daniel's path to the Chick-fil-A niche, how he started out, like so many advisors, as a generalist serving anyone and everyone he could meet, the way a fateful introduction by a recruiter to another advisor seeking to build a business with similar values led to Daniel meeting his business partner, the way they formed an advisory firm partnership with the delineation of roles where Daniel would focus on building the business internally, while his partner used his existing Chick-fil-A relationships to grow the clientele, and why when you find traction in a niche, it's so crucial to take the time to build the internal systems and processes, because as Daniel puts it, if your visibility exceeds your ability, it destroys your credibility.

We also talk about how Daniel's firm is actually building in the Chick-fil-A niche, how they separate out the advice services that One & Done provides from the home office support that Chick-fil-A itself gives its franchise operators, the unique modular approach to financial planning their firm takes, why services are split into monthly financial planning fees, investment management for standalone portfolios, and a separate retirement planning service offering with its own pricing structure, and how Chick-fil-A's robust business model and their own franchise vetting process effectively ensures that virtually every Chick-fil-A operator will be a good fit for Daniel's advisory firm.

And be sure to listen to the end, where Daniel shares why they've decided to build their fast-growing advisory firm entirely virtually, the reason they decided to invest heavily into Salesforce as their CRM system, and the power of not being everything to everyone, and finding the one thing you can be the best at, and using that as the core to grow and scale your advisory business.

So whether you’re interested in learning about the journey that led Daniel to finding his Chick-fil-A niche, how his modular financial planning system works, or why he built a virtual firm, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.
Read More...

Better Advisor Marketing Without Relying On More Tactics Or More Rainmakers: Optimizing Like An Engineer With The ART Method

September 28, 2020 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Marketing

When it comes to marketing strategies for financial advisors who want to grow their firms, there are generally two commonly used approaches. Optimistic “glass-half-full” strategists often decide to invest in a(n ever-widening) variety of marketing tactics in the hopes of attracting more and more new clients, whereas more Pessimistic “glass-half-empty” strategists may often feel that suboptimal business development efforts hold them back from potential growth and will spend their marketing resources on hiring, training, and restructuring their teams to correct the problem with more and better rainmaker advisors. However, these approaches are not generally the most logical way to grow firms, as adding new marketing tactics can be expensive and doesn’t always equate to more clients, and relying on the efficacy of rainmaker advisors is risky (as finding and keeping great rainmaker talent is often very difficult).

In this guest post, Angie Herbers – Chief Executive and Senior Consultant at Herbers & Company, an independent management and growth consultancy for financial advisory firms – explains how a more efficient approach to marketing for growth is to view the process as an “Engineer”, where the firm focuses on one marketing tool proven to work in the past, hones that specific tactic, and then maintains and continuously optimizes the process that supports that tactic over the long run. For Engineer strategists, the advisor marketing process can be broken down into three “ART” phases: Audit, Run, and Tune.

In the Audit phase, advisors and their firms evaluate their current inventory of marketing tools and identify the characteristics of the firm’s typical (and hopefully ideal) client – in a photographic ‘client picture board’. Pictures are important to illustrate the advisor’s ideal client, because the exercise can only be successful if the advisor has a deep enough understanding of their clientele to find the ‘right’ pictures to begin with. Thus, the Audit stage is instrumental in helping advisors to picture their clients clearly, which in turn clarifies how best to connect and speak to those prospects and turn them into the new clients they most want to attract.

In the Run phase, the firm identifies one marketing tactic that will serve to connect (and to keep connecting) with the target client identified and ‘pictured’ in the Audit phase. The focus is on establishing a meaningful rapport with the particular type of target prospects pursuing one specific channel where the firm can best reach out to their audience (e.g., podcasting on a topic that the firm’s clients would be particularly interested in). Which, notably, means that this is not the stage to update the firm’s design elements such as the website or logo. Instead, the important point in the Run phase is simply to focus on one strategy, and prepare to refine that one strategy to be even better… not to layer multiple marketing tactics that spread the firm’s attention too thinly to Tune any one in particular.

In turn, in the Tune phase, advisors review their now-primary marketing strategy, and assess what is working (and what isn’t) by gathering key data to make relevant adjustments along the way. Specifically, lead flow data measuring how many people (who weren’t referred by an existing client) actually contacted the firm to schedule an appointment, is the key statistic that can give insight about how effective the marketing strategy is at connecting with its target audience. Tuning a strategy is often simply a matter of expanding the scope of expertise offered through the strategy (e.g., for a strategy that relies on podcasting, perhaps the scope of topics can include stock options instead of just estate planning), as well as improving how the strategy connects to its target people in a sustainable and consistent manner.

Ultimately, the key point is that advisors who want to grow their firms through marketing efforts don’t need to invest in an array of marketing tactics, nor do they need to restructure their teams to rely on a rainmaker to do it for them. Rather, the more efficient way to successfully market an advisory firm is to focus on the ART of the marketing process – Auditing the firm’s existing marketing efforts to identify and hone one effective tactic to use, Running the marketing strategy identified over a long period of time, and continually Tuning the process to become a successful and sustainable strategy. Going deeper into one specific, carefully chosen strategy, and optimizing it, before choosing to add new marketing tactics into the mix, will likely prove to be a much more effective and efficient process in growing the advisor’s firm… and will serve to connect more meaningfully with its clients!