Nerd's Eye View blog

#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?

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Sep 16-17)

September 15, 2017 02:58 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with tips from leading cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs on what you (and your clients!) should do to protect themselves from potential identity theft after the recent news of the massive 143 million person data breach at Equifax.

From there, we have several regulatory articles this week, including an in-depth look from Investment News on the current state of FINRA and whether the industry watchdog needs better oversight and governance itself, the latest warning from the SEC to investment advisers to do a better job monitoring and overseeing their advertising (including the use of third-party recognition programs), and the emerging discussion of whether the best regulatory path forward might not be to apply a uniform fiduciary duty to all advisors and brokers but simply to better regulate the term "advisor" in the first place (and let non-advisor salespeople continue to not be subject to a fiduciary duty, as long as they distance themselves from the "advisor" title).

We also have several practice management articles, from a look by Cerulli at the latest trend of advisors towards outsourcing portfolio management (as the majority of CFP professionals now use some kind of third-party manager), why effective leadership in an advisory firm is all about not treating everyone the same and instead focusing the leadership's time, energy, and resources into its top emerging talent, and tips on how to effectively groom next generation "G2" talent in an advisory firm to eventually take over and manage client relationships. In addition, there are also articles on how to develop a prospect tracking list, the merits of having a client advisory board versus conducting a client focus group, and when it makes sense to use video as part of your marketing (and how much it costs to get it done right).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all focused around the psychology of how you position your business, your clients, and your team: the first explores how in the end, the best business models are very simple ones (e.g., make complex things simple, make boring things exciting, or eliminate middlemen), and raises the question of whether as advisors we try too hard to convey complex value propositions when simpler ones would be better; the second is a reminder that in most businesses (including financial advising), the bulk of utilization, revenue, and referrals tend to come from a small subset of "whale" clients, which makes it especially important to connect with them and make them feel appreciated (but balance against overserving them to the point they're unprofitable!); and the last is a look at how a business that consults on behavioral economics structures its own employee team bonuses, with an emphasis on not just paying a year-end performance-based bonus, but giving employees guidance on how to spend their bonuses in a manner that is most likely to actually contribute to their happiness.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

The Conflicts Of Interest Between RIAs And Their Custodians (and Brokers And Their B/Ds)

September 14, 2017 10:27 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

The need to manage conflicts of interest is a central issue in meeting an advisor's fiduciary obligation to clients, whether it's part of an RIA's fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, or any financial advisor's obligation when serving any retirement investors under the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule. Yet the reality is that prospective conflicts of interest go beyond just those that financial advisors may face with the product compensation they receive for implementing various insurance and investment products. In fact, financial advisors often face direct conflicts of interest with the very platforms they're affiliated with, particularly when it comes to practice management advice in how to grow their own business and serve their clients!

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss the conflict of interest that exists between RIA firms and their RIA custodian platforms (as well as between brokers and their broker-dealers), and why advisors should perhaps be a bit less reliant on their platforms for financial planning education and practice management insight, given the "conflicted advice" they're receiving!

A straightforward example comes up in the context of whether financial advisors should aim to serve "next generation" clients - in particular, the next generation heirs of their existing clients. Concerned about the assets that might leave their platform, RIA custodians regularly encourage and urge advisors to build relationships with the heirs of their clients, so that the assets don't leave. Yet ultimately, that just emphasizes that to the custodian, the "client" isn't even the client - it's simply their pot of money, that the custodian wants to retain, regardless of who owns it... which means pursuing the assets down the family tree. By contrast, financial advisors who are focused on their clients - the actual human beings - would often be better served by simply focusing on who they serve well... which means if the firm is retiree-centric, the best path forward is not to chase pots of money to next-generation heirs when their retired clients pass away, and instead is simply to go find more new retirees! In other words, advisors are getting advice from their RIA custodians to pursue next-generation clients is often based more on what's in the custodian's best interests, not necessarily what the advisor's best interests for their practices!

Another way that RIAs sit in conflict with their RIA custodial platforms is that in the end, one of a fiduciary advisor's primary goals is actually to proactively minimize the profit margins of our RIA platforms! Thus, advisors try to minimize transaction costs, lobby for lower ticket charges on trading, pick the lowest-cost share classes that don't have 12b-1 fees or revenue-sharing agreements, find the optimal balance in selecting No Transaction Fee (NTF) funds versus paying transaction fees based on the size of the clients' accounts and what will be cheapest for them, obtain best execution pricing regardless of order routing kickbacks, and minimize client assets sitting in cash. And all of this matters, because how do RIA custodians actually make money? Ticket charges, revenue-sharing from asset managers, getting basis points on NTF funds, order routing revenue on execution, and making a 25+ basis point interest rate spread on money market funds. Which means the better the job that the RIA does for its clients, the less profitable they are for their RIA custodian (a fact that advisors are often reminded of by their RIA custodian relationship managers!), and RIAs have a fundamental conflict of interest between being "good advisors" for their custodial platform and watching out for their clients' best interests.

Notably, this phenomenon is not unique to RIAs. It’s perhaps more noticeable because we usually talk about RIAs as being fiduciaries that are minimizing their conflicts of interest, but it’s equally relevant for those who work on a broker-dealer platform as well. Because as product intermediaries, broker-dealers ultimately make their money off of transactions, and it is impossible to sell financial service products without a broker-dealer! Yet the challenge is that the B-D can make more when they are offering both compliance oversight and getting a slice of GDC on all transactions, as opposed to just a compliance oversight slice of advisory fee business. Which means that while a fee-based business model may be more stable and valuable in the long run for a financial advisor, able to grow to a larger size and sell for a higher multiple, B-Ds are often at risk for making less money as their advisors shift to fee-based business that makes more for them (or alternatively, forces the B-D to increasingly try to reach into the advisor's fee-based business with ever-expanding "compliance oversight").

The point is not to paint every B-D or RIA custodian in a nefarious light - as they're just trying to run their businesses - but it's crucial to understand that in many situations, what's best for the broker-dealer or RIA custodian is not necessarily best for the advisor on the platform. Which is concerning, because too many advisors don't seem to acknowledge these inherent conflicts of interest, especially since advisor platforms are often the primary place they go for financial planning education and practice management insight, not realizing the conflicted advice they are receiving. And so, while it can be great to take advantage of some of the resources that these platforms provide, advisors should still be careful to consider whether the advice they receive is really in their best interests as an advisor, or ultimately about maximizing revenue for the platform instead!

Predicting Wealth Building Behavior With DataPoints Assessment Tools

September 13, 2017 07:01 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Retirement Planning

The Millionaire Next Door became a NY Times Bestseller in 1996 by revealing how little we understand about millionaires, and the behaviors that help people to become millionaires. While the traditional view was that wealth comes from an inheritance, or becoming an executive in a major corporation, and that you can identify millionaires by their high-end suits, luxury cars, and large houses in affluent neighborhoods, in reality a huge swath of millionaires become such simply by living frugal lives of cheap suits, practical cars, and modest homes, which allows them to convert a substantial portion of their income into wealth over time.

Of course, having a healthy income, and willingness to take calculated risks for success, do clearly help in the wealth-building process. But the key point was that not only is affluence not necessarily correlated to outward signs of wealth, but in reality some of the greatest wealth-building behaviors come from not flaunting that wealth and being “socially indifferent” to trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Now, a company called DataPoints – founded by Sarah Stanley Fallaw, the daughter of The Millionaire Next Door author Thomas Stanley (and herself trained as an industrial psychologist) – is turning The Millionaire-Next-Door insights about wealth building behaviors into a series of assessment tools that financial advisors can use.

For advisors who are trying to expand their practices to work with “younger” wealth accumulator clients, the DataPoints assessment tools provide a unique research-based approach to actually understand which prospects are likely to be successful wealth accumulators, and which prospects should be avoided because the assessment reveals in advance they will be especially difficult to work with. And for new and existing clients, a rigorous wealth building assessment tool as a part of the discovery process can help the advisor understand where to focus their advice and efforts to help the client actually change their financial behaviors for the better.

In other words, while as financial advisors we increasingly find ourselves talking about the “behavioral” value of financial planning advice, DataPoints is actually creating tools that help to measure what a client’s wealth-building behaviors actually are. Which on the one hand makes it easier to be effective with clients – as we can get a better understanding upfront of the client’s financial tendencies – but also makes it possible to actually measure the success of the advisor-client relationship by the extent to which the advisor actually helps their client (measurably) change their financial behaviors and attitudes!