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Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Sep 30 – Oct 1)

September 29, 2017 02:55 pm 5 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a good recap of the Winners and Losers in President Trump's new Tax Reform proposal, which appears to be "good" news for those who don't itemize deductions, high-income individuals, and especially owners of pass-through businesses (including many financial advisors themselves!), but bad news for those who live in high-tax-rate states, those with large homes and mortgages, high-wage employees, and people with large medical (or more recently, natural disaster) deductions.

From there, we have several advisor technology articles, from this week's blockbuster deal announcement that Envestnet is acquiring FolioDynamix (to form a combined entity that will support nearly $2 trillion of advisory and nonadvisory TAMP assets), to new reviews of the wealth management technology platform AdvisorEngine and a new Medicare enrollment solution for financial advisors (and their clients) called i65, and a nice listing of software solution that financial advisors can use to help improve their digital marketing presence and connect with prospects online.

There are also several practice management and marketing articles this week, including: why offering a "free first appointment" is not necessarily a good way to approach prospects; how telling your personal story, including the tough times in your life, can help you connect with prospects; how to shift your business towards a niche and strategies to refine it further; and a look at some recent research that reveals a new factor driving which clients refer their advisors: the extent to which they feel knowledgeable about their own investments.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all about changing our own habits and mindset as financial advisors: the first explores how, if you really want to change and improve your habits, it's not just about making a commitment to do so, but actually trying to change your own self-identity and especially your environment to make it more conducive to the new habit; the second takes a challenging look at what it really means to be "open-minded" and the ideals to strive for (though they're difficult for anyone/everyone to achieve!); and the last is a fascinating look at how, despite the increasingly popular discussion of pursuing "work/life balance", that most people actually find their greatest moments of happiness when they are most deeply engaged, suggesting that perhaps the better prescription is not to be more balanced, but to be deliberately unbalanced and more focused, but with the internal self-awareness to recognize when it's time to hit the "pause" button or make a change.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Why Is it So Hard to Ask For Referrals As A Financial Advisor?

September 28, 2017 03:01 pm 8 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

Growing a client base and acquiring more ideal clients is a challenge all advisors face, regardless of how successful they currently are. And although almost everyone in the industry has heard that asking for referrals is an important way to grow a business, many advisors struggle with this. Which raises the question, as recently posed by Ron Carson at a recent keynote presentation: "Why don't more advisors ask for referrals? Are advisors afraid to ask for referrals because they’re not proud of their own services?”

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we talk about why it is so hard to ask for referrals as a financial advisor, and how the many barriers – including our pride (or lack thereof) in the company or products we represent, our confidence in our own value, or even shame about the industry we are in – can make it hard to ask for referrals.

Of course, when financial advisors get started, it isn't feasible to ask for referrals, because you don't have any clients yet to refer you; instead, the only choice is cold calling, "cold knocking" (walking the streets and knocking on the doors of small businesses), or some other cold prospecting strategy. In fact, arguably for newer advisors, the whole appeal of being able to ask for referrals to generate new business is the opportunity to get away from cold calling and other types of prospecting!

Yet the caveat is that it's difficult to ask for referrals, if you're not actually proud of your company and its products. Because if you know, deep down, that your solutions aren't really the best for your clients, you'll likely self-sabotage your own behavior - as I experienced myself when starting out as a life insurance agent, struggling to prospect and ask for referrals because I was embarrassed about the sales tactics my company was using at the time!

Of course, ultimately becoming a real financial advisor is not about getting paid for your company's products, but getting paid for your own advice, knowledge, and wisdom. But that still means it's hard to ask for referrals until you're actually confident in yourself, and your own knowledge. And here, too, many struggle, because if we don't actually know anything about financial planning, and we know that we don't, then we can't confidently convey our value. Which is why professional designations like the CFP marks are so helpful... because often it's only after completing a designation that many will really start to feel confident that they can bring value to the table, and ask for referrals.

Although even once advisors have expertise and can truly add value as a financial advisor, it can still be hard to have confidence to ask for referrals, when telling people "I'm a financial advisor" risks making you a social pariah because so many consumers have had bad prior experiences with advisors! That's the challenge of trying to do business in a low trust industry. When metrics like the Edelman Trust Barometer finds that fewer than 50% of all consumers trust financial services companies, it’s literally an odds-on bet that if you say “I’m a financial advisor” and ask for referrals, that the person’s first and immediate impression of you will be negative!

The bottom line, though, is just to recognize that there really are a lot of barriers that make it hard for us to ask for referrals, all of which are built around our own fears and discomfort in what we do, the value we provide, or the company/industry we represent. Our fears hold us back. And often our fears are quite well-founded. It really is uncomfortable asking for referrals when you’re not proud of the company and products you represent. Or you're not confident in your own value. Or you're ashamed of the industry you're in. So, if you find yourself at one of these blocking points, figure what do you have to do to grow past it - whether it's leaving your company, reinvesting in yourself and your education, or differentiating yourself from the rest of the industry - or you won't have the confidence you need to ask for referrals!

Risk Composure: The Real Predictor Of Who Can Stick To Their Investment Plan

September 27, 2017 07:01 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

Regulators around the world require financial advisors to assess their clients’ risk tolerance to determine if an investment is suitable for them before recommending it. For the obvious reason that taking more risk than one can tolerate will potentially lead to untenable losses. And even if the investment bounces back, an investor who loses more money than he/she can tolerate in the near term may sell in a panic at the market bottom, and miss out on that subsequent recovery.

Yet the reality is that many investors end up owning portfolios that are inconsistent with their risk tolerance, and it’s only in bear markets that they seem to “realize” the problem (which unfortunately leads to problem-selling). Which raises the question: why is it that investors don’t mind owning mis-aligned and overly risky portfolios until the moment of market decline?

The key is to recognize that investors do not always properly perceive the risks of their own investments. And it’s not until the investor’s perceived risk exceeds his/her risk tolerance that there’s a compulsion to make a (potentially ill-timed) investment change.

Yet the fact that investors may dissociate their perceptions of risk from the portfolio’s actual risk also means there’s a danger than the investor will misperceive the portfolio risk and want to sell (or buy more) even if the portfolio is appropriately aligned to his/her risk tolerance. In other words, it’s not enough to just ensure that the investors have portfolios consistent with their risk tolerance (and risk capacity); it’s also necessary to determine whether they’re properly perceiving the amount of risk they’re taking.

And as any experienced advisor has likely noticed, not all investors are equally good at understanding and properly perceiving the risks they’re taking. Some are quite good at perceiving risk and maintaining their composure through market ups and downs. But others have poor “risk composure”, and are highly prone to misperceiving risks (and thus tend to make frequently-ill-timed portfolio changes!).

Which means in the end, it’s necessary to not only assess a client’s risk tolerance, but also to determine their risk composure. Unfortunately, at this point no tools exist to measure risk composure – beyond recognizing that clients whose risk perceptions vary wildly over time will likely experience challenges staying the course in the future. But perhaps it’s time to broaden our understanding – and assessment – of risk composure, as in the end it’s the investor’s ability to maintain their composure that really determines whether they are able to effectively stay the course!

#FASuccess Ep 039: Using Behavioral Assessment Tools To Really Understand A Client’s Wealth Building Potential with Sarah Fallaw

September 26, 2017 07:01 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the thirty-ninth episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Sarah Fallaw. Sarah is the founder and president of DataPoints, a technology company that is creating behavioral science and assessment tools for financial advisors to use to better assess, understand, and coach their clients' financial behaviors.

What's fascinating about Sarah's work with DataPoints, though, is the way that they have applied research rigor to the fundamental question of: what are the financial behavioral traits that lead people to actually turn their income into wealth. As advisors, many of us are already familiar with the concept of the mild-mannered "Millionaire Next Door" who, through steady frugal savings behaviors, has managed to accumulate substantial wealth, without being flashy about it. Well, as it turns out, that original research was done by Thomas Stanley - who was Sarah Fallaw's father - and it's his initial work that she has now extended even further, and turned into a series of assessment tools for advisors to use with our clients!

In this episode, we talk about Sarah's research on how people build wealth, the key financial behaviors and traits - including conscientiousness, financial literacy, frugality, planning, responsibility, confidence - that lead to building wealth, why and how they measure "social indifference" (how sensitive you actually are to trying to keep up with the Joneses) to understand someone's wealth building potential, and the way that they've turned all of this research into a series of assessment tools that we as advisors can use... whether it's giving the assessment to young accumulator prospects to really understand how likely they are to save and accumulate wealth, or to give it to new or even existing clients just to better understand where their strengths are, and where their potential financial challenges will be in the future. We even explore how these kinds of behavioral assessment tools could even become a way to show the true value of financial advice - where we provide the assessment to clients year by year, and actually show them not just how they're accumulating wealth over time, but how we're actually helping them to change their financial attitudes and behaviors for the better!

And be certain to listen to the end, where Sarah talks about the challenges in actually launching a technology company that provides solutions for advisors, how "perfection can definitely be the enemy of good" when it comes to getting a new company launched (true for both technology and advisory businesses!), and why - even when it comes to starting a technology company - it's still all about focusing in on a narrow niche of the particular type of target clientele (or target financial advisor) that you want to serve.

So whether you've been curious to learn more about the research on what actually leads to wealth-building behavior, are curious about a new technology solution you could use to identify clients (or even prospects) with good wealth-building potential, or simply want perspective on what it takes to build a successful business, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

Launching An ESG Shareholder Engagement Initiative As An Advisory Firm Value-Add

September 25, 2017 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

Historically, socially responsible investing (SRI) has been about a fundamental decision: whether to hold a “traditional” diversified portfolio, or to screen out companies for various environmental, social, or governance (ESG) criteria in order to meet an SRI mandate. The end result has been an endless debate about whether a portfolio that used ESG screens will subsequently produce returns that are better, worse, or the same as the traditional portfolio.

Yet the reality is that an SRI approach doesn’t have to be a choice between traditional portfolio investing or using ESG screens. An alternative approach is to try to shape the stocks in a traditional portfolio to better adhere to an SRI mandate, by leveraging the proxy voting and shareholder engagement process to steer the company’s management itself in a more SRI-focused direction.

In this guest post, Justina Lai and Ria Boner of Wetherby Asset Management share how they implemented an ESG shareholder engagement initiative within their own advisory firm, leveraging the outside resources of an external non-profit called “As You Sow” that works with institutions (including advisors) to mobilize shareholder resolutions.

The end result of their ESG shareholder engagement initiative was a deeper engagement with clients themselves, for what was ultimately a fairly modest financial and logistical cost for the firm. However, because there are specific requirements that must be met for clients to vote proxies, including owning individual securities directly, affirming their ownership, and delegating proxy voting authority to a third party, advisory firms must be certain to implement a proper process to ensure their shareholder engagement efforts with clients are successful!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Sep 23-24)

September 22, 2017 02:57 pm 7 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a recap from the recent "Deals and Dealmakers" Summit on mergers and acquisitions in the advisory industry, which suggests that demand remains strong for advisory firms, though buyers are increasingly focusing on the largest ($1B+ AUM) sellers. Also in the news this week was a fascinating interview with Matt Lunch of Strategy & Resources about the future of the Independent Broker-Dealer (IBD) model, and the announcement that the CFP Board's Center for Financial Planning is finally launching its new academic journal, dubbed "Financial Planning Review" (FPR), and will have a Call For Papers in October to be considered for the inaugumidral issue coming mid-2018.

From there, we have several technical planning articles this week, including a look at the projected Social Security COLA for 2018 (which will ironically increase payments for upper-income individuals, but likely not for lower- and middle-income households due to the looming unwind of Medicare Part B's Hold Harmless provisions from 2016-2017), strategies to reduce clients' state income taxes by changing their state of residence (and what it takes for HNW clients to really substantiate their change in address), and what affluent clients should bear in mind as the IRS increasingly targets its resources on focused examinations of high-income individuals (but with fewer full-tax-return audits).

We also have several practice management articles, from a discussion of whether the traditional A/B/C client segmentation approach is actually just a relic of the old commission-based world and needs to be re-designed for modern advisory firms, to a look at the concept of "Client Journey Mapping" and why there are many opportunities for advisory firms to innovate by focusing on how technology can be used to improve the client's experience in interacting with the firm, and a fascinating discussion from advisor consultant Stephanie Bogan about how for many advisors the best strategy for handling prospects who ask for discounts or exceptions to the advisor's minimums is simply to have a stringent "no exceptions" policy.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all focused on thinking about the ways the advisory industry is changing: the first looks at how the recent Equifax breach was actually an excellent "micro-moment" opportunity for advisors to demonstrate their value and relevance for clients beyond just their investment portfolios... yet few seem to have stepped up to provide proactive guidance to their clients on issues like credit freezes; the second is a look at the real-world consequences of "non-fiduciary" conflicted advice, where the problem is not just that occasional "bad actors" make highly questionable (but still "suitable") sales to clients, but the fact that because of a current lack of fiduciary standard, they get away with it and keep doing it over and over again; and the last is a good reminder that ultimately, in trying to help clients stick to their investment plan, the best solution is not just about trying to change the portfolio to fit the client's investment behaviors, but also figuring out how to use the behavioral finance research to help clients adjust their behaviors so they are less stressed about (or focused on) their portfolios in the first place!

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Setting Proper Client Minimums: AUM Account Vs Retainer Fee Minimums For Advisors

September 21, 2017 02:58 pm 5 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

Setting proper client minimums is an important practice management issue that every advisor needs to consider. For many advisors, the idea of having "minimums" is an unpopular, as their goal is to be ready and willing to serve any prospective client who needs help. But the truth is that there's only so much time in the day - which means not everyone can be served - and given the overhead costs to operate an advisory firm, serving clients that are "too small" may well be a money-losing proposition for the business (even if it brings some revenue in the door).

Of course, even for advisors who are ready to set client minimums for their advisory firm, it’s one thing to say “you should have minimums”, and another to figure out how to actually structure the minimum (e.g., a minimum account size, or a minimum advisory fee?), and what level it should be set at!

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss best practices in how advisors should actually go about setting client minimums, the benefits and trade-offs in setting minimums based on investment account sizes (e.g., an AUM minimum) versus a minimum fee (e.g., a minimum annual retainer), and how to figure out what the minimum revenue per client should be for the business to be profitable.

Most advisors that have a minimum simply set a minimum AUM requirement (i.e., a minimum household or portfolio account size). The virtue of having an asset minimum to work with a client is the sheer simplicity. If the advisor sets an asset minimum of $250,000, and charges a 1% advisory fee, then the advisor has effectively set a $2,500 minimum fee for clients. Additionally, the advisor has set a minimum without any special billing requirements or complexities.

By contrast, some advisors prefer to set a minimum annual fee instead (regardless of account size), such as $2,500/year, and simply charge all clients that fee at a minimum (either as an annual retainer, or sometimes billed quarterly or even month). The good news of such a retainer-fee minimum structure is that it opens up new markets - for instance, young professionals who have limited assets but high income and good wealth-building potential who can happily afford the fee from their income. The bad news, though, it that it introduces additional billing complexity, as now the advisor needs a way to invoice, track, and process those minimum fees and have a way to actually get paid by the client (especially if there is no investment account to manage and sweep fees from!).

Regardless of the structure, though - an annual $2,500 minimum fee, or a $250,000 account minimum at a 1% rate that adds up to $2,500/year - it's still necessary to determine what the minimum revenue should be, and whether any particular advisor needs a minimum revenue per client that is higher or lower than $2,500/year.

Ultimately, most advisory firms do this one of two ways. The first option is to set the minimum fee based on the cost to actually service a client in the first place, by adding up the total overhead cost of the business and dividing by the number of clients; for instance, if the firm has 180 clients and the total cost of overhead is $450,000, then the firm must charge $2,500/year just to cover its office rent, staff, and other overhead costs. The second option - especially popular for solo financial advisors - is to price the minimum is based on the value of the advisor's time (since that is his/her primary constraint as an individual advisor). Thus, if the advisor wants to earn $200,000 per year and can only generate about 1,200 productive client-facing hours, the advisor needs to earn at least $166 per hour when doing client work, which means if a client takes 12 hours per year to serve, the minimum fee must be $166/hour x 12 hours = $2,000/year.

The bottom line, though, is that some minimum level of revenue per client is necessary for an advisory firm to execute well as a business. It can be administered as either a minimum account size, or a minimum retainer fee, though each has its benefits and disadvantages and who the advisor can (or cannot) work with, and it's especially important to recognize that if the advisor is going to have a non-investment-account retainer minimum, the advisor had better be delivering some real financial planning value outside of the investment account!

What Inflation Rate Should You Assume For College Expense Planning?

September 20, 2017 07:01 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

With the rise of 529 plans and increased focus amongst parents on saving for college, financial advisors have increasingly included college expense planning as a part of the comprehensive financial planning process for clients. And while the mathematics of funding education are relatively straightforward (at least in contrast to more complex retirement planning projections), the reality is that most advisors rely on some very simplistic college expense inflation assumptions for planning purposes (e.g., CPI + 3.0%). Yet, the increasing availability of college expense data reveals that the pace of inflation for college expenses may be slowing – at least for some types of college degrees – and that it’s necessary to take a more nuanced approach to college inflation assumptions.

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 – explores the historical data on the rising cost of a college education, and particularly the ways in which college inflation rates have varied based on institution type, location, and even the family income of the student.

For instance, according to the data in the Trends in College Pricing 2016 report (published annually by the CollegeBoard), the reality is that for students looking at private institutions, the common CPI + 3.0% inflation rate typically assumed by financial advisors has actually not been the case for some time now. Instead, the inflation rate for private colleges has been trending substantially lower for more than two decades! Yet by contrast, for high-income families looking at public institutions, a CPI + 3.0% inflation assumption for the cost of college may actually be too low!

In addition to variations by institution type and family income, considerable variability exists by location. For instance, over the past 12 years, annual real college expense inflation at public institutions has ranged from a low of 0% in Ohio to a high of nearly 8%/year in D.C. and Hawaii. Additionally, location-specific trends are made more complex by the role that declining (or increasing) public funding has in increasing (or decreasing) the amount of aid that may be available to students to offset college expenses (which impacts the typical “discount” between the published cost of college and the actual net price that students typically pay).

Of course, just because we’ve seen trends in the past does not mean that those trends will be the same in the future, but particularly given the unique dynamics of college inflation rates for above-average-income families (who most typically work with financial advisors), and the risk that for some clients there may be several college inflation trends moving in the same direction that may substantial increase (or decrease) the savings that clients need to fund their educational goals, the annual CollegeBoard’s Trends in College Pricing report provides a tremendous amount of data that advisors can (and should) use to customize their college inflation assumptions!

#FASuccess Ep 038: From Wirehouse Cold Calling Scripts To The Flexibility Of Independence with Winnie Sun

September 19, 2017 07:01 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the thirty-eighth episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Winnie Sun. Winnie is the co-founder of Sun Group Wealth Partners, a hybrid RIA on the LPL platform based in Los Angeles that oversees nearly $200 million of client assets.

What's fascinating about Winnie's firm, though, is how she managed to successfully launch her advisory business in a wirehouse through cold calling - with a unique tactic of calling businesses after hours, to deliberately read her cold calling script to their voicemail, and get those cold-calling prospects to call her back! From there, she evolved her business development strategy into a seminar marketing approach, before she ultimately shifted into a niche advisory firm servicing clients in the television and movie industries... building on her background with a television audience production company she founded when she first graduated from college and worked with shows like America's Funniest Home Videos, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune.

In this episode, Winnie talks about what "works" and what doesn't when it comes to social media marketing, why she still balances spending 2/3rds of her time in the wealth management business, and 1/3rd engaging in social media, video, and other multi-media efforts to market her business - because as Winnie puts it, "if no one knows you exist, you can't serve them as clients" - how she's structured her team with a partner to support her practice, and the details of why she ultimately decided to break away from a wirehouse to join an independent broker-dealer... despite the generous offer a competing wirehouse had made.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Winnie shares her perspective on everything from the challenges of our industry's gender or racial diversity - or lack thereof - and the relatively simple change that could be make the advisory business more appealing to young women, along with why she chose to pursue social media marketing, as an introvert, to help facilitate her own work/life balance while growing her business.

So whether you've been curious about what it takes to successfully grow a business via social media, or are simply looking for alternative marketing ideas to cold calling scripts, or want some perspective on how targeting a particular type of clientele can be amplified with digital marketing, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

Differentiating The Next Generation Of Financial Planning Software

September 18, 2017 07:01 am 32 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Financial planning software has changed substantially over the years, from its roots in demonstrating why a client might “need” certain insurance and investment products, to doing detailed cash flow projections, goals-based planning, and providing account-aggregation-driven portals. As the nature of financial planning itself, and how financial advisors get paid for their services, continues to evolve, so too does the software we use to power our businesses.

However, in the past decade, few new financial planning software companies have managed to gain traction and market share from today’s leading incumbents – MoneyGuidePro, eMoney Advisor, and NaviPlan. In part, that’s because the “switching costs” for financial advisors to change planning software providers is very high, due to the fact that client data isn’t portable and can’t be effectively migrated from one solution to another, which means changing software amounts to “rebooting” all client financial plans from scratch.

But perhaps the greatest blocking point to financial planning software innovation is that few new providers have really taken an innovative and differentiated vision of what financial planning software can and should be… and instead continue to simply copy today’s incumbents, adding only incremental new features while trying to forever be “simpler and easier” – without even any clear understanding of what, exactly, is OK to eliminate in the process.

Nonetheless, tremendous opportunity remains for real innovation in financial planning software. From the lack of any financial planning software that facilitates real income tax planning, to the gap in effective household cash flow and spending tools, a lack of solutions built for the needs of Gen X and Gen Y clients, and a dearth of specialized financial planning software that illustrates real retirement distribution planning (using actual liquidation strategies and actual retirement products). In addition, most financial planning software is still written first and foremost to produce a physical, written financial plan – with interactive, collaborative financial planning often a seeming afterthought, and even fewer financial planning software solutions that are really built to do continuous ongoing planning with clients (not for the first year they work with the financial advisor, but the next 20 years thereafter), where the planning software monitors the client situation and tells the advisor when there’s a planning opportunity!

Fortunately, though, with industry change being accelerated thanks to the DoL fiduciary rule, the timing has never been better for new competitors to try to capture new market share for emerging new financial advisor business models. Will the coming years mark the onset of a new wave of financial planning software innovation?