Nerd's Eye View blog

Building A Niche Advisory Business: It Takes 3 Years For People To Know, Like, And Trust

August 4, 2014 07:01 am 14 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

Starting a niche business can be very difficult. It’s hard to be a specialist for a particular type of clientele or need that they face from day 1; it takes time to learn the issues and the pain points, and acquire the knowledge and expertise. And even once you have the knowledge and expertise to provide the solutions, there’s still the simple challenge of actually finding clients to whom you can deliver those solutions! After all, it’s not enough to just know how to solve the problems of your target clientele; ultimately, people do business with people they know, like, and trust… which means even after getting the expertise, you still have to become known, liked, and trusted.

As a result, it takes time to build a niche business. In fact, having witnessed the process repeatedly, it appears that with remarkable consistency, the time it takes to become known, liked, and trusted is about 3 years. The bad news of this path is that it can feel painfully slow and even demotivating in the early years. Yet as reputation and trust builds, the end result is a business that builds not just linearly year by year, but expotentially as the years pass and the niche develops. Because while it takes time to become known, liked, and trusted within a niche, once you are the "go-to" person for your target clientele, the pace of incoming referrals can be tremendous!

Accordingly, perhaps the most important "tip" for building a successful niche practice is simply to recognize that it takes time to build one, and have a plan for how to navigate that slow building process (from supplementing income to preparing yourself mentally for the time it will take before the real business rewards may come). Similarly, it's crucial to measure "the right things" in the early years - business activity, not business results - because of the time it takes to build trust. Nonetheless, for those who stay focused in a niche, and refine and evolve it over time, the long-run potential remains a business where growth eventually gets much easier over time!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Aug 2-3)

August 1, 2014 02:31 pm 8 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition starts out with reports emerging that Scottrade Advisor Services appears to be strategically shifting away from its position as one of the more startup-friendly custodians, imposing a new asset minimum of $7M, or a potential $12,000 custodial fee for advisors who don't meet the minimum; dozens of advisors who don't meet the minimum are now shifting away to the leading startup-friendly alternatives, SSG and TradePMR instead. In a related story, the latest data on RIAs suggests that notwithstanding industry consolidation and the push towards larger advisory firms, there is still a lot of growth with new RIAs being formed every year (though a significant number of other firms appear to be closing their doors at the same time, leading to a smaller level of net growth in RIAs).

From there, we have several articles on practice management and advisor technology this week, including: how advisory firms need to shift away from revenue-sharing-based compensation to build enduring businesses; a look at some less expensive rebalancing software tools for advisors including RedBlack, Trade Warrior, and TRX; the re-emergence of consumer-targeted BloombergBlack as an advisor-targeted account aggregation and analysis/reporting platform called CircleBlack; and a look at the ongoing aggravation many advisors still face with account aggregation tools, and a new entrant (Quovo) that's attempting to solve the issues.

We also have a few more technical financial planning articles, from an analysis via Morningstar that finds tactically-based target-date funds are outperforming purely strategic TDFs, to a discussion of the various options for long-term care insurance (and alternatives to "traditional" coverage), and a look at how the line-of-credit borrowing limits are determined for clients who want to obtain a standby reverse mortgage to support their retirement income needs.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first gives a credit list of important lessons from the research in social psychology, some of which have significant implications for us as financial planners and how we build a business; the second is a fascinating look at how the pricing of your services dramatically impacts the long-term growth of the business, when you take into account the potential of reinvesting profits back into the business to get new clients in the future and how it compounds over time; and the last reports on a recent research study finding that financial knowledge/acumen is a poor predictor of making good financial decisions, and that the better predictor is whether the individual tends to focus more on the past, present, or future... and notably, the best results are not from those who focus on the future, but those who focus on the past!

Enjoy the reading!

How To Evaluate Your Current And Future Marginal Tax Rate

July 30, 2014 07:01 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Proper tax planning for clients relies on understanding what the tax consequences will be for various tax strategies - in other words, what tax rate, at the margin, will apply to the next dollar of income or deductions. Whether it's taking advantage of charitable deductions, calculating the true after-tax cost of tax-deductible interest, of evaluating the consequences of a Roth conversion, it's crucial to know how the client's tax liability would be impacted, on top of the existing "base" income that already exists, if the planning strategy is implemented.

However, for tax strategies that shift the timing of income - most notably, decisions like to whether to a traditional or Roth retirement account (or whether to convert from traditional to Roth) - it's important to evaluate not only the current marginal tax rate, but also the one that will apply in the future. After all, if the reality is that a Roth conversion accelerates income from future (tax rates) to the present day (tax rates), it's crucial to know whether today's tax rates are actually likely to be lower - or higher - than they would have been down the road!

While the conceptual process for determining a marginal tax rate is fairly straightforward - the tax rate that will apply at the margin after accounting for the underlying base income - the situation is much more complex in light of the various factors that impact marginal tax rates beyond just the client's tax bracket itself. The situation is further complicated by how inflation will change tax brackets in the future, and compounding growth can change the income and wealth picture as well. Nonetheless, it remains crucial to make reasonable estimates of how a client's tax situation will change over time, or it's impossible to make good tax planning decisions!

CFP Board’s Flawed Fee-Only Compensation Definition Creates Another Three Bucket Mess

July 28, 2014 07:01 am 17 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

After almost a year of often-public discussions, the CFP Board recently delivered its decision to financial planner Rick Kahler that, because he owns a (commission-based) real estate brokerage firm to which his financial planning clients are sometimes referred, he will no longer be permitted to label himself as "fee-only" and must describe his compensation as "commission and fee" instead, in light of the commission-based related party. In response, Kahler has declared that he will likely drop his CFP certification (after being the first in South Dakota to earn the CFP certification over 30 years ago), and may even file a lawsuit with the CFP Board over the issue, after failing to find any other remedy to the situation in more than 10 months of talks with CFP Board staffers.

In point of fact, though, the CFP Board's "related party" rules were arguably designed to catch situations precisely like Kahler's - the whole point of the rule is that a planning firm cannot make itself "fee-only" by simply splitting off its commission-based work into a separate business still owned by the CFP certificant. To allow such behavior would render compensation disclosure meaningless, as all advisors could be both "fee-only" AND "commission-only" by just hanging two shingles! As a result, it appears that this time the CFP Board may have really gotten its ruling right in this case.

However, the reality that the CFP Board could not come to an amicable resolution with Kahler about how to unwind the situation highlights what is still the CFP Board's fundamentally flawed interpretation of its own compensation disclosure rules. Kahler offered to cease providing referrals to the real estate firm, or even to outright bar any of his financial planning clients from doing business with the real estate firm, yet the CFP Board still insists that the mere fact that he owns the private-held firm "taints" his fee-only status, and that even if Kahler can prove that 100% of his clients pay only 100% fees from this day forward, forever, Kahler is still required to "disclose" client commissions that wouldn't actually exist or face potential sanction.

Instead, the CFP Board insists that the only solution is for Kahler to divest himself of his non-majority stake in a family firm he has owned for over 40 years, for what would surely be a significant personal financial loss to Kahler in trying to sell an illiquid closely-held business. But should the CFP Board really be allowed to dictate to fee-only CFP certificants what are and are not "permissible" investments to own for personal investment purposes apart from their financial planning clients? Ultimately, Kahler's dilemma about how to come back into compliance with the fee-only rules - and his inability to do so without divesting himself of a family business that he is willing to legitimately run separate from his financial planning clients - emphasizes the continued absurdity of how the CFP Board is interpreting its own three bucket doctrine for determining compensation to disclose.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Jul 26-27)

July 25, 2014 02:11 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition starts out with the news that another planner is threatening to sue the CFP Board over its compensation disclosure rules, after being told that the relationship between his "fee-only" advisory firm and commission-based family real estate firm meant that his advisory firm must describe itself as "commission and fee" instead. Also in the news this week was the latest study from the CFP Board that the public awareness campaign continues to have a material impact on consumer awareness of the CFP marks, and a decision from the SEC on new rules for money market funds that may introduce a floating-NAV to institutional funds and the potential for "gating" on redemptions and potential 2% exit fees on retail money market funds during times of financial distress.

From there, we have a few articles on technical planning issues this week, including a look at how sometimes Social Security beneficiaries should actually claim early to take advantage of dependents' benefits, an overview of the current landscape for annuities of all types (including which have been more popular lately, and which are declining), and some fresh analysis comparing systematic withdrawal strategies in retirement to partial annuitization approaches.

We also have several practice management articles, from a discussion of whether we need to start teaching personal finance in high schools not just for financial literacy but to encourage young people to aspire to become financial advisors when they go off to college, to a look at the recent failed effort by Savant Capital Management to launch an e-platform for their advisory firm and what they learned from the experience, to the highlights of the latest RIA industry study from Financial Advisor magazine.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first raises the interesting idea that perhaps we should focus less on "time management" and more on energy management like athletes, recognizing that one highly energized hour can be far more productive than several tired ones; the second article looks at some of the ongoing discussions about changing the accredited investor rules and the challenging reality that income- and wealth-based tests may simply not be the best measure of determining whether someone is "savvy" enough to select complex investments; and the last provides a valuable reminder that there are a lot of great questions we ask our clients about how they vision their retirement and their future that we might consider asking inwardly of ourselves sometime as well...

Enjoy the reading!

How IRA Withdrawals In The Crossover Zone Can Trigger The 3.8% Medicare Surtax

July 23, 2014 07:01 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

As the 2013 tax preparation season wound to a close in April of this year, many investors discovered for the first time a costly new line item on their tax return: "Other Taxes" on Line 60 of their Form 1040, where they reported the new 3.8% "Medicare surtax" on net investment income that just took effect in the past year. While "only" a 3.8% rate, the new tax is significant for many types of investment income eligible for a preferential rate; after all, adding 3.8% to a 15% long-term capital gains rate is actually a 25.3% relative increase in tax burden!

Fortunately, the new 3.8% surtax on net investment income applies only to investment income, and not distribution from (or conversions of) retirement accounts like 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and IRAs. However, the reality is that because the tax only applies to investment income above certain income thresholds, it's possible for "non"-investment income like retirement distributions to cause the surtax on other investment income by pushing it over the line. The end result: even types of income not directly subject to the tax end out indirectly causing the 3.8% surtax after all!

Given this dynamic, investors whose investment income is in the "crossover zone" and straddles the income threshold - such that only a portion of their investment income is subject to the surtax - have a unique planning opportunity to shift income into other years where they do not face the crossover zone. In fact, there are even situations where it can pay to shift retirement distributions or conversions into a year where overall income is higher if it avoids the crossover zone (and of course, shifting income into years when income is lower is often also favorable). At a minimum, though, recognizing the crossover means acknowledging that the marginal tax rate may be higher than just the tax bracket alone, leading to additional tax planning opportunities but requiring more careful analysis as well!

FPA RPI Studies How Advisors Communicate, Segment Clients, And Conduct Review Meetings

July 21, 2014 07:01 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

This month, the FPA’s “Research and Practice Institute” (RPI) released its study on “Trends in Client Communication”, a part of its ongoing follow-up to last year’s “Future of Practice Management Study” that identified client communication as a key driver of advisory firms (and a self-identified challenge area for many advisors).

Not surprisingly, then, the results of the RPI study show a wide range of practices in how advisors handle their client communication, segment their clients, and conduct their client review meetings. Nonetheless, the results do provide an interesting glimpse into common practices today; for instance, 71% of advisors report that they segment their clients to at least some degree, 85% conduct client meetings in their offices (rather than the client’s home/business), and 88% have a website for providing at least basic information to clients.

Notwithstanding these consistencies, though, the conclusions of the study suggest there is still significant room for advisors to continue to standardize the way they conduct review meetings and deliver communication to clients as well. For instance, while 80% of advisors say they use a CRM only 41% actually enter client notes into their CRM, only 1-in-3 advisors even occasionally set a formal agenda for client meetings, and only about a quarter of advisors have defined standards of service for their clients and have a means of tracking effectiveness!

While the study is ultimately more descriptive than prescriptive, it will be interesting to see how these statistics trend in the coming years!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Jul 19-20)

July 18, 2014 03:31 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition starts out with the news that Republican Spencer Bachus has signed on as a co-sponsor to Democrat Maxine Waters' proposed legislation to establish SEC user fees that would help fund increased investor adviser oversight; while there still isn't likely to be anything passed into law in the immediate future, the announcement suggests that there may be some traction building for the user fee approach to close the examination gap as the SEC remains underfunded. Also in the news this week was an announcement that the SEC is considering whether to update the definitions for Accredited Investors (which still haven't been updated, or even adjusted for inflation, in more than 30 years since they were first established in 1982!), and a new round of fighting between the American College and the CFP Board as the American College announced updates to its ChFC curriculum to 'compete' with the CFP certification and the CFP Board responded by noting that the ChFC still doesn't require a comprehensive exam (amongst other differences).

From there, we have a firm retirement planning articles this week, including some recent research suggesting how a focus on combining partial annuitization with portfolios may be a better way to frame annuities than the typical all-or-none discussion, a look at how cash balance plans are exploding forth in popularity and are already approach $1 trillion in retirement assets (compared to about $4 trillion in 401(k) plans), and a powerful discussion of how retirement is a joy for many but also a time where the depression and suicide rate for men doubles and advisors may be one of the few in a position to intervene and encourage a client to get help.

We also have several practice management articles this week, including a look at the FA Insight "People and Pay" study that finds team-based firms are growing more rapidly than firms that run in silos, a discussion from Angie Herbers about how the real challenge for existing advisory firms to grow is not about "making rain" and generating new prospects but about improving the closing ratios the prospective clients firms are already getting via referrals, and the last reporting on a recent industry survey that finds - despite all the discussion of the coming wave of retiring advisors - that there are still twice as many buyers as sellers in the next 1-5 years, suggesting that it's actually still very much a seller's market for the few firm owners that are willing to sell at all.

We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first looks at the challenges of businesses that have "co-founders" who struggle to keep their business and personal interests aligned as the business grows (while written in the context of co-founded startup tech firms, the challenge seems equally relevant for advisory firm partnerships as well!); the second examines some of the latest research on motivation, which finds that not only is internal motivation better than "external" factors like incentivizing with money and fame, but that offering too much in external incentives can actually damage the outcomes of otherwise-internally-motivated people (so think through your compensation structures carefully!); and the last is a discussion of the so-called "End of History Illusion" and recent research that finds we're actually terrible at predicting our personality, values, and preferences more than a decade into the future... which raises interesting questions about how to effectively save for retirement in the long run when you really may not have any idea what you'll want to do in retirement until you're almost there!

Enjoy the reading!

How The “Annuities Should NEVER Go In An IRA” Rule Has Become A Myth

July 16, 2014 07:01 am 12 Comments CATEGORY: Annuities

Similar to retirement accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s, Congress provides deferred annuities a tax preference, in the form of tax-deferred growth, to encourage their use. This tax treatment does not have any outright cost; instead, it’s simply a benefit that is otherwise granted to the owner of an annuity. Yet because of the similarities in tax treatment between retirement accounts and annuities – and the fact that for much of their history, deferred annuities really were used primarily or solely for their tax deferral treatment – there is a long-standing rule of thumb for how to coordinate between the two: similar to muni bonds in an IRA, the rule is “never purchase an annuity inside of an IRA, because you don’t need tax deferral in an already tax-deferred account!”

Yet the reality is that for more than a decade, this rule has actually been rendered moot by significant changes that have occurred in the annuity landscape. While once upon a time there were few reasons to purchase a deferred annuity besides the preferential tax-deferral treatment, since the early 2000s annuities has been increasingly popular for their guaranteed living benefit riders, along with enhanced death benefit, unique investment features (in the case of certain equity-indexed annuities), or outright superior fixed income yields (with some fixed annuities). As a result, by 2012 the majority of annuities were actually being purchased with funds sourced from a retirement account, because that’s where the available money was held to be invested for such features and guarantees!

While in some limited cases, deferred variable annuities actually are making a resurgence for pure tax deferral purposes – in which case, there’s once again little reason to purchase them with retirement assets – most annuities continue to be purchased for their guarantees and investment characteristics, not their tax preferences. Given these changes, it is perhaps time to abolish the “annuities should never go into an IRA” rule and recognize that it has become more a myth and remnant of old than proper advice in today’s environment.

Nerd’s Eye View 2014 Reader Survey – Your Input Is Requested!

July 15, 2014 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Nerd's Eye View

As my long-time subscribers know, I like to survey readers of this blog once a year to get their input on what they find least/most useful about the content and how it's delivered to them. Your feedback is used to shape everything from the design and structure of the blog, to new types of content and features, and more. I've tested many ideas and potential initiatives via these surveys over the years; it's shaped everything from the default font size of the blog content, to the recent launch of our webinars offering, to a decision to totally scrap some ideas that have come up along the way but were clearly not supported in the survey results.

Accordingly, I'm hoping you'll take just a couple minutes to answer the relatively brief reader survey below, and share with me your thoughts about this blog, the content, and some services and business ideas that I am considering adding to it... if the survey says I should, of course!

The survey is only a dozen questions, should take no more than a few minutes, and will remain open until the end of the month (July 31st). Thanks in advance for your time, feedback, and ongoing readership!