Nerd's Eye View blog

The Latest In Financial Advisor #FinTech (July 2016)

August 1, 2016 07:01 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

As technology plays an increasingly central role in the business of financial advice, the pace of change is accelerating. After years of limited development and progress – from 2002 to 2012, the biggest “news” for most advisor technology providers was simply that they had finally moved from server-based to a cloud-based platform – the arrival of “robo-advisors” highlighted how far financial services technology had fallen behind. The end result: while robo-advisors aren’t competing much with financial advisors directly, they have set off an arms race of technology firms aiming to serve financial advisors.

To help my fellow financial advisor community keep up with the most important developments, I’m launching what will become a new regular column on the first Monday of every month: the latest in Financial #AdvisorTech.

The goal here will be to highlight the significant news and developments in advisor-related technology over the past month, from major software releases, to big news on new integrations, companies raising capital (or shutting down), and highlighting new #AdvisorTech providers coming to the forefront with new solutions that advisors might want to check out.

In this month’s inaugural issue, we look at the news that RightCapital (a new financial planning software provider) has raised $1M in seed funding to grow their tax-savvy planning solution for advisors, the announcement from EverPlans (an estate planning document value that advisors offer as a perk to their clients) that they have raised $6M in their Series A round (even as some other new estate planning tools like Yourefolio and EstateGen have appeared on the scene), Microsoft’s launch of a new online scheduling tool called “Bookings”, the merger of Citrix and LogMeIn (which may eventually combine together the popular advisor video meeting apps GoToMeeting and Join.Me), how we may truly be past the “peak robo” moment as several more robo-advisors have either shut down or are struggling to retain talent, and a quick look at whether Apex Clearing may be trying to get their foot in the door as a new RIA alternative to Schwab, Fidelity, and especially TD Ameritrade.

I hope you find this new column helpful! Please share your comments at the end and let me know what you think!

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

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (July 30-31)

July 29, 2016 02:45 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with news on the Department of Labor's proposal that would clear the way for state-based automatic enrollment into IRAs for employees of small business, which has been sent as a final proposal to the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) and is expected to be approved within a month or two, ushering in a new era of accessibility for automatic-enrollment retirement savings.

From there, we have several additional articles on the ever-shifting regulatory landscape for advisors, including a look at what RIAs will have to do to comply with the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule (which will have less impact on RIAs than broker-dealers, but still introduces new compliance obligations), how the DoL's "grandfathering" rule allowing existing commission trails to continue may have the unintended consequence of limiting the ability for registered reps to change broker-dealers next year, and a discussion of the SEC's looming push for an initiative that would start using third-party examiners to increase oversight of RIAs or whether the agency should wait and study current RIA practices to understand which ones really do (or do not) need greater oversight in the first place given the modern role of independent custodians that RIAs work with.

We also have a few practice management articles this week, including: how advisors can improve their marketing by being more transparent about their services and pricing; tips for dealing with introverted vs extroverted prospective clients, and how to frame questions differently to better engage them; and how connecting with and providing even basic advice services for clients' children is associated with a higher likelihood of getting referrals (though it's not clear if that's because helping the children drives referrals, or if clients who refer are more likely to push their advisor to work with their children, too).

There are a couple of investment-related articles as well, from a look at how FinaMetrica (known for its academically rigorous risk tolerance questionnaire) is pairing with both RiXtrema and Macro Risk Analytics to provide more robust tools to analyze a client's current portfolio and compare it to their risk tolerance, a discussion of whether near-zero or negative yields could actually be a sign of prosperity and not looming global deflation, and a look at how asset managers are still struggling to gain traction with actively managed ETFs.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first is a discussion of how the media's focus on "newsworthy" events, combined with ever-improving access to information about what's happening in the world, may be causing us to mistakenly believe the world is getting worse, when in reality it's never been better (we're just more aware of a smaller number of bad events than we were in the past); the second is an interesting study from the Journal of Financial Planning finding that advice on savings/investments and tax planning really do lead to higher financial satisfaction, but advice regarding debt, mortgages, and insurance does not (unless it's all paired together holistically); and the last is a fascinating look at how those who enjoy their work the most tend to have the best career progress, the most retirement readiness, yet are the least interested in retiring (because they enjoy their work!), while those who are most miserable in their jobs are the ones who most want to retire but may struggle with earning enough to achieve that retirement, suggesting that the real key is not in doing better "retirement planning" but in helping to guide clients to more fulfilling careers in the first place.

And be certain to check out Bill Winterberg's "Bits & Bytes" video on the latest in advisor tech news at the end, which this week includes a flurry of "robo-advisor" news (from the launch of Fidelity Go to announcements that TD Ameritrade and Wells Fargo are working on "robo" tools), along with news from Envestnet/Tamarac on the roll-out of its "Client Portal 2.0", and MoneyGuidePro releasing a new DoL fiduciary software tool called "Best Interest Scout".

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Financial Advisor Practice Vs Business: What Are You Trying To Build?

July 28, 2016 01:33 pm 14 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

The path of becoming a financial advisor is viewed as a very entrepreneurial one, starting from scratch and building a client base who pay you for services, growing over time into a business that can generate substantial income for the advisor/owner/founder. The growing trend of independent advisors, whether in RIA or broker-dealer form, just further emphasizes the entrepreneurial spirit of the financial advisor community, and their desire to build businesses of value... or at least, a practice that can generate substantial ongoing income throughout their working years.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we look at the key distinction between building a business versus a practice. Because while the terms are often used interchangeably, the reality is that they're actually very different roles.

Building a successful practice means getting clients who will pay you for your services, and leveraging your personal productivity to serve them effectively. By contrast, building a successful financial advisory business is about hiring other advisors who will be paid for their advice, and building the infrastructure necessary to support them, and ensure that clients are served well. In other words, it's the difference between delivering financial advice yourself, versus building a business to deliver financial advice.

And the difference matters, because the reality is that a practice can generate substantial income for successful advisors, but will only ever have very limited enterprise value. On the other hand, a bona fide advisory business can become an extraordinarily large financial asset, but comes at a cost of what could be years or decades of lower income as dollars (and a lot of sweat equity) are reinvested back into the business to continue to grow it. One benchmarking study recently found that it takes growing an advisory firm to more than $1B of AUM, just to get the partner/owners back to the same take-home pay that the most successful solo advisors can generate.

Ultimately, the choice is the advisor's about which to build - a business vs a practice - but it's crucial to recognize the difference, to ensure that you're building what you really want!

Minimizing The Income Tax Bite Of A Bypass Trust

July 27, 2016 07:01 am 20 Comments CATEGORY: Estate Planning

The bypass trust is a popular estate planning strategy used to reduce a couple’s exposure to estate taxes, by leaving the assets of the first spouse to die not to the surviving spouse, but to a trust for his/her beneficiary instead. If the surviving spouse doesn’t inherit the assets directly, they’re not subject to future estate taxes when the second spouse ultimately passes away.

However, while the bypass trust is effective for saving on estate taxes, it’s not very favorable for income tax planning, given that trusts reach a top 39.6% tax bracket (plus the 3.8% Medicare surtax on net investment income) at “just” $12,400 of taxable income. And at that threshold, long-term capital gains (and qualified dividends) are subject to a whopping 20% + 3.8% = 23.8% tax rate as well. Plus state income taxes to boot (if applicable).

Fortunately, though, the tax rules for bypass trusts (and other “non-grantor” trusts) allow trusts that distribute their income to beneficiaries to distribute the tax consequences to the beneficiaries as well – allowing those beneficiaries to claim the income on their own personal tax returns (and be subject to their far more favorable individual tax brackets) while the trust claims a “Distributable Net Income” (DNI) deduction to avoid any double taxation.

Of course, the caveat to passing through income from a trust to the beneficiary is that while distributing the income to the beneficiary may minimize income taxes, it just compounds the estate tax problem the bypass trust was designed to avoid (by pushing the income back into the spouse’s taxable estate). However, given the significant rise in the Federal estate tax exemption over the past 15 years – from “just” $1M in 2001 to $5.45M today – many bypass trusts are actually no longer necessary. Which means it has suddenly become a far more effective strategy to start deliberately making income distributions from a(n existing) bypass trust to the beneficiary, who may no longer face any estate taxes, but can materially reduce the family’s income tax exposure in the process!

The Compliance #FinTech Gap Under DoL Fiduciary And The Next Generation Of Robo-Advice

July 25, 2016 07:01 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

The current regulatory oversight structure for advisors is a patchwork combination of FINRA, SEC and state securities regulators, and state insurance regulators, depending on which types of insurance or investment products/services the advisor offers. Regardless of the regulator, though, the compliance process is substantively similar for all of them: the advisor is evaluated based on the final solution that is sold/implemented, and the focus of compliance is on substantiating that particular product recommendation or investment portfolio implementation.

Under the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, though, a new standard is emerging, in a manner that transcends the traditional dividing lines of product channels: that the advice must be in the best interests of the client. Which means not only must the product have been reasonable and not UNsuitable… a prudent expert would have to concur that the recommendation itself was actually in the best interests of the client and improved his/her situation.

In today’s compliance landscape, though, this introduces significant new challenges. The financial services industry has not adopted a standardized advice process for advisors to consistently adhere to, in order to demonstrate their fiduciary duty of care and due diligence. Nor is there any clear agreed-upon framework to determine when a particular recommendation is “best” or not, based on a specific set of client goals and circumstances.

Fortunately, technology can help to solve these problems, but will require a significant change from the compliance technology tools today. This may entail a shift in financial planning software (from being a mere analytical tool for advisors to an actual oversight tool for financial institutions), or the development of third-party software that takes an established advice process (or creates a new one) and institutionalizes it with due diligence and procedural checklists.

Or alternatively, the DoL fiduciary rule may actually spawn the next generation of “robo-advice” software, designed not directly for consumers, but as a compliance-driven solution to ensure that all advisors in the organization are giving the same consistent advice… and potentially transforming the financial advisor from the one who crafts the client advice, to someone who instead simply delivers the institution’s computer-generated advice and helps the client take the necessary steps to change their behavior, follow through, and implement?

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (July 23-24)

July 22, 2016 02:51 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week kicks off with the news that the Department of Labor will soon be issuing some "follow-up" clarifying guidance about next year's fiduciary rule, as the DoL formulates a response to the most frequently asked questions coming in from advisors and financial institutions (relating primarily to advisor compensation and large-firm financial incentives related to the products they make available).

From there, we have a few articles related to advisor technology, including a good overview of the latest trends and developments in the advisor tech landscape from Joel Bruckenstein, coverage of the major deal announced last month between Vestorly (which provides content curation tools for advisors to drip market to clients and prospects) and Dow Jones (which will provide Wall Street Journal and other content to Vestorly users), and a review of financial planning software provider FinanceLogix.

We also have a few investment-related articles this week, from an analysis of the trends in securities lending by asset managers, to a look at how capital market assumptions for retirement planning projections could be adjusted to account for sequence of return risk, an examination of how mutual funds and ETF providers are preparing for the change in September when REITs will be removed from financial services sector and placed into their own sector instead, and two articles looking at how many of the foundational principles of investing and modern finance are breaking down as government bond yields keep trending lower and the "risk-free" rate on government bonds is approaching zero or even going negative in some countries (leading to strange outcomes where bond returns are primarily driven by capital gains, and investors are buying stocks for yield!).

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first looks at a recent Capgemini study on the behaviors of young millionaires, finding that they are drastically more likely to hold cash (as much as 1/3rd of their net worth!), are more likely to invest in alternatives and diversify out of just holding 'traditional' stock portfolios, and are less likely than older millionaires to engage with a financial advisor; the second is a review of a few "savings" smartphone apps, like Qapital, Digit, Dyme, and Acorns, which are trying to use technology to make saving easier and more frictionless (the technology equivalent of modern 'pay yourself first' savings strategies); and the last is a fascinating study that finds financial stress and economic insecurity can actually lead to increased feelings of physical pain, which may help to explain the country's rising epidemic of prescription pain medications, and also raises interesting questions about the potential role and value of having a good financial planner!

Also, be certain to check out the video at the end, the trailer of an interesting new "documentary" movie from Mark Hebner of Index Fund Advisors and Robin Powell of Evidence-Based Investor, on the issues with Wall Street and active management and the ever-rising role of index funds (somewhat controversially titled "Index Funds: The 12-Step Recovery Program For Active Investors").

Enjoy the "light" reading!

What’s The Best Personality Type To Succeed As A Financial Advisor?

July 21, 2016 11:50 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

According to most industry benchmarking studies, average income of an experienced financial advisor is roughly 2x to 3x the average household income in the U.S., which makes being a financial planner an incredibly appealing career, both to college graduates looking for a career, and those who may feel they have "topped out" in their current industry and wish to make a career change into financial planning. The caveat, however, is that financial advisors also have an incredibly high attrition and failure rate in the early years, which means the decision to try is not without significant risks. For many, their greatest fear in getting started is simply that they don't have the "right" personality type to succeed in the first place.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we look at what kind of personality type it does take to succeed as a financial advisor, and how despite the conventional view that being a financial advisor is a quintessential career for extroverts (where you meet lots of people to work with and do business with), in reality many introverts are also very successful at being a financial advisor. Because while being an introvert might be a little more challenging when "prospecting" for potential clients, the fact that introverts more commonly form deeper relationships to fewer people is actually a great fit for establishing a great and loyal client base!

In fact, for many who start out as a financial advisor, the biggest roadblock is not about being an introvert versus extrovert, but simply about having the "grit" necessary to handle the emotional rollercoaster that is being an entrepreneur and building your own business. That includes both the sheer financial ups and downs of starting a business from scratch with no income, and the amount of rejection that occurs when prospecting for clients, where "just" being rejected 2-out-of-3 times is actually a fairly solid 33% close rate!

Fortunately, there is an alternative career path for financial advisors beginning to emerge as well - the employee advisor path, which starts out as an entry level "paraplanner" and climbs from there to an associate advisor, lead/senior advisors, and perhaps even to becoming a partner someday. Unfortunately, though, the relatively slow progression down that career path - which may take as long as 7-10 years to reach a senior advisor position - is for many career changers "too long" to wait to reach the income levels of their former careers.

Nonetheless, the bottom line is that the "right" personality type for being a financial advisor is not about being an introvert or extrovert - because either can create meaningful relationships with clients (and both will struggle if they are too extreme in either the introversion or extroversion direction) - but about having the patience and focus to build your career as an employee, or the sheer grit (and financial capabilities) to handle the entrepreneurial rollercoaster of starting your own advisory firm from scratch!

The End Of History Illusion And The Problem With Goals-Based Investing

July 20, 2016 07:01 am 23 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

The very essence of financial planning is about helping clients to formulate the strategies to achieve their goals. In this context, the role of the financial planning is to help clients articulate their future goals, and then provide recommendations for how the client can best achieve them.

There’s just one problem: research suggests that we’re not actually very good at figuring out what our future goals will be. The fundamental challenge is that, despite recognizing how much we change over time (think back on how different you were 5, 10, or 20 years ago!), we just don’t know how to envision the ways we’ll be different in the future. In fact, researchers have dubbed the phenomenon the “End Of History Illusion” – we just don’t know how to project a future that’s any different from today (which is the end of our personal history as we know it).

From the perspective of financial planning, and the rising popularity of goals-based investing, the challenge of the End Of History Illusion is that we may be encouraging retirees to save towards a vision of retirement that they won’t actually care about when retirement comes. This doesn’t mean that retirement itself won’t be relevant, but that vision of a particular retirement home, vacations, a boat on the lake, or a certain lifestyle, may not actually be very desirable when the time comes.

Which means investors should actually be cautious about tying their saving and investing habits in a way that over-commits to a particular and specific long-term goal. Instead, if we recognize the uncertainty of future goals themselves, planning for flexibility to adapt to future goals may be more effective than investing for the goals themselves!

When Does It Make Sense To Join With A Financial Advisor Partner?

July 18, 2016 07:01 am 11 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

The explosive growth of technology has made it possible for individual financial advisors to be more personally productive than ever before, from software to automate key tasks to the use of (virtual) assistants to even further leverage the advisor’s time.

However, the reality is that every financial advisor eventually hits some personal productivity wall – the point at which there just aren’t any hours left in the day to serve more clients, even with the assistance of a technology and a team of support. In some cases, it’s the time to manage the team itself that becomes the biggest barrier to growing further.

At that point, the opportunity for growth shifts to the need to add a financial advisor partner, where the advisor has the potential to earn a smaller slice of a much-larger pie. And in this context, the ideal of usually not just to combine together two already-successful financial advisors, but to actually find advisors who have different and complementary skillsets, which enhances the potential for the new whole to be worth more than just the sum of the individual parts.

Unfortunately, though, for many advisors the biggest challenge in adding a financial advisor partner is simply finding one in the first place. For most, the path seems to be through financial advisor conferences and events related to their platform, where it’s most feasible to find like-minded individuals. And fortunately, the availability of third-party “financial advisor compatibility assessment” tools can help to ensure that the partners will likely be able to formulate a shared vision for the future growth of their new joint business!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (July 16-17)

July 15, 2016 02:01 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with an announcement that the SEC will begin to audit RIAs over the use of mutual fund share classes, seeking to verify that investment advisers are really using the lowest cost institutional shares available, and not trying to double-dip into 12(b)-1 or other back-end fees on more expensive share classes. Also in the news this week was the SEC's decision to bar Dawn Bennett and fine her a whopping $4M, for what started out as an investigation into overstated AUM on her radio show and in marketing materials, and then snowballed into a fight over the SEC's use of administrative law judges.

From there, we have a few articles related to how the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule continues to ripple, including a look at the likelihood of the rule being struck down by legislators (virtually impossible) or in the courts (still highly unlikely), how advisor recruiting amongst broker-dealers has fallen a whopping 40% in the first half of 2016 (attributed in large part to uncertainty about how DoL fiduciary compliance will play out), and the ways that broker-dealers are starting to push back on financial services product manufacturers to make their commission payouts levelized and more uniform from one company to the next. There's also an article looking at a new niche RIA custodian called MoneyBlock, which specifically targets advisors who are heavy implementors of options strategies with clients.

We also have a few marketing-related articles this week, including a discussion of how asking clients to send "referrals" is far less effective than specifically asking for introductions, the approach that one start-up financial advisor has been using to achieve a whopping 76% close rate on his prospective clients, and a Journal of Financial Planning cover story that interviewed a dozen financial advisor marketing experts for a wide range of marketing tips and strategies that advisors can implement.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first looks at how financial advisors may increasingly play a role in spotting financial abuse of seniors, as legislators change laws to make it easier for (or even require) financial advisors to report potential abuse situations; the second is a look at how the increasing volume of data used to manage an advisory (or any) business is leading to the rise of "business dashboards", central reporting tools that pull together the relevant business data (often from several sources) and make it easier to keep track of the health of the business; and the last is a valuable reminder that as successful advisors, it's important to give back to our communities, which is not only about being charitable but also recognizing that there's a business opportunity to "do well by doing good", too.

Enjoy the "light" reading!