Nerd's Eye View blog

Is Financial Planning Software Preventing The Growth Of Real Financial Planning Advice?

January 18, 2016 07:01 am 38 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

One of the not-so-secret “secrets” of financial planning is that relatively few advisors actually generate the bulk of their income by getting paid for financial planning advice. Instead, despite the growth of financial planning in recent decades, the reality is still that most advisors get paid for financial planning through the subsequent products that are sold for implementation, or the subsequent assets they gather or retain through financial planning as a value-add.

And while arguably this is still not a bad way to build a business model around financial planning, the fact that financial planning remains rooted primarily in product sales and asset gathering has influenced – perhaps more than most advisors realized – the way that our financial planning software is built.

In fact, with its focus on investment accumulation (for retirement and college) and insurance-related scenarios, most financial planning software may be little more than a product sales and asset gathering tool shrouded in financial planning terms. Areas that are highly relevant for financial advice but not for product sales – from tax strategies to debt management to cash flow and budgeting – remain remarkably absent from most financial planning software tools available today.

Given that financial planning is a complex, intangible service that may be beneficial for clients but is hard for them to conceptualize, having tools to illustrate financial planning strategies, help clients adjust their behavior, and show the value of the advice we’ve delivered is essential. Yet in a world where most financial planning software remains so product-centric, have we progressed to the point where the financial planning software is not facilitating real advice, but limiting its growth?

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Jan 16-17)

January 15, 2016 02:31 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with the big news that mega asset manager Invesco has bought "robo-advisor-for-advisors" platform Jemstep, in yet another example of an investment company acquiring a robo technology platform to use as a distribution channel for advisors.

From there, we have a number of technical financial planning articles, including: a look at why most retirees really go broke (hint: despite our focus on Monte Carlo analysis, it's not actually from market volatility, but spending shocks instead); how to proactively use the Roth recharacterization rules for various Roth conversion strategies; a discussion of recent research examining why corporate bonds don't seem to provide the risk premium over government bonds that would be expected given their default risk; and a look at the ongoing rise in various "values-based investing" approaches from SRI and ESG to impact investing (to the point that even regulators and the IRS are making it easier to pursue such strategies).

We also have a few practice management articles this week, from the ongoing decline of client referrals (as affluent clients seem to be increasingly concerned about the "social risk" of making a referral), to a reminder of the importance of updating your LLC operating agreement for your advisory firm (or more importantly, creating one if your LLC doesn't have one already!), the liability issues involved if an advisory firm employee makes a trading mistake, and some reminders of what not to do as you complete the annual Form ADV update process in the coming weeks.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all focused on the topic of personal productivity: the first is a look at why you might consider getting a personal assistant to help you be more productive in business (even if you have to pay for it out of your own pocket); the second is a reminder of how helpful it can be to create a structured weekly routine for yourself (where client meetings are only scheduled on certain days of the week); and the last is a powerful reminder of the difference between just being "busy" (even if you're very efficient at getting things done!), and truly being productive.

And be certain to check out Bill Winterberg's "Bits & Bytes" video on the latest in advisor tech news at the end, including a discussion of the Invesco acquisition of robo-advisor Jemstep, social media platform Snapchat is rumored to be working on its own robo-advisor offering, BBVA Compass is announced as the first financial services firm to be linked up to FutureAdvisor since Blackrock acquired it, and Wealthfront announced its own Portfolio Review service to analyze fees and performance of a prospect's outside portfolios in an effort to try to amplify its own lead generation.

Enjoy the reading!

Getting Funding To Launch An RIA And The Startup Costs Of Becoming A Financial Advisor

January 14, 2016 09:01 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment opportunities for personal financial advisors will grow by 30% in the coming decade, and Cerulli projects that nearly 1/3rd of existing advisors will retire over that same time period as well - creating a tremendous opportunity for those who are interesting in becoming a financial advisor.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces – a new video series we’ve launched where I will take reader questions, both emailed and live, every Tuesday at 1PM EST via the Periscope social media platform – we look at how much it costs to start an advisory firm, what it takes to survive in the early years, and why it is so difficult to get funding for your new advisory business venture.

Yet ultimately, it turns out that the simple reality is it's actually remarkably inexpensive to become a financial advisor - at least compared to the startup costs for most other industries. The real blocking point for getting started is not the cost to establish the business, but the "income gap" that is created as you leave another job and haven't yet gotten clients in your new firm. Or viewed another way, it's the difficulty in paying your personal bills while getting started as a financial advisor that is the real challenge, not the startup costs for creating the business itself.

You can see me discuss all of this and more in our #OfficeHours video posted in today’s article, along with details on how to sign up to watch the next broadcast live, and participate for yourself!

Should Equity Return Assumptions In Retirement Projections Be Reduced For Today’s High Shiller CAPE Valuation?

January 13, 2016 07:01 am 49 Comments CATEGORY: Retirement Planning

The sustainability of retirement cash flows from a portfolio depends in no small part on the returns generated by that portfolio – in particular, the real returns, given the pernicious impact of inflation over a multi-decade retirement.

In today’s high-valuation environment, many retirement projections are being done with reduced long-term return assumptions… with the caveat that while many advisors agree on the need to project lower returns, there is little agreement on how much lower it should be.

A look at the available market data suggests that realistically, it would be appropriate to reduce equity return assumptions by about 100bps (or 1 percentage point) over the next 30 years, to reflect the current valuation environment. Ironically, the reduction is not greater, because 30 years is such a long time that even if returns are bad for a period of time, there are enough subsequent years to recover as well.

In point of fact, though, it turns out that market valuation is even more predictive of 15-year returns, and that today’s high P/E ratios imply that between now and 2030, market returns could be reduced by as much as 400bps. On the other hand, because market valuations (and the associated returns) tend to move in cycles, this also implies that in the 2030s and 2040s, market returns could be as much as 400bps above the long-term average as well.

Ultimately, then, the ideal way to adjust return assumptions in a retirement plan in today’s environment may not be to reduce long-term returns at all, but instead to do projections with a “regime-based” approach to return assumptions. This would entail projecting a period of much lower returns, followed by a subsequent period of higher returns, in a manner that more accurately reflects the impact of market valuation on returns – and better accounts for the sequence-of-return risk along the way as well!

Life Settlements – Selling A Life Insurance Policy That’s No Longer Wanted For More Than Its Cash Value

January 12, 2016 07:01 am 9 Comments CATEGORY: Insurance

The classic view of life insurance is that it is purchased as long as needed or desired, and then lapsed (or if there's any cash value, surrendered) when it is no longer necessary. Term insurance policies are usually expected to lapse, and in practice even "permanent" insurance often ends out being surrendered before it is ever paid out as a death claim.

Technically, though, there is a third option to the "keep versus lapse" decision of life insurance: to sell the policy to a third party in a transaction called a "life settlement" to an (institutional) investor who might be willing to pay more than just the policy's cash value (or the $0 value that might be available if the coverage just lapses on its own). After all, in the hands of an investor, a life insurance policy is simply an "investment" that has ongoing cash flow requirements (premiums) but will eventually mature as a (much larger) death benefit later. So as long as the time horizon is "reasonable", the policy can actually have a remarkably appealing implied rate of return to an investor, for which the current policyowner can be paid!

In this guest post, Lingke Wang - co-founder of Ovid Life, a technology firm aiming to create a centralized transparent marketplace for life settlements transactions - provides a "Financial Advisor's Guide To Life Settlements" with a detailed review of the life settlement industry, what a life settlement provider is and how life settlements operate, and the mechanics of how an investor evaluates a prospective life settlement contract purchase (which is important to understand for any policyowner who might be selling their life insurance policy!).

Ironically, the biggest caveat of engaging in a life settlement is the reality that any life settlement policy worth selling to an investor is worth even more in the long run for the policyowner to just keep themselves, where the internal rate of return will be even more appealing (since the investor has both transaction costs to acquire the policy, and does not enjoy the death benefit tax free as the original policyowner would). Nonetheless, that appealing internal rate of return for keeping a permanent life insurance policy only applies by continuing to maintain the policy, including ongoing premiums. So for a policyowner who simply doesn't want to - or can't afford to - keep the policy in the first place, a life settlement may still be a more appealing exit than just letting the policy lapse away!

An Emerging War Over Who Controls Client Data, And The Unconsidered Consequences Of Rising Interest Rates – Top Financial Advisor Issues For 2016

January 11, 2016 07:01 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

In last week's blog post, we looked at what is shaping up to be the dominant issue for financial advisors in 2016: the rollout of the Department of Labor's new fiduciary rule, which will likely reshape not just the delivery of financial advice, but challenge the relevance of the companies that support financial advisors (i.e., broker-dealers), and the nature of how financial services products are distributed (in a world where companies will no longer be able to use big commissions to incentivize the use of their products).

However, the rest of the world is not standing still while regulatory change looms. The ongoing march of technology continues, and while 2014 was the year of the robo-advisor and 2015 was the year of robo-advisors-for-advisors, it appears that in 2016 the big issue in FinTech will be a looming war over client data - who has access to it, who controls it, how is it protected, and ultimately does the data about the client belong to the financial services firm or to the client themselves? As account aggregation is increasingly used not just to track a client's household data but actually used to facilitate money transfers - not to mention companies beginning to leverage the information for big data insights - the question of who has what rights to financial data and what can be done with it is coming to a head in 2016.

And of course, it's important to recognize what may still be the biggest outright impact to the business of most financial advisors in 2016 - the Fed's new path of raising interest rates, for the first time in nearly a decade, and the consequences that may bring in the coming year. The "good" news is that at least with fixed income enjoying outright higher yields, the pressure may be reduced for advisors to seek out various "alternative" asset classes in search of yield and return. The "badl" news, though, is that rising rates can adversely impact bond prices, and even risks cracking the stock market as today's P/E ratios and market valuations may not look as appealing once bonds are paying more. Yet ultimately, some of the biggest consequences of higher interest rates may be the secondary effects, from improvements in the pricing of long-term care insurance, to higher payouts and better guarantees from deferred annuities, and a potential explosion of earnings growth for RIA custodians (with some estimates that Schwab's total earnings could triple in a normalized rate environment!)... not to mention the ripple effects across the entire economy with changes to the cost of capital and the discount rate used in most financial models.
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Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Jan 9-10)

January 8, 2016 01:41 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with the latest release of FINRA's regulatory and exam priorities in 2016, where the organization has indicated its leading target is "broker-dealer culture" around compliance and the way that conflicts of interest are handled.

From there, we have several practice management articles this week, including: the ongoing rise of social media adoption by advisors (and that the highest adoption is amongst the most financially successful advisors); how despite the rise of social media, "old-fashioned" email remains a remarkably effective marketing strategy; tips on how to manage advisory firm staff members, particularly regarding setting and then monitoring/managing employee goals; a round-up review by advisor tech guru Joel Bruckenstein of leading RIA custodian technology platforms including Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and LPL; and an article providing a great reminder that the real key to time management is not getting more efficient about what you do but getting better about deciding what not to do in the first place.

We also have a couple of technical articles this week, from a look at how "stress testing" portfolios with tools like HiddenLevers is becoming a popular alternative to analyzing traditional portfolio risk metrics like standard deviation or value-at-risk (VaR), to a discussion of how the structuring of irrevocable trusts has changed in recent years (from the separation of administrative and investment trustees to the rise of distribution committees and trust protectors), and a review of the data on what the true odds really are that a 65-year-old will need long-term care.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first is a discussion of the rising battle between banks and other financial institutions, and the account aggregation and personal financial management tools that draw upon and use that data (and potentially overload bank servers in the process); the second is a look at how economics research has been undergoing a significant shift in the past 30 years, from research being dominated by pure theory to increasingly focusing on real-world empirical data (supported by the availability of the personal computer and the rise of the internet and its data accessibility); and the last is a great reminder of the perspective that can be gained when a financial planner actually becomes a financial planning client, and sees the financial planning experience (and how it can be improved) from the other side of the table.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Why Monte Carlo Analysis Still Matters And The Risk Of A Retiree Black Swan Is [Probably] Overrated

January 7, 2016 12:01 pm 17 Comments CATEGORY: Retirement Planning

Over the past 15 years, we’ve seen the rapid rise of Monte Carlo analysis as a tool for analyzing retirement. Yet at the same time, the use of conventional statistics to project potential market scenarios has been under attack, for failing to capture the so-called “Black Swan” phenomenon.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces – a new video series we’ve launched where I will take reader questions, both emailed and live, every Tuesday at 1PM EST via the Periscope social media platform – we look at the phenomenon of Black Swans, what a black swan event really is, and how the “risk” of a black swan is quite different for a long-term retiree who takes annual withdrawals versus a leveraged hedge fund who faces the risk of having their debt called in.

In fact, we ultimately find that while Monte Carlo analysis for retirees is commonly criticized for failing to capture extreme market events, it turns out that the biggest problem with Monte Carlo is not that it fails to model the downside risks but that it actually understates the possibility for upside surprises!

You can see me discuss all of this and more in our #OfficeHours video posted in today’s article, along with details on how to sign up to watch the next broadcast live, and participate for yourself!

How Continuing To Work, Even In Retirement, Can Increase Social Security Benefits

January 6, 2016 07:02 am 76 Comments CATEGORY: Retirement Planning

The conventional view of delaying Social Security is that doing so is an opportunity to earn delayed retirement credits, an 8%/year increase in benefits that can be highly appealing in today’s low-yield environment.

However, the reality is that delaying Social Security benefits doesn't just increase benefits by earning delayed retirement credits. Additional years of working while collecting Social Security benefits can also increase the worker’s Average Indexed Monthly Earnings used to calculate those Social Security benefits in the first place, just as ending work early can reduce AIME below what is projected as benefits on the Social Security statement.

And depending on how much additional income will be earned – and how low his/her historical earnings really are – the reality is that continuing to work while getting Social Security benefits can produce a material increase in future payments for some workers, simply because of how benefits are recalculated. In other words, for those past full retirement age (and no longer subject to the Earnings Test), it’s possible to be receiving Social Security benefits while working and have those years added to the Social Security work history to generate higher future benefits as well!

In the end, working while on Social Security won’t always produce a significant increase in Social Security benefits. For those whose prior working years produced more income – at least on an inflation-adjusted basis – it’s possible that continuing to work will generate no additional benefits at all. Nonetheless, for those who haven’t fully capped out Social Security benefits based on 35 years of maximal earnings already, it is possible to be working and getting Social Security benefits at the same time, and have that work increase the benefits (at least after reaching full retirement age). And the potential for a benefits increase can be material in some cases, and thus should definitely be considered in the timing and impact of when to stop working!

Top Financial Advisor Issue For 2016 – The Department Of Labor Fiduciary Rule And The Best Interests Contract Exemption (BICE)

January 4, 2016 07:01 am 9 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

The turning of the New Year brings a fresh set of both opportunities and challenges, and 2016 looks to be no exception to the rule.

Last year the dominant themes included the pivot of "robo" technology from being a direct-to-consumer solution to instead becoming robo-advisor-for-advisors platforms (which spurred an explosion of FinTech acquisitions), the ongoing crisis of differentiation for advisors leading to more and more discussions of whether it's time to reinvent the advisor business model (or perhaps just finally get more focused into niches and specialization), and the growing pressure of regulatory reform as President Obama threw his full support behind the Department of Labor's proposed fiduciary rule and the anti-fiduciary lobbyists spent all year trying (and failing) to stop it.

In fact, with a final failed effort to stop the DoL proposal by trying attach a rider to the recent omnibus spending legislation last month, it now appears that the pending release of the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule will be the hot issue for financial advisors in 2016. The rule has the potential to completely reshape the landscape of financial advice, force broker-dealers to reinvent themselves (into turnkey financial planning platform [TFPP] solutions instead?), and force financial services product manufacturers for the first time ever to compete solely on the merits of their products rather than the size of the commissions they can pay.

While in the long run I would still maintain that a fiduciary rule for financial advisors is absolutely critical as a protection for consumers, there seems little doubt that 2016 will be a seminal transition year that sets the stage for how financial advice will be delivered in the coming decades - a tremendous opportunity for advisors (and the companies serving them) who are prepared for the change, and the beginning of the end for those companies who have not positioned themselves for an advice-centric future.