Nerd's Eye View blog

How Technology Is Turning The Typical Advisor AUM Fee Schedule Upside Down

December 15, 2014 07:01 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

The “traditional” AUM fee schedule for an advisory firm has graduated breakpoint as asset levels rise, a tacit acknowledgement that it doesn’t really take twice the work to service a client with twice the assets, and that investment management (and/or with broader financial planning and wealth management services) is fundamentally an expensive service that gets cheaper with “volume” discounts as clients invest more.

By contrast, today’s “robo-advisor” platforms simply charge a flat low AUM fee. While robo-advisors provide only a limited scope of services for that price point – not directly competing against a comprehensive advisor – the nature of charging a low price for a commoditized service implies that advisors can only charge more by explicitly offering additional value-add services (e.g., financial planning and wealth management) for an additional fee, that rises with the client complexity and depth of client service.

While the reality is that none of today’s “robo-advisor” platforms are actually profitable, and their business model is heavily subsidized by venture capital while they try to achieve scale, the difference in fee structures highlights a fundamental difference that will likely remain relevant for years to come: is investment management and supporting financial planning and wealth management services an “expensive” service that gets (relatively) cheaper to provide at larger asset levels, or actually a “cheap” service where higher net worth client can buy value-added services for an additional cost?

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Dec 13-14)

December 12, 2014 02:31 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with some industry regulatory news, including the potential that Congress may soon approve NARAB (creating the National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers) to better facilitate multi-state insurance licensing, and that the SEC is considering whether to require large RIAs to have a business continuity and succession plan in place (following on a similar proposal by NASAA earlier this year for state RIAs to be subject to such a rule as well).

Also in the news this week are a number of articles related to year-end planning, both for advisors and clients, including a discussion of the rules for determining when a charitable gift is made and "delivered" for end-of-year charitable donations, an overview of why almost 10% of ETFs are actually making long-term capital gains distributions this year despite their typical tax-efficiency, some tips for advisors giving gifts to clients about mistakes to avoid, and some guidance about how to execute good employee performance and compensation reviews.

From there, we have a few investment-related articles this week, including: a discussion of how nontraded REITs really work, their potential conflicts of interest, and why advisors should perhaps be wary of them; a look at a new AQR "alternatives" fund that actually seeks to capture the return premium by investing in risk factors without taking on the underlying risks of the investments; and a look at the explosive growth of "securities-based lending" for higher net worth individuals - often as an alternative to more traditional mortgage lending - and the problems that it may create the next time there's a market downturn.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first looks at how as service professionals we tend to underestimate the value of the component parts of what we do, leading us to package together a "value beast" that may be so complex to explain and difficult to deliver that it would have been better to just provide clients the component parts instead; the second provides a reminder that when there's an elephant in the room - like recent market volatility - it's always better to acknowledge the elephant and talk about the issue than to ignore it and wait/hope it goes away; and the last provides an interesting look at how even 5-year periods of returns can drastically differ from what financial theory expects for stocks, bonds, and commodities, yet over the long haul (e.g., multi-decade time periods) financial theory still holds up far better than we typically give it credit for.

And be certain to check out Bill Winterberg's "Bits & Bytes" video on the latest in advisor tech news at the end, including coverage of the 2014 Advisor Tech Survey, Fidelity's collaboration with LearnVest, and a new "Direct Indexing" solution from Wealthfront! Enjoy the reading!

Understanding The New Once-Per-Year 60-Day Rollover Rules For IRAs And The Exclusion For Trustee-To-Trustee Transfers

December 10, 2014 07:01 am 38 Comments CATEGORY: Retirement Planning

The rule allowing IRA distributions to be rolled over within 60 days to avoid taxation has been around as long as IRAs themselves have existed, whether used simply to facilitate the transfer of an account, to fix a distribution mistake, or for those who want to use their IRA as a form of “temporary loan” to be repaid in a timely manner. However, to prevent abuse, Congress did enact a rule that limits 60-day rollovers to only being done once every 12 months, which the IRS has historically applied on an IRA-by-IRA basis.

In the recent case of Bobrow v. Commissioner, though, the Tax Court expanded the interpretation of the once-per-year rollover rule, changing it from applying one account at a time to instead being applied on an aggregated basis across all IRAs, effectively killing a popular form of sequential-rollovers-as-extended-personal-loan strategy.

The IRS has declared that it will begin to enforce the new aggregation-based IRA rollover rules in 2015, with a special transition rule that will still allow old 2014 rollovers to cause a 1-year waiting period for just the accounts that were involved and not all IRAs. Nonetheless, going forward advisors and their clients will need to be more cautious than ever not to run afoul of the rules when engaging in multiple 60-day rollovers over time… or better yet, simply ensure that IRA funds are only moved as a trustee-to-trustee transfer to avoid the rules altogether!

The Battle Of Advisor Dashboards And Client PFM Portals – Advisor Technology As The Engine Or The Interface?

December 8, 2014 07:01 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

With the migration of advisor technology solutions over the past several years from local servers to existing in the cloud, the ability for software to be continuously digitally connected has led to a massive rise in software integrations, allowing an ever-increasing amount of data to flow through the "Big 3" technology hub for advisors, going more and more efficiently from one software platform to the next.

Yet as information and data flows more freely across the advisor technology stack, it is becoming increasingly frustrating for advisors to need to log into so many different software packages to manage their business, and for clients to have several different portals to access their document vault, their financial plan, their investment account information, and more. If the software is becoming more integrated, will there soon be a single centralized dashboard for advisors to manage their practices and monitor key performance indicators, and a single portal for clients to effectively manage their personal financial information?

The convergence towards a single advisor practice management dashboard and a single client portal, though, raises the question of where exactly these software tools will be anchored. Should client portals be built around client vaults, or planning software, or portfolio reporting? Should advisor dashboards be built within financial planning or portfolio accounting software, or the advisor CRM instead? Ultimately, it remains to see where the winners will come from – or if an entire new software category for advisors may soon emerge – but for advisor technology companies, they may soon come to the crossroads about whether the purpose of the software is to be the engine that powers and manages the data, or the portal to interface with it.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Dec 6-7)

December 5, 2014 02:45 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with the results from the industry's top annual financial advisor technology survey, co-produced by Joel Bruckenstein and Financial Planning magazine, highlighting some of the notable changes in the advisor technology landscape, from up-and-comers Riskalyze and Orion Advisor Services, to the ongoing dominance of MoneyGuidePro financial planning software, how incredibly fractured portfolio accounting and performance reporting software continues to be, and which broker/dealers and custodians have the highest (and lowest) technology satisfaction scores amongst their advisors.

There are several additional advisor-technology-related articles this week as well, from an announcement from Fidelity that they will be partnering with "robo" platform LearnVest (following on the heels of their recent Betterment Institutional partnership as well), to an interesting interview on the future of financial planning (software) from InStream Wealth CEO Alex Murguia, and lastly a "new" entrant to the portfolio accounting software world for RIAs called WealthTouch that his historically worked with ultra-high-net-worth clientele but is now looking to come "downstream" to clients with "just" $5M of assets.

From there, we have a number of retirement and planning articles this week, including: a discussion of how annuitization can effectively serve the same "hedging" function as a hedge fund for retirees (but at a fraction of the cost); how delaying Social Security has a natural "bias" in favor of delaying for affluent clients; a look at whether the risk-reduction benefits of individual bond ladders over bond mutual funds may be overstated; an interesting research-based proposal to help shore up Social Security by offering retirees who delay a choice between higher benefits or a(n actuarially fair) lump sum alternative; and a new study from the Journal of Financial Planning showing that, controlling for other factors, those who use a comprehensive financial planner really do appear to save more effectively for retirement than self-directed investors (or those who use an "advisor" who doesn't really do comprehensive planning).

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first reports on the "surprise" announcement just days before the big MarketCounsel Summit conference that opening keynoter Tony Robbins, who in recent weeks has declared himself the new "voice of independent advisors" will actually be delivering a generic not-RIA-specific speech and will not be allowing any journalists to cover or write about what he says in his 2-hour keynote session, raising at the least a significant amount of confusion about what impact he really intends to bring to the industry; the second is a fascinating research study about the real risks and opportunities involved in holding concentrated stock positions, which have historically provided both a surprising number of "golden swan" events (a large number of improbably good financial outcomes) but also a stunning 40% chance of permanent impairment of capital (a 70%+ decline in value that never recovers); and the last is an intriguing article looking at how "robo-advisor" platforms may co-exist with advisors, where technology solves "simpler" problems and advisors focus on the more "complex" ones, and that the biggest winners may be the "bionic" (or "cyborg") advisors who blend together the human and the technology.

Enjoy the reading!

Evaluating The Tax Deferral And Tax Bracket Arbitrage Benefits Of Tax Loss Harvesting

December 3, 2014 07:01 am 16 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Tax loss harvesting is a popular tax planning strategy, especially as the end of the year approaches and investors consider their potential capital gains exposure. Yet for many investors, the benefit of tax loss harvesting is overestimated, as harvesting a loss generates current tax savings, but also reduces the cost basis of the investment, triggering a potential gain in the future that may offset most or all of the loss harvesting benefit!

Nonetheless, even if a harvested loss creates a future gain, there is still an opportunity for tax deferral in the meantime, which can create a modest but non-trivial economic benefit for tax loss harvesting. The benefits are further amplified – sometimes greatly so – if there is a potential that gains in the future will be taxed at a lower rate than losses harvested today, with the caveat that if brackets go the other direction, tax loss harvesting not only loses its positive value but can actually be wealth destructive!

To the extent that tax brackets changes are anticipated favorable, though – or at least, that rates will hold steady – some benefit to tax loss harvesting remains, and can be maximized with portfolios that hold a wide range of diversified positions (creating more loss harvesting opportunities), have ongoing contributions (again creating more loss harvesting opportunities), and are checked frequently for losses to harvest (as only trying to harvest losses in December can miss out on even greater intra-year loss harvesting opportunities!). And for those who are not at risk for adverse tax bracket changes, the tax loss harvesting opportunity is especially appealing in today’s environment, with transaction costs (including trading fees and bid/ask spreads) as low as they've ever been, and more opportunities than ever to own investment alternatives that minimize tracking error while navigating the wash sale rules!

A Buyers Take on Succession Planning in The Financial Services Industry

December 2, 2014 07:01 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on succession planning, and an explosion in the number of consultants providing advice on merger and acquisition deals, and metrics about the deals themselves. Yet thus far, almost all of the guidance and "best practices" offered regarding succession planning focus almost exclusively on the veteran planner who is selling the business, and doesn't necessarily consider the buyer's perspective.

In this guest post, advisor Daniel Zajac shares his thoughts on succession planning from the "other" side of the deal - as a 32-year-old buyer looking at purchasing the firms of retiring advisors. From common deal terms like size of down payment and the relevance of earn-outs and employment agreements, to the relative importance of "good fit" over finding the right/best price in the first place, Zajac's perspective provides some helpful color and contrast to the "traditional" advice on advisor succession planning.

So whether you're an advisor who may someday be thinking about selling your practice - and wants to gain some insight into a buyer's mentality - or are a younger financial planner yourself looking for a better understanding of whether buying a practice is a good way to get started as an advisor (and what to think about if you're going to go that route), I hope that this article provides some helpful food for thought!

How Can Financial Advisors Differentiate Their Services Across Segmented Client Tiers?

December 1, 2014 07:01 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

The importance of segmenting clients into different tiers (e.g., A, B, and C clients) has long been discussed in the industry, along with different ways to segment those clients on criteria ranging from revenue and profits to referrals and the ease of working with them. The concept is relatively straightforward: to improve the efficiency and profitability of the firm by appropriately matching the depth and level of services to the client’s value to the firm.

Yet despite the prevalence of the advice to segment clients, there is remarkably little written about how exactly to differentiate those tiers of service. After all, if financial planning is “holistic” by nature, it’s not exactly conducive to higher and lower service tiers. A doctor that just does “half a check-up” for C patients would be guilty of malpractice, and for many financial planners there is concern of similar risks to do a less-than-complete job for clients!

Nonetheless, the reality is that there are ways to effectively segment clients, without giving bad or “incomplete” advice – either by simply defining and limiting the scope of the engagement in the first place, adding more services or perks for top-tier clients (as opposed to “taking away” from bottom-tier clients), or just differentiating in how those services are delivered and how much additional support is provided along the way. In the end, we even look at a sample of what a segmented client service offering might look like when it’s all put together.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Nov 29-30)

November 28, 2014 02:04 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 CFP Board and Rick Kahler have reached a resolution regarding his publicly controversial "fee-only" situation, with the odd conclusion that Kahler can avoid declaring that he receives any commission compensation directly or through a related party by transferring his commission-based business to... his wife, who inexplicably is not being treated as a related party. Also in the news this week was an updated regulatory notice associated with the Department of Labor's fiduciary proposal, suggesting that the next draft is still on track for release in January.

From there, we have a number of practice management this week, including a discussion of how advisors might plan to adapt (in advance) to survive the next big market downturn, a look at how advisors can create a "shock plan" to plan in advance for potential shocks to the business, a guide for advisors looking to change broker-dealers about how to do it properly to maximize the retention of clients and minimize business disruptions (to the extent possible), and an interesting profile of an independent RIA Wetherby Asset Management that has grown to over $4B of AUM in just over 20 years with a whopping $10M client minimum yet even while nearly 75% of its staff are under the age of 40.

We also have a couple of technology articles this week, including a review of the new financial planning software Advizr, a look at some advisor technology tools being adopted on mobile devices, and a (favorable) early look at the major client portal overhaul coming for the Black Diamond portfolio performance reporting software.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first is a detailed look from the RIA's perspective at the recent Barrons cover story on Schwab CEO Walt Bettinger that suggests the company is still conflicted about the fact that it is simultaneously the largest independent RIA custodian and also a massive consumer retail brand; the second looks at client trust, and makes the interesting point that just because clients do business with an advisor doesn't mean they fully trust the advisor (which may explain why the clients still have other outside advisors, and are not referring despite saying they are "happy" clients); and the last explores how the amount of available alpha in the investment markets may be shrinking, despite the fact that active managers have more tools and resources that ever at their disposal, because paradoxically the higher the average skill level of all active managers, the harder it is for any one of them to materially outperform.

Enjoy the reading, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Mechanics Of The 0% Long-Term Capital Gains Tax Rate And Harvesting Capital Gains For A Free Step-Up In Basis!

November 26, 2014 07:01 am 48 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

For “lower income” individuals whose income falls within the bottom two ordinary income tax brackets, the Internal Revenue Code applies a 0% long-term capital gains rate to the extent their gains also fall within the lower two brackets. However, the 0% rate only applies as long as the income actually does fall within those lower brackets – which means “too much” in capital gains will eventually cross out of the 0% rate and into the higher tax brackets.

Nonetheless, the potential for 0% long-term capital gains rates means that for those who are eligible, the best thing they can do every year is not harvest capital losses – the “typical” capital gains strategy – but instead to harvest gains! By selling investments that are up, and buying them back again immediately (without any wash sale rules to navigate!), the taxpayer can effectively get a step-up in basis on current investments without any (Federal) tax liability!

Of course, the caveat to this strategy is that while long-term capital gains may be eligible for 0% rates for lower income individuals, it is still income itself, potentially impacting certain deductions and tax credits, and the taxation of Social Security. In addition, harvesting capital gains must be coordinated with other strategies, like partial Roth conversions, which can potentially drive up long-term capital gains rates and make capital gains harvesting less effective. Still, though, the potential to claim a free step-up in basis is not one to be missed, for any years where income is low enough to take advantage of the rules, whether due to just having income low enough to qualify, having a “temporarily” low income year due to a job loss or change, or simply looking to harvest capital gains once retired when wage income is gone and required minimum distributions have not yet begun!