Nerd's Eye View blog

MailBag: Advice For A Career Changer Transitioning Into Financial Planning

July 18, 2013 11:04 am 5 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

Many readers of this blog contact me directly with questions and comments. While often the responses are very specific to a particular circumstance, occasionally the subject matter is general enough that it might be of interest to others as well. Accordingly, I will occasionally post a new "MailBag" article, presenting the question or comment (on a strictly anonymous basis!) and my response, in the hopes that the discussion may be useful food for thought.

In this week's MailBag, we look at a question about how best to transition as a career changer into financial planning, the issues to consider, and some best first steps to take.

Why Inferential Statistics Is A Lousy Way To Evaluate Active Managers

July 17, 2013 11:03 am 15 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

Determining whether investment results are due to luck or skill is no small task for even skilled analysts evaluating an active investment manager; given the amount of randomness inherent in markets, it can be very difficult to determine which is which. Fortunately, the field of inferential statistics exists specifically to analyze such situations and help to distinguish the signal from the noise, and determine when results are likely randomness and luck versus when there is at least a high probability that skill or some other factor is at play.

When inferential statistics is applied to evaluating active management, the results are questionable at best - a small subset of managers are clearly inferior, and for virtually all the rest, there are simply no clear indicators of skill at all; even when some modest level of outperformance occurs, the results are rarely ever statistically significant. Of course, just because an actively managed fund has outperformance that is not statistically significant doesn't mean the manager isn't actually generating real outperformance and adding value. It's just that the outperformance isn't large enough relative to overall market volatility to clearly show whether the results are due to luck or skill.

Unfortunately, though, the caveat is that given just how incredibly volatile markets really are, searching for "statistically significant" outperformance may actually be a lousy approach for evaluating managers; even if a manager really does outperform for an extended period of time, the available tests simply are not capable of distinguishing skill from market noise given the tenure of even long-standing managers. In fact, when tested to determine the effectiveness of the approach in the first place, the reality is that even if a manager is adding several hundred basis points of outperformance, annually, for more than a decade, there is still a more-than-90% likelihood that inferential statistics will FAIL to identify the signal that really is there.

In other words, if the goal is actually to determine which active managers really do add value, searching for statistically significant outperformance is an approach with an overwhelming likelihood to fail, even in situations where it should be succeeding! Which means in the end, failing to find statistically significant outperformance amongst active managers may actually be less a failure of active management itself, and more a problem with using an approach that was unlikely to successfully identify good managers in the first place!

Using Photos To Humanize The Connection Between Clients And Their Financial Planning Firms

July 15, 2013 11:05 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Marketing

As communication becomes increasingly virtual, from telephone calls to emails, it becomes harder and harder to ensure that interactions between the staff and clients of any firm maintain their personal touch. Yet maintaining that personal connection with the individual client is crucial; in fact, a recent study in medicine found that radiologists are dramatically more effective in their analysis of scans of patients they've never met, simply by attaching a photo of the subject to help make the interaction more personal.

The opportunity to reinforce such connections is equally relevant in a financial planning firm, and equally feasible to implement. Just as the radiologist demonstrates a better connection to their patients with the photo - and report feeling more empathy on behalf of their patients - so too can client photos be attached to client files, or loaded into the main page of a client's CRM record, to ensure staff bear in mind the human being at the other end of the account/phone call/email message.

In addition, the reality is that the need for a visual personal connection in a virtual environment goes both ways. As a result, it's perhaps equally important to include a picture of all your staff members on your website - or even in the signature of their emails - to help clients understand who they're relating to as well. And the issue is relevant for the financial planners themselves, too; while planners will typically meet with their clients in person, at some point before a client is a client, they're a prospect who might visit your website to do their due diligence. When a potential client looks you up on your website, what is their first impression? Do they have a chance to make a visual connection and actually SEE you?

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (July 13-14)

July 12, 2013 05:02 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's issue starts off with a summary of some of the final comment letters submitted regarding the SEC's request for information for a cost-benefit analysis about a uniform fiduciary standard. Why industry organizations like SIFMA and NAIFA indicated that a fiduciary standard would significantly increase compliance costs and force advisors to stop serving middle market clients, the results of a Financial Planning Coalition study found that fiduciary advisors generate significantly more revenue - suggesting that revenue growth could more than offset any higher costs - and that there are no statistically significant differences between the number of middle-market clients that fiduciary vs non-fiduciary advisors currently serve.

From there, we have a wide array of technical articles, including: a discussion of the ongoing Commission on Long-Term Care established by the American Taxpayer Relief Act to propose structural solutions to the country's long-term care challenges; a great overview of the coming new health insurance rules and how to start planning for them; a discussion of the importance of disability insurance for both clients and advisors themselves; a look from Ed Slott at how the Net Unrealized Appreciation strategy may be a little less appealing at today's long-term capital gains tax rates; and an intriguing analysis by Moshe Milevsky that in some circumstances equity-indexed annuities with guaranteed living benefit riders might actually produce slightly more income than a simple single-premium immediate annuity.

There are also a number of investment-related articles this week, from a review of recent applied research by Harold Evensky in the Journal of Financial Planning, to a discussion by Bob Veres of five new investment approaches being implemented by advisors that appear to have value, to a look at whether it's time to acknowledge that the efficient frontier of mean-variance optimization is more like an efficient "range" because ultimately neither the inputs to the model nor the preferences of investors are really as precise as a strict interpretation of Modern Portfolio Theory implies. There's also a good review of the recent Active Share research and why "hyperactively managed" funds may be best outperformers of all actively managed funds.

We wrap up with an article from industry veteran and luminary Richard Wagner, who suggests that financial planning could become the most important profession of the 21st century, as we human beings collectively become increasingly cognizant of the powerful role that money exerts in our lives, and the unique contribution that financial planners can bring to the table in helping clients to navigate those forces effectively. Enjoy the reading!

Solving The Annuity Puzzle – Inflexibility For Handling Potential Health Care Shocks In Retirement

July 10, 2013 11:06 am 20 Comments CATEGORY: Annuities

From the perspective of economics and life cycle finance, the immediate annuity is often viewed as the perfect retirement vehicle; in research dating back to Yaari (1965), it has been shown that for someone whose primary concern is outliving his/her money (as opposed to leaving a bequest to future generations), investment dollars should be annuitized to generate a superior return over bonds (due to mortality credits) while protecting against mortality risk.

Yet economists have long struggled to explain the so-called "annuity puzzle" - the fact that while the research suggests annuitization should be optimal, in practice remarkably few people ever choose to do so. Does that mean they're all just being driven by an irrational decision-making process and just need to be better educated to understand the true benefits of immediate annuities, or is there some other factor at play?

In new research, researchers Felix Reichling of the Congressional Budget Office and Kent Smetters of the Wharton School of Business think they have found a new way to explain the puzzle: the fact that the value of an immediate annuity changes over time due to incremental (and sometimes shocking) changes in health and mortality. In fact, it can be the worst of both worlds - severe health events can simultaneously reduce life expectancy (decreasing the remaining value of the annuity) and increase cash flow needs (to pay for the necessary care). And when viewed in this dynamic context, the value of annuitization can be quite risky indeed; so much, in fact, that Reichling and Smetters find that for those who are relatively risk averse and/or have limited retirement assets, that the most rational annuity allocation might be to avoid them altogether, and the ideal might even be for many to have negative exposure and "short" annuities instead!

Fee ONLY, Compensation Disclosure For CFP Certificants, And The Strange Case Of Alan Goldfarb

July 8, 2013 11:02 am 5 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

After a sudden resignation last fall, Alan Goldfarb, the former Chair of the Board of Directors of the CFP Board, has been found to have violated the CFP Board's Rules of Conduct for failing to properly disclose his compensation, after he claimed on FPA's PlannerSearch that he was "fee-only" and later "salaried" when in reality a "related party" was eligible to receive commissions from Goldfarb's clients. As a result, the CFP Board's Ad Hoc Disciplinary and Ethics Commission that investigated the matter has issued a public Letter of Admonition for Goldfarb's conduct.

Yet the details of the case suggest that the matter was not as clear as the initially reported findings suggested; Goldfarb's ties to the "related" broker-dealer were through a parent accounting firm that owned both his RIA and the broker-dealer, and Goldfarb himself held only a small 1% equity interest in the firm and was otherwise not compensated. By contrast, even NAPFA guidelines dictate that less-than-2% interests are de minimis, yet the CFP Board declare that because of these related interests Goldfarb should not have labeled himself as "fee only" even though all of his clients in reality only ever did in fact pay him fees through his own RIA.

At a higher level, though, the real issue in the Goldfarb case is that such a strict interpretation of what does and doesn't constitute "fee only" could cause even many large and well-known RIAs to "fail" the test, and renders the definition of "salary" almost moot, and is a problematic reminder of how opaque the CFP Board's adjudication process can sometimes be due to its privacy obligations as a private entity. In addition, taking such an extreme position regarding "fee only" will arguably result in so many financial planners being classified as receiving both commissions and fees - regardless of whether the commissions constitute 0.1% or 99.9% of total compensation - as to render the disclosure relatively useless as a consumer protection. Furthermore, the Goldfarb result also leaves us unclear about where to draw the lines on what constitutes "trivial" or immaterial compensation conflicts, related parties, overlapping ownership of holding company subsidiaries, and complex real-world arrangements that could unwittingly render advisors on the wrong side of the line.

In the end, a strict interpretation of the Goldfarb conclusions about what constitutes "salary" and "fee only" could mean that thousands of current CFP certificants are not complying properly with the rules, and that many need to update their information immediately! But perhaps ultimately, the best outcome for this whole situation is to hope that it can serve as a catalyst for better clarification on the rules for compensation, and an improvement in the transparency of CFP Board's enforcement process to allow clearer *(and better?) precedents to be set for the future.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (July 6-7)

July 5, 2013 04:55 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's issue kicks off with three interesting practice management articles: the first suggests it may be time for advisors to re-evaluate the value of serving smaller clients, who PriceMetrix finds are 108 times more likely to leave their advisor than become a large client while with the same advisor; the second looks at the tendency for advisors (even/especially fiduciary RIAs) to selectively discuss/disclose their fees but not fully explain all underlying fees; and the third examines the emerging trend towards financial advisory firms engaging in mergers and acquisitions to grow and reach scale.

From there, we have a wide array of technical articles, including: a look at fascinating new research that suggests that immediate annuities may be far less effective than previously posited due to how they are impacted by unexpected client health events; new estate planning trusts that focus more on the income tax opportunities at death (e.g., step-up in basis) rather than avoiding estate taxes; the implications of this week's announcement to delay the employer mandate for the Affordable Care Act; important things to know about the new state health insurance exchanges (which are still scheduled to open up in October!); how to plan for Social Security dependent benefits and why it's not always a good idea to delay until you're age 70; and the latest from PIMCO's Bill Gross about how the rising turmoil in bonds may be troubling but it's not time to abandon ship.

We wrap up with three final articles that look a bit more inward: the first is from the Farnam Street blog and provides tips about how to quickly build rapport with someone when meeting for the first time (e.g., a prospective client!); the second is an introspective look from the Wall Street Journal's Jason Zweig about the challenges of saving investors from themselves and why it's a worthwhile effort to pursue anyway; and the last delves into some of the latest research about the connections between money and happiness and how to utilize more money to ensure it really brings more happiness. Enjoy the reading!

Place Of Celebration Vs State Of Residence – Determining Federal Marital Status After DOMA Decision

July 3, 2013 11:04 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Under the Supreme Court decision of United States v. Windsor, Section 3 of DOMA was declared unconstitutional, and as a result the Federal government is required to recognize same-sex marriages that are recognized by the state. However, in Hollinsworth v. Perry the Supreme Court simply ruled that the appellants did not have standing to defend California's Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban; the court did not actually rule on the legitimacy of Proposition 8 itself, and thus did not address whether Section 2 of DOMA – which exonerates states from any obligation to recognize same-sex marriages – is Constitutional.

As a result, while the Federal government must recognize state-sanctioned same-sex marriages, it is not the case under current law that all states must allow same-sex marriages, nor even that all states must recognize same-sex marriages that originated in other states. Instead, for the time being, the matter remains entirely a state-by-state issue, until/unless a new legal dispute comes forth that specifically challenges Section 2 of DOMA, and/or Congress otherwise repeals or alters the remaining provisions of DOMA.

However, this current state of affairs creates significant challenges for same-sex couples who marry in a state that recognizes the marriage, but later relocate to a state that does not. Under Federal law, the treatment of such situations varies, depending on whether the Federal provisions look to the "state of residence" to determine marital status, or the "place of celebration" - and currently, some Federal programs adopt one definition, while some utilize the other. Thus, for the time being, financial planners will need to be cognizant of which status applies to a client, which rules apply to a client, and stay alert as the definitions are anticipated to change in the coming months at Federal agencies and programs seek to refine their rules and regulations for determining marital status in light of the Supreme Court decision.

RICP Vs RMA Vs CRC – Choosing The Best Retirement Income Designation for Financial Advisors

July 2, 2013 11:02 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

Choosing advanced education as a financial advisor has become increasingly complex over the years, as the proliferation of designations has led not only to a confusion amongst consumers about which are credible and which are not, but has similarly led to uncertainty and frustration amongst advisors trying to identify which programs will add genuine knowledge and educational value and are worth pursuing.

In this guest post, retirement income professor and researcher Wade Pfau shares his perspective on three of the leading most prominent and rigorous retirement income designations - the Certified Retirement Counselor (CRC), the Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP), and the Retirement Management Analyst (RMA) - as someone who has studied this body of knowledge extensively, and in fact has helped to design curriculum and teach content for several of the programs.

If you're trying to decide whether to pursue advanced education in the specialty of retirement income - and struggling to determine which designation in particular to choose - this should be helpful to you as a starting point for making a decision about which curriculum, program, and sponsoring organization is the best fit for you.Read More...

Deadline Looms For SEC Request For Information On Potential Uniform Fiduciary Standard

July 1, 2013 11:01 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Planning Profession

Almost four months ago, the SEC released its Request For Information to assess the costs and benefits of a potential uniform fiduciary standard for brokers and investment advisers. This week, the deadline for the comment period ends, and the SEC will begin to evaluate comments and come to a decision about whether to move forward with a fiduciary rule, to back away from it, or to simply partially "harmonize" the rules between brokers and investment advisers without fully imposing a uniform standard.

Ultimately, the SEC's cost-benefit analysis study will just be one of many steps in the progression towards a potential uniform fiduciary standard, but it is a critically important one, as the SEC's recent struggles in having its rules challenged have made it clear that the SEC is unlikely to proceed on the fiduciary issue unless it can get comfortable with the results of its economic analysis. This is especially true as the SEC tries to sort through thorny issues, including the fact that Section 913 of Dodd-Frank mandates that any uniform fiduciary standard must be at least as stringent as the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, but that the receipt commissions alone should not automatically run afoul of whatever the future rule will be.

While several "big hitter" organizations have already weighed in, it's crucial for all advisors who have an opinion on the matter to submit their own comments, whether just to generally support the implementation of a uniform fiduciary standard, or to more specifically offer up detailed comments on their own perspective and personal experiences on the issues, or any quantitative or qualitative information and data they have to share. Accordingly, for those who haven't already submitted a comment letter, now's the time - comments can be sent via email or using the SEC's online form through July 5th!