Nerd's Eye View blog

How Life Insurance Loans Really Work And Why It’s Problematic To “Bank On Yourself”

March 16, 2016 07:01 am 126 Comments CATEGORY: Insurance

A popular feature of permanent life insurance is that it accumulates cash value that can grow over time – ensuring that if the policy is surrendered, the policyowner will still have something to show for it that cannot be forfeited. However, this “non-forfeiture value” of a life insurance policy has an important secondary benefit as well – it gives an insurance company the means to provide policyowners a personal loan at favorable interest rates, because the cash value provides collateral for the loan.

Yet even as cash value life insurance operates as collateral for a life insurance policy loan, it also remains invested, earning a rate of return that slows the erosion of the net equity in the policy and allows a policy loan to remain in place for an extended period of time. And with some insurance policy loan strategies – such as the popular “Bank On Yourself” approach, there’s even a possibility that the cash value can out-earn the stated interest rate of the loan, allowing the loan to compound ‘indefinitely’.

The caveat, however, is that in the end a life insurance policy loan is still really nothing more than a personal loan from an insurance company, using the life insurance cash value as collateral. Which means even if the net borrowing cost is low because the cash value continues to appreciate, that’s still growth that the investor might have enjoyed for personal use, if the loan was never taken out in the first place. Or viewed another way, trying to bank on yourself doesn’t work very well when ultimately the loan interest isn’t actually something you pay back to yourself, it simply repays the life insurance company instead!

Replacing The Data Gathering Meeting With A “Get Organized” Client Experience

March 14, 2016 07:01 am 14 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

Creating a financial plan starts with gathering the client data, which many advisors request by providing clients with a “data gathering form”, typically structured in a manner that makes it easy to input the data into their financial planning software.

The caveat, however, is that in practice clients often don’t fill out the data gathering form. For some, they feel it’s too much work. For most, the problem is simply that they aren’t organized enough to provide all the requisite information. And may even feel guilty or embarrassed about the fact that they’re “failing” in the very first step of the financial planning process.

So what’s the alternative? Ditch the data gathering meeting, and have a “Get Organized” meeting instead. In other words, make the first meeting with the client about getting them financially organized in the first place. Have them bring in their jumbled files, and give them a file box with sorted folders to organize the information. Scan the key documents and statements and put them into a newly created client vault. Set up a client PFM portal, show them how to use it, and help them to begin connecting their accounts on the spot.

By having the Get Organized meeting, the financial planner still has the opportunity to collect all the data that’s needed to move forward with the financial planning process – but done in a client-centric manner that recognizes the client’s challenges and provides them an immediate, tangible benefit. In fact, for some people, a “Get [Financially] Organized” service might be so valuable, advisors could even charge for it separately and get paid to market and demonstrate their value to prospective clients!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Mar 12-13)

March 11, 2016 02:29 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with the big announcement of Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, a new contender in the world of advisor CRM as Salesforce looks to build on its success in financial services by building its own proprietary customized solution for financial advisors.

From there, we have several technical articles, including some good reminder tips for those doing "last-minute" IRA contributions in the coming weeks, and a review of the issues to consider for early retirees who want/need access to health insurance after work and before being eligible for Medicare at age 65 (now more feasible than ever, thanks to the new health insurance exchanges). We also have two investment-related articles, one discussing the launch of Eaton Vance's new "exchange-traded mutual fund" (the ETMF) and how it's similar-but-different to an ETF, and the other looking at how high-dividend strategies may have strong performance but value-oriented strategies (regardless of the dividend) appear to perform even better.

There are also a few technology-related articles this week, including software reviews of a new digital content marketing service called Financial Media Exchange (FMeX), a new platform for advisors to engage in options trading called Vest Financial, and the looming emergence of facial recognition software that advisors might use to help understand their prospects and clients better (and how they emotionally react to money and financial issues). There's also a good review of the technology offerings of the "smaller" and start-up-friendly RIA custodians, including TradePMR, SSG, and Scottrade Advisor Services.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first is a look at why investors tend to stray from their investment principles (hint: they convince themselves it's "close enough" to their principles that it's ok to fudge a little, even though it's often quite a material divergence); the second is a look at how our world is becoming so abundant, from free media and entertainment to excesses in many commodities, and how it may be driving malinvestment (and that a 'healthy' recession to purge the excesses would be good, before the real economy is harmed!); and the last is a discussion of whether the explosive rise of indexing over the past decade may be approaching the point that it's starting to distort the market prices for stocks and commodities, and what we might need to do in the future to correct the situation if we want to preserve cost-effective investment strategies but ensure healthy markets.

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 discussion about the new release of Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (and his skepticism of its significance!), and the announcement that Betterment is adding account aggregation to its retail and institutional platform.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Using Psychological Profiling Tools To Better Communicate With Clients

March 10, 2016 10:37 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

Being able to communicate effectively with clients is an essential skill for a financial advisor. Yet the reality is that few of us are really trained in how to communicate effectively. Instead, most of us simply have our own natural style, and clients either connect with you, or they don't.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we look at some psychological profiling tools that financial advisors can use to better understand their clients' communication styles, which makes it easier for the advisor to figure out whether or how to adapt the way information is presented to clients.

From financial industry tools like Financial DNA, to general profiling tools like ProScan PDP, and even work style tools like Kolbe, there are a number of solutions available that can help advisors understand how to better communicate with a wider range of clients.

Of course, the reality is that in the early years, often the focus for new financial advisors is simply on mastering their technical competency and skills, and trying to focus on communication at the same time can be overwhelming. But for more experienced and established advisors, adopting psychological profiling tools may be an appealing path to deepen client relationships and grow the business!

Dollar Cost Averaging May Help To Manage Risk But On Average It Just Reduces Returns

March 9, 2016 07:01 am 23 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

Conventional investment wisdom suggests that dollar cost averaging is a good approach to allocating investment dollars over time. By always investing a constant dollar amount, the strategy ensures that fewer shares will be bought as prices rise, while more shares are purchased if prices decline, bringing down the average cost per share in the long run. The only question is over what time horizon it’s best to average in.

Yet as it turns out, the answer is “none”. In reality, a dollar cost averaging investment strategy doesn’t actually enhance returns in volatile markets that have similar upside gains and downside losses on a percentage basis. And given that on average, markets go up more often than they go down, choosing to dollar cost average is more likely to just leave gains on the table (and the longer the time period, the greater the risk of foregone returns).

However, while dollar cost averaging may not be likely to enhance returns in the long run, it is still a risk management technique. Over the dollar cost averaging time period itself, the diversification of the “new” investment and “old” investment may actually produce superior risk-adjusted returns. And given that the pain of losses is more severe than the joy of gains, risk-averse investors may prefer to dollar cost average simply to minimize the potential regret of not doing so and seeing markets decline shortly thereafter.

Nonetheless, for investors who are comfortable with the risk of their portfolios, and aren’t specifically seeking a “regret aversion” (or at least, regret minimization) strategy, in the long run the best time horizon for dollar cost averaging is simply to invest all the money immediately – at least, presuming the investment was desirable to own in the first place!

A Hierarchy Of The Value A Financial Advisor Provides

March 8, 2016 07:01 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

With the ongoing commoditization of investment management services, and ever-increasing pressure on active investment managers to demonstrate their value, many have raised the question of whether financial advisors will eventually succumb to the pricing pressures of low-cost robo-advisors.

In today's guest post, Bob Seawright from Above The Market makes a compelling case for the long-term value of a financial advisor beyond just security selection and portfolio management, and highlights a "hierarchy of financial advisor value" that starts with the areas where financial advisors have the most impact - on savings and investment behavior, and providing financial planning advice - beyond which the actual implementation of an investment portfolio is just a small slice.

So whether you're a financial advisor who finds it difficult to articulate your value beyond just portfolio management services, or are simply looking for a new take and some fresh inspiration on how to describe your value to current and prospective clients, I hope that you find this hierarchy of financial advisor value to be beneficial in your practice!

Broker Misconduct Study Highlights Importance Of FINRA BrokerCheck Due Diligence

March 7, 2016 07:01 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

Given the intangible nature of financial advice, the reality is that financial advisors and their advisory firms rely heavily on perceived trust and their reputation in order to get clients. As a result, both advisors and their firms have a strong incentive to distance themselves from the “bad apples” of the industry.

Yet a newly released study entitled “The Market For Financial Adviser Misconduct” finds that market forces and the industry’s self-regulatory mechanisms are failing to cleanse the bad apples. As a result, 73% of "financial advisors" (though the study actually analyzed FINRA-registered brokers, not fiduciary financial advisors!) who disclose a material misconduct event on FINRA BrokerCheck are still employed a year later, despite the fact that such brokers are a whopping 5x more likely to engage in misconduct again in the future.

On the one hand, the results of the research emphasize the importance of consumers doing effective due diligence using tools like FINRA BrokerCheck or seeking out services that “vet” advisors on their behalf (i.e., find advisors and brokers with clean regulatory records), and cast a positive light on FINRA’s recent efforts (including overhauling the FINRA BrokerCheck interface, and soon requiring all brokers to include a hyperlink back to their BrokerCheck record on their professional pages/profiles).

At the same time, though, the fact that bad brokers have been able to persist so long, and find safe haven in a subset of brokerage firms that appear to have cultures that are ‘unusually’ permissive of broker misconduct - combined with the fact that the SEC improperly allows those brokers to hold out as "financial advisors" in the first place - raises the question of whether the industry’s self-regulatory mechanisms are failing altogether. To the point that, similar to another "advisor sting" study from NBER several years ago, even researchers studying financial advisors and brokers can't tell them apart. As a result, is it any surprise that the President and the Department of Labor are pushing for fiduciary regulatory change?

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Mar 5-6)

March 4, 2016 02:29 pm 4 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with a controversial new industry study finding that not only do 7% of all "financial advisors" (those registered in FINRA BrokerCheck) have a serious misconduct event in their records, but the overwhelming majority of them remain in the industry even after committing their infractions, with some firms reported to have as many as 1-in-5 advisors with a misconduct disclosure. Also in the news this week is the launch of Morningstar's new ESG sustainability ratings for 20,000+ mutual funds and ETFs, as the rise of impact and socially responsible investing continues.

From there, we have a slew of articles related to business development and growing an advisory firm, including: a discussion from Mark Tibergien about whether advisors are paying too much in using solicitor agreements to get referrals; how some advisors have had great success hosting a radio show to build their clientele (but that many advisors have found radio to be an expensive failure, too); what surveys of clients who refer tells us about why they refer and how to increase referrals (hint: asking them for referrals is not the way to do it!); how to develop strategic alliances to try to generate more high-quality high-net-worth referrals; the importance of letting your own personality and "style" shine through in your marketing and business development; and how one 26-year-old woman succeeded in getting ultra-high-net-worth clients after joining Goldman Sachs by embracing a business development attitude across both her professional and personal life.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first is a look at how people who feel powerful and confidence are more creative, process information better, and focus more effectively... until they're put in a group with other powerful people, where the results get worse as the leaders jockey for leadership status and lose focus on the purpose of the group; the second is a Journal of Financial Planning study showing how some people have a naturally high propensity to plan, while others will struggle to engage with a financial planner until/unless they are better trained on how to plan for themselves; and the last is the review of a survey study of financial advisors and their own tendencies towards financial planning, which finds that fewer than half of all financial advisors even have a financial plan of their own, and a mere 4% engage an outside financial planning professional to assist them, suggesting at the best that advisors are like the proverbial "cobbler's children with no shoes" neglecting their personal situation (and at worst may be hypocrites about the value of financial planning itself?).

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 discussion about the rise of "ransomware" cyberattacks on financial advisors, LPL Financial's coming robo-advisor tool, and the new Morningstar ESG sustainability ratings tool!

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Google’s Nascent #FinTech Robo-Advisor – Google Compare – Bites The Dust

March 3, 2016 09:18 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

While there have been a number of small robo-advisor start-ups in since the financial crisis, and a few traditional financial services firms have thrown their hats into the ring, the looming question of the robo-advisor space is whether, someday, a "mega" web business like Google would want to someday get in on the action. Which, given the sheer scope of the company, could cause some real disruption of financial advisors.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we look at the recent announcement that Google has decided to shut down its Google Compare service, which provided consumers an opportunity to compare and then purchase a wide range of financial services products, from CDs and savings accounts to mortgages and car insurance. Some had speculated that it was only a matter of time before Google used the service - which was once actually named Google Advisor - as the launch platform for their own robo-advisor service.

Ultimately, Google declared that its decision to shut down Google Compare was driven by the simple fact that while people might be gathering information online to evaluate financial services products, they weren't necessarily buying online. In other words, at the end of the day, it takes more than just a website to buy a complex financial services product. A challenge that Google learned from its Google Compare experiment, and that the direct-to-consumer robo-advisor platforms and their slowing growth rates are revealing as well.

Of course, none of this is meant to say that technology isn't important and won't change the way that financial advisors do business. But just as online brokerage platforms of the 1990s and the rise of the internet didn't replace financial advisors, it appears less and less likely that robo-advisors will, either. Still, just as the leading advisory firms ultimately adopted the internet technology of the 1990s to run successful advisory firms today, the cycle is playing out again with Blackrock buying FutureAdvisor and Invesco buying Jemstep. Which means in the end once again it won't be the technology firms that replace advisors, but the technology-augmented advisors who beat out the rest that lag behind!

The Age-100 Tax Problem With Outliving The End Of Life Insurance Mortality Tables

March 2, 2016 07:01 am 17 Comments CATEGORY: Insurance

The conventional view of “whole life” and other forms of “permanent” insurance coverage is that the policies are designed to last for your entire life, however long you may live. As long as you keep paying the premiums, you can keep your coverage, until it pays out as a tax-free death benefit.

However, the reality is that the underlying structure of permanent insurance, and the key characteristic that makes it affordable to have coverage – even in the later years of life – is that a “permanent” insurance policy actually has an ultimate maturity date, such as age 100. Which means if you live beyond that point, the policy “matures” and pays out its face value!

And the problem with outliving life insurance is not merely that the policy matures and pays out its benefit, but the fact that it was paid while alive – and not as an actual death benefit – meaning the payout is a taxable gain to the policyowner! In other words, outliving the life insurance maturity date not only marks the end of life insurance coverage itself, but a taxable event!

Fortunately, policies issued in the past 10 years or so primarily use the newest 2001 CSO mortality tables, which were extended to a maximum life span of age 121, to reduce the risk of the insured outliving the end of life insurance mortality tables. However, most existing permanent life insurance was issued under “old” mortality tables with a maximum age of 100 (or even age 96), which means most permanent life insurance owners still have to contend with the possibility that they can actually outlive their life insurance… and face the tax consequences that come with it!