Nerd's Eye View blog

How Mindset Trumps Best Practices For Financial Advisor Success

November 27, 2017 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

Financial advisors looking to improve their businesses have a wide range of “Best Practices” research to tap for new ideas, from industry benchmarking studies to specialized white papers. And of course, this Nerd’s Eye View blog. For those seeking methods to run their advisory business more efficiently and profitably, there are a lot of relatively simple tactics to try.

In fact, as highlighted in this guest post from Stephanie Bogan and Matthew Jarvis, arguably the greatest challenge in improving a financial advisor’s business is not actually figuring out the Best Practices methods at all… and instead is almost entirely about changing the mindset of the advisory firm owner. Because most business improvements to an advisory firm are fairly straightforward – from standardizing service offerings, to eliminating fee schedule exceptions. The blocking point is in our heads. Literally.

Because as Bogan and Jarvis discuss, the real reason that most advisors struggle to take their businesses to the next level is the limiting beliefs that we impose on ourselves as financial advisors and business owners. The idea that certain aspects of the business “must” be done a certain way, or the business will fail. When in reality, it’s simply that we don’t want to go through the awkwardness of change and the discomfort of feeling threatened and worried that a client might push back… even though at worst, making changes will probably just threaten to cause a few clients to leave (and usually it’s those clients who weren’t even the best fit in the first place!).

In other words, the key to financial advisor success isn’t really about implementing the right methods – the business tactics and best practices – but more about having the right mindset that makes it easier to implement those methods in the first place. Because once as advisors we have clarity and focus in the business, a confidence in our own worth and the value we provide, a focus on leveraging our time and relationships, and an abundance mentality that the money and business success will come by doing the right things… it becomes remarkably easy to make the changes necessary for that success to actually happen!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (November 25-26)

November 24, 2017 01:01 pm 7 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a look at the latest part of the Senate Republican tax plan generating buzz amongst advisors… that all investment sales may be required to use FIFO treatment in the future, eliminating the specific lot identification method, which would substantially curtail tax loss harvesting strategies.

Also in the recent news is the announcement that the military is overhauling its traditional 20-or-nothing pension system to a slightly scaled down version of the pension combined with government involuntary plus matching contributions to the Thrift Savings Plan (and a choice for enlisted military with less than 12 years of experience about whether they want to stay in the old system or switch to the new one). And there’s also a timely article on providing ideas for client holiday gifts, just in time for Black Friday sales!

From there, we have several articles about pricing and marketing advisory services, from a look at how to properly set and then communicate your fees, to an outsider’s perspective on how financial planners should be pricing their services (or rather, offering a menu of variously-priced services), and a good reminder about how it’s impossible to effectively market the value of your services until you get a clear understanding of your internal business strategy on how you plan to create (and differentiate) your value to your intended target market.

We also have a few practice management articles, including: how a growing number of advisory firms are shifting from lifestyle practices to enduring businesses (which provides more upside value potential to sell the business, but introduces substantial complexity along the way); a good primer on how a valuation expert looks at the real issues involved in trying to determine an advisory firm’s value; and a look at what today’s RIAs may be missing in how the DoL fiduciary rule will apply to them (including during the current “transition BICE” period until the full rule takes effect in July of 2019).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of how the advice industry, and the needs to be successful in the industry, are changing: the first looks at the challenges in attracting women into the financial planning profession, noting that the real challenge may not be the concern about whether there’s “too much math” or not, but that too many financial planning jobs are still overly sales-oriented, too inflexible, and too unwilling to given upwardly mobile Millennials the autonomy they crave; the second explores the emerging field of financial therapy, and how just as financial planners have been blurring the line between advice and product sales, so too is financial therapy blurring the line between advice and making (and treating) mental health diagnoses; and the last notes that as more advisors master the technical skills in financial planning, it’s the communication skills that are increasingly important, especially in a world where money remains such a taboo subject, which means perhaps it’s time to rename the “soft skills” to something more commensurate with the gravitas they are taking on in the path to being a successful financial planner!

Enjoy the "light" reading!

The Wealth-Limiting Risks Of Diversifying Too Soon – Redwoods, Bushes, and Pear Trees

November 22, 2017 07:01 am 30 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

Good diversification is a staple of financial planning advice, though the principle long pre-dates financial planners. From the aphorism “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, to Talmudic texts from 3,000 years ago directing people to split their wealth evenly between cash, real estate, and business, the virtue of limiting exposure to risk from diversification is an “accepted truth”.

Except the reality is that, when you look to those who achieve the greatest wealth or have the greatest impact, virtually none of them ever diversify… or at least, not throughout most of their years. After all, if Bill Gates had “just” diversified into the S&P 500 after Microsoft IPO’ed, he’d have barely 1/40^th of the wealth he does today. In fact, most of those on the list of the richest billionaires are people in their 60s, 70s, or 80s, who have held a concentrated interest in their businesses for nearly their entire lives. Like the redwood tree, they waited a very, very long time before branching out… and as a result, were able to grow the tallest.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that diversification is always bad. Most “trees” are actually short bushes and shrubs, that grow just a few feet tall, but are still able to broaden their shoots and leaves enough to grow healthy. In the investing context, it’s the equivalent of a person who diligently saves and invests in a portfolio for decades, and retires with “comfortable wealth”.

Still, it’s important to recognize that diversification isn’t literally always the winning strategy, and for those who are young and have a long time horizon, arguably not even a necessary one. In fact, the weakest tree is the Bradford Pear – known for growing a V-shaped trunk, effectively diversifying itself from the start… in a manner that virtually ensures the tree will eventually either collapse under its own weight, or succumb to external forces.

For those who have decided they have “enough”, the satisficing strategy of the bush may be just fine. But for those who decidedly want to generate more wealth or have more impact, perhaps the redwood strategy is underrated after all? In fact, the highest-risk losing strategy may actually be the pear tree strategy of trying to have it both ways at once!

#FASuccess Ep 047: Pursuing An Operations Career Path In An Advisory Firm With HIFON Study Group Support With Shaun Kapusinski

November 21, 2017 07:01 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 47th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest today is Shaun Kapusinski. Shaun is the Director of Operations for Sequoia Financial Group, a hybrid RIA based in Akron, Ohio, that manages more than $3.7 billion across private client and institutional divisions spanning four office locations.

What's unique about Shaun, though, is that while he started out in the industry over 15 years ago like many advisors of the time – as a "financial advisor" selling life insurance for a career agent life insurance company – he made a shift early in his career to the operations side of the business, and has since been able to grow his career by following an Operations career track inside of an advisory firm, rather than the more traditional paraplanner, then associate advisor, then lead advisor career track.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the organizational structure of this mega advisory firm, how they split apart a division of "Shared Services" including centralized paraplanners, a centralized investment team, and centralized operations (all supporting advisors with local client service associates in multiple locations), the core technology stack of Tamarac, eMoney, and Microsoft Dynamics that Sequoia uses to run the business, and why the firm is looking to make a shift from Dynamics to Salesforce Financial Services Cloud for the next stage of growth.

We also talk about Shaun's own fascinating career track, from starting out as a life insurance agent, transitioning to an operations role early in his career, why he believes that getting an MBA is even more valuable for those in an Operations role at an advisory firm than getting the degree as a financial advisor, and Shaun's perspective on why "growth" is such an imperative for advisory firms – because it's the growth that creates the career track opportunities in operations in the first place!

And be certain to listen to the end, where Shaun talks about the study group he created, called HIFON – short for High Impact Financial Operations Network – which gathers together operations team members from advisory firms across the country. And in recent years, HIFON has grown to the point that it's no longer just a study group, but an emerging membership group for the operations staff of advisory firms, with not only study group opportunities, but also private discussion forums, private vendor webinars, and even shared data about what technology various advisory firms are using!

So whether you are trying to figure out how to grow the operations side of your business, interested in making a transition to operations yourself, or simply interested in learning about the resources such as HIFON that are available for operations team members, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

Giving Referral Thank-You Gifts That Actually Make Someone Happier

November 20, 2017 07:01 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

Receiving a new client referral has a substantial value for a financial advisor – so much that advisors often provide “thank-you” gifts, either as a simple expression of gratitude, or even as a means to encourage more referrals. Of course, regulators want to be certain that advisors don’t inappropriately “buy” prospective client referrals – in a conflicted or undisclosed manner – and consequently FINRA Rule 3220 limits client gifts to just $100 per year, and the SEC similarly expects RIAs to establish their own gift-giving (and gift-limiting) policies. Nonetheless, the fact remains that referral “thank-you” gifts are relatively common.

Except often the biggest challenge of giving a good referral thank-you gift is simply picking the “right” gift – something that is commensurate with the value of a referral (not too big nor too small), is appropriately personalized and relevant to the recipient, and will likely be appreciated and well-received by the referrer. Which for some advisors, is so stressful that it’s actually easier to give nothing at all – beyond perhaps a simple verbal statement of “thanks” – than risk giving the “wrong” gift.

Yet recent research on happiness suggests that the best thank-you gifts might not actually be giving a “thing” at all, but instead gifting an experience, or giving someone an opportunity to themselves spend on others. And in the modern digital age, a growing number of online platforms make this possible – from online experience-buying sites like Excitations and Xperience Days, to donation sites like DonorsChoose to help teachers fund classroom projects, or even TisBest, which simply sells “charitable gift cards” that the recipient can then redeem as a donation to any one of 300+ charities.

The virtue of such services is that ultimately, it puts power in the hands of the recipient to select the final gift – whether an experience, or a donation to someone else – which helps to reduce the risk of making a poorly-matched gift. But in the end, the true value of gifting experiences or the gifting the opportunity to spend on others is that it increases the likelihood that the recipient will actually feel happier after receiving the gift… which is perhaps the most powerful way to express gratitude for a referral.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (November 18-19)

November 17, 2017 02:55 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 the CFP Board has decided to issue a second draft of its proposed changes to the CFP Standards of Conduct, which is expected to be released in mid-December with a comment period running in January of 2018. Also in the news this week was a new report from PIABA that points out 5 out of the 13 "public" members of FINRA's Board of Governors (who are supposed to represent consumers and have no ties to the industry) actually do have substantive ties to the financial services industry, which raises the significant conflict-of-interest concern that the majority of FINRA's Board is actually comprised of industry representatives (whereas it is supposed to maintain 13-out-of-24 board seats with non-industry public governors).

From there, we have a number of articles on mergers and acquisitions of advisory firms, including a discussion of some of the key factors that drive an advisory firm's valuation (beyond just its size and revenue), what an "earn-out" is and why it's often used as part of the terms of an advisory firm acquisition, and how the ongoing wave of industry consolidation is likely to progress in the coming years as a small subset of mega-firms begin to emerge.

We also have several investment-related articles, from a discussion of how the "p-hacking" phenomenon (of doing so many tests for statistical significance that, ironically, it becomes inevitable that there will be a large number of false positives) may have inappropriate spurred the "investment anomalies" research, a look at the rapid rise and fall of many ETFs (which also appears to be tied to how many ETFs are being launched on spurious anomalies research), and an explanation of how Research Affiliates formulates its own forward-looking return assumptions (important for both portfolio design, and determining reasonable investment assumptions to plug into financial planning software).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all focused around the theme of financial services industry change: the first raises the question of whether, as the Broker Protocol unravels, if it's time for the SEC to step in and formally codify a version of the Broker Protocol for all firms (broker-dealer and RIA) under Regulation S-P; the second looks at whether it's time to ditch life insurance illustrations and instead demand and require that insurance companies provide more detailed projections (which more clearly explain what are guaranteed costs and what are uncertain assumptions that could be manipulated); and the last suggests that perhaps the best way to fix the compliance woes at broker-dealers is for independent B/Ds to become more stringent on their hiring processes in the first place, vetting prospective brokers and weeding out the bad ones, so that they don't have to create compliance procedures that cater to such a low level "lowest common denominator" broker (to the detriment of all the rest of the good and honest advisors at the broker-dealer). Which is especially important in today's environment of broker-dealer consolidation, where large swaths of brokers – good and bad – may be getting absorbed into other broker-dealers in the coming years!

Enjoy the "light" reading!

The Latest Advisory Industry & FinTech Trends From #SchwabIMPACT

November 16, 2017 02:36 pm 3 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

While it is becoming increasingly clear that "robo-advisors" are not disrupting human financial advisors, the adoption of robo technology by financial advisors themselves is beginning to shift the competitive landscape... both amongst financial advisors themselves, and the technology vendors who serve them, as the very role and value proposition of financial advisors themselves begins to get re-defined.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, I'm interviewed by Neesha Hathi, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Schwab, at the Schwab IMPACT 2017 conference, about the latest advisory industry and FinTech trends – including the Robo 2.0 trend currently rolling through the industry, why Robo 2.0 will spur the rebirth of next generation financial planning software, and why it's the rise of better “small data”, rather than “big data”, that is likely to be most important to advisory firms in the coming decade.

One of the biggest trends rolling through the advisory industry right now is rise of “Robo 2.0”. Robo-Advisor 1.0 was all about companies like Betterment and Wealthfront, which made convenient and easy-to-use tech tools for opening accounts, investing those accounts, and managing them over time, and offered directly to consumers. However, we’ve learned that only a small subset of consumers actually want to buy these solutions directly, while there is a large base of financial advisors who want to use these same tools within their own businesses. As a result, Robo 2.0 tools are focused on facilitating the ability of financial advisors to quickly and easily open investment accounts, get the dollars actually transferred, invested, allocated in reasonable models, and model management tools to make it very easy to allocate and rebalance models along the way. The good news for advisors is that these trends drive efficiencies and lower business costs. But the challenge going forward is that now that all of this can be done with a click of a button, advisors need to find new ways to add value for their clients.

Looking forward a bit further, the biggest change we’re likely to see in the industry 5 to 10 years from now isn’t actually the adoption of Robo 2.0 tools, but instead, the rebirth of next-generation financial planning software as investment management receives less attention. As advisors are forced to focus on other areas of financial planning – everything from HSAs and healthcare conversations, to debt management issues, and cash flow planning more generally – advisors are going to need better financial planning software tools to help clients with these issues. Which presents a huge opportunity for those who are interested in building tools oriented towards financial planning, and advisors who want to focus more on financial planning... while for those still mostly focused on investments, the next decade is going to present more of a competitive business challenge.

Another trend that many have predicted will influence the next decade is artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data. But I’m very skeptical about the discussion of these technologies coming into advisory businesses. Because the reality is that so many of the challenges in what we do for clients are not big data problems. Instead, it’s small data – i.e., the uniqueness of every advisory firm and the clients they serve – where better insights are needed. So while there will certainly be some applications for large firms to leverage big data and bring insights on the entire industry, at the advisor level, the most exciting advancements are in the small data areas that are directly relevant to firm owners and their clients. For instance, automated business management and benchmarking data that makes it easier to track the components of business growth and performance, and tools that automate the many business management reporting processes that advisors are manually doing today.

The bottom line, though, is simply to recognize that we’re in the midst of some big FinTech trends within the advisory industry right now. So if you are an advisor who wants to stay relevant and continue to add value to your clients in the future (or a tech provider who wants to make the tools to help advisors do so!), it is important to understand how these trends will shape financial planning in the future!

Financial Planning Research Highlights From The 2017 Academy of Financial Services Annual Meeting

November 15, 2017 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

From October 1st through October 3rd, the Academy of Financial Services’ annual meeting was in Nashville, TN – partially overlapping with the FPA’s BE Annual Conference. The event brought together many academics and practitioners to share and discuss research, with the intention of increasing academic-practitioner engagement by holding two of the largest conferences for both researchers and practitioners in conjunction.

In this guest post, Derek Tharp – our Research Associate at Kitces.com, and a Ph.D. candidate in the financial planning program at Kansas State University – provides a recap of the 2017 Academy of Financial Services Annual Meeting, and highlights a few particularly studies with practical takeaways for financial planners.

The 2017 Academy of Financial Services (AFS) Annual Meeting showcased research from scholars at a wide range of institutions – with first author affiliation on paper and poster sessions representing roughly 40 institutions. As expected, the core financial planning programs had a strong presence, with scholars from just seven of those institutions serving as lead authors for more than 50% of all research presentations and poster sessions.

The AFS annual meeting featured research on a number of different topics. Some notable sessions for practitioners ranged from topics such as whether having resources from friends and family reduces a household's willingness to establish an emergency fund (not as much as you might expect!), how bull and bear markets impact the subjective assessments of portfolio risk, the links between certain types of personality traits and likelihood of financial stress, and quantifying the financial advisor's value when it comes to making efficient investment decisions (and how that value varies depending on the investor's existing capabilities in the first place).

Overall, holding the AFS Annual Conference and FPA BE Conference in conjunction appeared to be successful in creating greater engagement between practitioners and researchers (with some research presentations filling large rooms at standing room only capacity!). As both the AFS Annual Conference and CFP Board's Academic Research Colloquium strive to create more robust platforms for sharing and engaging in academic research, the future appears bright for financial planning researchers (and research that can really be used by financial planning practitioners)!

#FASuccess Ep 046: Training Financial Advisor Empathy And Communication Skills Through The CeFT Designation with Susan Bradley

November 14, 2017 07:01 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 46th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Susan Bradley. Susan is the founder of the Sudden Money Institute, which trains financial advisors in how to improve their empathy and communication skills when working with clients who experience so-called "Sudden Money" transitions – whether from a business liquidity event, a personal injury settlement, an inheritance, or the settlement proceeds of a divorce. Because as Susan puts it: "When life changes, money changes. And when the money changes, life changes." Which means as advisors, we need the training in how to help clients through those change transitions - which Sudden Money Institute teaches through a designation program called the CeFT (short for Certified Financial Transitionist).

In this episode, we talk in depth about what it really means to help clients through these kinds of financial transitions, why it requires a unique skillset to help people through what is not only a big financial change but typically the major life transition that inevitably accompanies it, the "Purpose, Method, and Outcome" framework that Sudden Money Institute uses to have productive conversations with clients, why it's ineffective to help people in transition to plan for their goals (because they usually don't even know what's possible after a major life transition!), and why it's important to give clients a "decision-free zone" after a major transition before they actually implement any new financial planning strategies.

We also talk about why it is that helping clients through financial transitions really requires more specialized training, the reason that Susan decided to create a formal advisor designation specifically to train advisors in a better and more consistent process, why the CeFT is positioned as a "post-CFP" designation - as you need 5 years of client-facing experience, and an advanced technical designation like the CFP or CPA/PFS, to even qualify for the CeFT training - and what it really takes to complete the year-long training program.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Susan shares her vision of the future value proposition for financial planners, which is all about developing in two directions at once by pursuing post-CFP training, including the technical competency skills that are necessary to actually give the best financial advice, and the empathy and communication skills necessary to really listen to clients and get comfortable being their thinking partner and their guide (and NOT just "the expert" that tells them what to do to achieve their stated goals).

So whether you’ve been looking for better ways to assist clients through financial transitions, thinking about pursuing post-CFP training in communication and empathy skills, or are interested in the evolution of more behavior-change-oriented financial advisor value propositions in the future, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

Why Performance And Fulcrum Fees Are Banned For Most Financial Advisors

November 13, 2017 07:01 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

As financial advisors feel increasing pressure to differentiate themselves, a recently emerging trend for those who (actively) manage client portfolios is the idea of charging clients not an AUM fee that is a percentage of assets, but instead, a performance-based fee that is a percentage of upside (or outperformance of a benchmark index), where the advisor’s fee is forfeited if he/she fails to achieve the required threshold or hurdle rate. Such a compensation structure would compel active financial advisors to eschew closet indexing and really, truly, try to outperform their benchmarks – which can be a very compelling proposition to prospective clients.

However, the reality is that performance fees have a very troubled past. Because while a performance-based fee does incentivize the advisor to not be a closet indexer and own a substantially different portfolio than the benchmark, one of the “easiest” ways to do so is simply to take on more risk and amplify the volatility of the portfolio. After all, if the markets rise substantially – as they do on average – a high-volatility portfolio will often provide a substantial performance fee in a bull market. In when the inevitable bear market occurs, the “worst case” scenario for the advisor is simply a year of zero fees.

In fact, this “heads the advisor wins, tails the client loses” asymmetry of performance fees is why when Congress created the Investment Advisers Act for RIAs in 1940, it banned most financial advisors from charging performance-based fees at all to retail investors (and of course, brokers under a broker-dealer cannot charge performance fees because they are not serving as actual investment advisers in the first place!). It was only in 1970 that Congress partially relented and allow RIAs serving as investment managers to mutual funds to charge performance fees, and only then if it was a “fulcrum fee” where the advisor participates in both the upside for outperforming and at least some of the downside for underperformance. In turn, it wasn’t until 1985 that the SEC began to allow RIAs to charge performance fees in certain situations to retail clients, and even then the offering must be limited to “Qualified Clients” who meet one of three financial tests… either: a) $1M of assets under management with the RIA charging a performance fee; b) a $2.1M net worth (and thus are presumed to be financially experienced and “sophisticated” enough to understand the risks inherent in performance fees); or c) be an executive officer, director, trustee, or general partner of the RIA, or an employee who participates in the investment activities of the investment adviser.

In addition, it’s notable that research over the years on incentive fees in the context of mutual funds has failed to find any sign that incentive fees are actually associated with better risk-adjusted performance anyway. Instead, the research finds that – perhaps not surprisingly, given the problematic history of performance-based fees – mutual fund managers compensated by incentive fees tend to just generate higher returns by taking more risk, and then amplify their risk-taking activity further once they fall behind their benchmarks! Ironically, though, the researchers did find that mutual funds with incentive fees are more likely to attract client assets, suggesting that substantial consumer demand remains for paying investment managers via performance fees!

Nonetheless, the real-world operational challenges of executing what would be a more complex billing process, the revenue volatility that financial advisors introduce to their businesses (particularly if they use a fulcrum fee structure which means if the advisor underperforms, they really do take the risk of seeing their fees cut substantially), the limitations of only offering a Performance Fee structure to affluent Qualified Clients in the first place, and the conflicts of interest that must be managed, suggests that a widespread shift towards performance fees for RIAs is not likely in the near future… especially as many firms seek to shift their value propositions away from being centered around the investment portfolio and towards financial planning and wealth management instead! But for those RIAs who want to pursue charging performance fees on investment portfolios, it is an option… at least for their Qualified Clients who want to take the risk!