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Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (January 27-28)

January 26, 2018 02:49 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that the battle over the CFP Board's expanded fiduciary standard is heating up, with both SIFMA and FSI (lobbying firms for broker-dealers) calling for the CFP Board to postpone their fiduciary proposal until at least next year to see what the SEC does, and the CFP Board responding that it still intends to move forward (and putting to rest the criticism that CFP Board is solely beholden to its large-firm broker-dealer stakeholders).

Also in the news this week is the announcement that administration of the Broker Protocol is being shifted to a new law firm called Capital Forensics (after complaints arose that the prior law firm Bressler Amery & Ross sat on the news that Morgan Stanley was leaving the protocol and failed to communicate it to the other protocol participants in a timely manner), and a look at how despite the de-regulatory agenda of President Trump the financial advisory industry is facing a slew of new and additional regulatory activity in the coming year from both the SEC and FINRA (not to mention what is already underway with the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule).

From there, we have a series of practice management articles this week, including: a look at some of the new additions on Form ADV that will be required in the coming weeks as firms do their annual updates; the regulatory and compliance issues to consider when hiring non-advisor employees (who still must be overseen by the firm); why fiduciary compliance does not actually require advisors to always use the absolute lowest cost solution for clients; the rise of the "quasi-independent" model of breakaway brokers who join existing independent RIAs that provide solutions to the advisors who often become partners of the firms; the various Millennial archetypes (beyond the increasingly popular "HENRYs") that financial advisors should consider working with; and how to think about developing a special treatment program to deepen your relationship with your top clients (and what we can learn from the airline industries about how to provide differentiated service to your most valuable clients/customers).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme saving and spending habits: the first looks at how, in a world of retargeting ads and email marketing, often the best way to save and buy less is simply... to buy less in the first place (which keeps you from being signed up for all those lists in the first place, and helps you get more comfortable in simply enjoying what you already have); the second is a look at how sometimes the best strategy to succeed is simply by using brute force, which can apply to everything from investing (don't try to pick stocks, and instead just own all of them with an index fund) to accumulating for retirement (if your savings rate is aggressive enough, it hardly matters what you actually generate in investment returns!); and the last is an interesting exploration into what is worth spending a little more money on, particularly for those who may be financially successful (or fully financially independent) precisely because they lived a lifetime of frugality... and now can't find out how to flip the switch and actually try to enjoy the money they have!

Enjoy the "light" reading!

How Advisors Pay For #FinTech And Why It Matters: Cost Of Revenue Vs Overhead

January 25, 2018 02:32 pm 9 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Most advisory firms that do “wealth management” – some combination of financial planning and investment management – will have three core technology platforms they use: portfolio accounting software to track the investment portfolios, financial planning software to build the financial plans, and CRM software so you can just keep track of all the clients. And this software will come with a cost, but one thing that's interesting about financial advisor #FinTech, is how much (or how little) we are willing to pay for different types of software.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we examine how financial advisors pay for different types of technology, why these dynamics influence how much we are willing to pay for software, and what this means for the future of financial advisor #FinTech!

As a starting point, just consider how much this software costs for a typical advisor to use. CRM software in our industry is typically about $500 to $1,000 a year. Financial planning software is a little more expensive, with packages like MoneyGuidePro or RightCapital at about $1,000 to $1,500 a year (and some, like eMoney Advisor, are a bit more expensive at over $3,500 per year). Portfolio accounting solutions, though, are typically the most expensive at all, with costs like $40 to $70 dollars per year per account, which means 80 clients who each have an average of 3 accounts leaves the advisor paying about $10,000 to $15,000 per year. Which raises the question: why the huge discrepancy, and why are advisors willing to pay so much more for some software solutions that others? Or stated more simply, why isn't there a $15,000/year financial planning software solution, as there is for portfolio accounting software?

We can gain some insight by looking at the typical financials of an advisory firm. The classic advisor's Profit and Loss statement reduces gross revenue by both Direct Expenses (the costs it takes to actually get the revenue in the door and service it, such as client-facing advisors), and Overhead Expenses (e.g., administrative staff, rent, E&O insurance, and technology) to arrive at the bottom line: Net Profits. In essence, there are two primary “categories” of expenses here, direct expenses that produce the revenue, and overhead expenses that support the operation of the business, like admin staff and office space and technology.

The reason this distinction matters is that typically, we will pay a lot more for direct expenses than we will for overhead expenses, precisely because the cost tends to produce more revenue and it "pays for itself" over time. Yet while advisor technology is typically classified as an overhead expense of the business, but it's not actually always the way we think about the costs when we decide what to buy. After all, for advisors running the typical assets under management model, the reality is that portfolio accounting software isn’t really just an overhead expense, but more of a direct expense, because advisors need portfolio accounting software to validate their AUM fees. By contrast, even for firms that do rigorous financial planning as part of their AUM fee, the planning software isn't a core requirement for generating that AUM fee. It's still good to do good planning work, but you can do good planning work more profitably by reducing the cost of this overhead expense! Thus, we’ll pay 10 times the cost for portfolio accounting software than financial planning software because, when we run an AUM model, we think of portfolio accounting software as something that drives revenue, while financial planning software is just a cost to be managed. And pay accordingly.

In fact, if you extend this line of thought further, it actually becomes clearer why and how it is that even within existing advisor technology categories, some software providers charge a lot more than others. For instance, while financial planning software is typically an “overhead cost to be managed”, MoneyGuidePro costs about $100 a month while eMoney Advisor costs over $300 a month. Both are good financial planning software packages, but what eMoney Advisor does have, that MoneyGuidePro does not, is its client portal. And it matters, because when clients link all their accounts to the portal and engage with the portal, they tend to be “stickier” clients, who are less likely to leave, and therefore the firm has a higher retention rate and keeps more revenue. Thus why eMoney Advisor charges triple the fee of MoneyGuidePro... and similarly why Riskalyze charges nearly double the price of FinaMetrica... because that is what happens when software is positioned as a revenue driver (that can be used for business development and revenue growth and retention), instead of an overhead cost!

And the other reason why all of this matters is the implications for the future of advisor technology. As more and more advisors converge on the AUM model, it’s getting very competitive to gather new assets, and it’s driving advisory firms to focus more and more on financial planning to differentiate themselves (or even become their primary revenue model). And as investment management shifts to the background as a “supporting service” that financial planners offer, there’s going to be immense pressure on portfolio accounting software solutions to bring their costs down, as they get shifted from a revenue-driving software to an overhead expense to be managed. At the same time, if we are primarily in the business of doing financial planning and financial planning fees are driving our revenue, then we will also pay a lot more for financial planning software as a revenue driver. And if advisors were will to pay $15,000 per year for financial planning software, how awesome could that financial planning software be!?

The bottom line, though, is just to recognize that it is the ability of software to drive revenue that makes us willing to pay so much more for some software than others. And with the coming divide between advisor technology for planning-centric firms and investment-centric firms, we're going to see a shift as increasingly financial-planning-centric firms that typically treated planning software as an overhead expense to be managed begin to treat it as a direct expense to generate revenue, while simultaneously beginning to cut back on portfolio management expenses (including portfolio accounting software). Which may mean some big changes for the future of advisor technology, as it is exciting to think about what some software types could look like if advisors were willing to pay 10X more than the tools they currently use!

Do Losses Truly Loom Larger Than Gains?

January 24, 2018 07:01 am 5 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

Loss aversion—the idea that losses hurt more than gains feel good—is one of the most well-known insights of behavioral economics. Originally developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the late 1970s as a component of “prospect theory”, loss aversion has since come to be seen as the driving force behind a wide range of phenomena such as the endowment effect, status quo bias, the disposition effect, and even the equity risk premium. However, a new article forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Psychology makes the provocative claim that despite widespread belief to the contrary, losses are not actually more impactful than gains as a general psychological principle.

In this guest post, Dr. Derek Tharp – a Kitces.com Researcher, and a recent Ph.D. graduate from the financial planning program at Kansas State University – takes a deep dive into this provocative paper… examining the evidence on why losses may not truly loom larger than gains, and why it may be better to look at loss aversion as a concept that applies (only) in some specific circumstances.

In their forthcoming paper, researchers David Gal of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Derek Rucker of Northwestern University examine the history of loss aversion research, beginning with Kahneman and Tversky’s seminal paper and growing into one of the most widely accepted ideas in social science. Developed out of a need to address anomalies which could not be addressed by expected utility theory, Kahneman and Tversky provided a clever explanation for why loss aversion could result in people being risk averse when evaluating gains and risk seeking when evaluating losses. However, based on Gal and Rucker’s review of the research that has emerged since the development of prospect theory, as well as some of their own research which has attempted to isolate the effects of loss aversion relative to alternative explanations, the authors conclude that loss aversion has been greatly overgeneralized. Instead of being a general psychological principle, loss aversion appears to apply more or less based on the specific circumstances of a given situation, and it cannot be said that losses simply loom larger than gains.

As a result, financial planners should be careful not to assume that loss aversion applies in situations in which it may not. From career considerations to portfolio management strategies and even retirement income planning… clients may not actually be as loss-avoiding as we once believed, and the research suggests there really are situations where they may prefer to seek gains than to simply minimize risk of loss. Some more nuanced perspectives related to perceptions of losses and gains also provide potential insight for financial planners relevant to topics ranging from clients chasing gains to the ways in which financial planners sell and package their services. But ultimately, the key is to acknowledge that, despite conventional wisdom, losses may not truly loom larger than gains!

#FASuccess Ep 056: The Opportunities In Providing Hourly As-Needed Financial Advice For The Middle Market with Sheryl Garrett

January 23, 2018 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 56th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Sheryl Garrett. Sheryl is the founder of the Garrett Planning Network, a financial advisor support network for fee-only RIAs with a focus on bringing financial planning to the middle market by making it available on an hourly, as-needed basis.

What's unique about Sheryl, though, is that what started out as a very unique business model in the late 1990s turned out to be so popular, that it attracted other financial advisors to her to emulate the model... and as a result, what started out as something Sheryl wanted to do for her own clients turned into a network of several hundred advisors all delivering the same hourly model in their own local markets.

In this episode, Sheryl shares her own path through the financial planning industry, how she struggled early on in a broker-dealer that required her to cold call and sell products, how she dropped her FINRA licenses and shifted to an early fee-only RIA, then picked her FINRA licenses back UP a second time for another broker-dealer firm, only to drop them again by transitioning once more into the fee-only channel for good... albeit by becoming a partner in a new fee-only RIA, only to quickly discover that the partnership wasn't going to work, which is what ultimately led her to finally start a firm of her own, a full 10+ years into her career.

In addition, Sheryl shares what it took for her to finally launch the Garrett Planning Network, what she's learned about the success and challenges of the hourly model for financial planning, why referrals from other advisors can actually be one of the best ways to build an hourly practice, how – just as with other advisory firm models – many hourly planners build lifestyle practices, while some endeavor to grow larger businesses, and how one of the appeals of the hourly model for her is that it kept her focused on trying to be as efficient as possible with her clients to help them manage their cost of advice.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Sheryl talks about the value of organizations like the Garrett Planning Network, where it's great to have the advisor support services... but in the end, the most powerful effect is simply finding a community of fellow advisors, pursuing a similar business model with a similar clientele, from whom you can learn, and with whom you can share best practices. Whatever your target clientele and business model happen to be.

So whether you are interested in learning more about the Garrett Planning Network, curious how you can grow your business by generating referrals from other financial advisors, or simply want to learn more about the hourly financial planning business model, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

Introducing AdvicePay And The Automation Of Billing Financial Planning Fees (Without Custody)

January 22, 2018 07:01 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

In recent years, the rise of the robo-advisor has driven a realization amongst most financial advisors that it’s absolutely essential to provide value beyond “just” portfolio management itself to attract and retain clients. This surge of interest in delivering financial planning is driving the growth of CFP certification to record levels (now more than 80,000!), but is also causing many financial advisors to question the entire AUM business model altogether; after all, if the future is all about getting paid for financial planning and not investment management, then will consumers eventually compel advisors to move away from the AUM model and towards fee-for-service financial planning?

Yet the caveat of this transition is that there’s an incredible operational efficiency to charging AUM fees. They’re straightforward to calculate, the infrastructure already exists to sweep fees from investment accounts and remit them to advisors, and the AUM fee is psychologically easier for clients because it happens automatically on their behalf. By contrast, charging directly for financial planning requires managing invoices, collecting and cashing physical checks, and a process to collect for late/missed payments. And from the client’s perspective, writing lots of checks for fees often just makes clients more fee-sensitive.

To address this challenge, we’re excited to announce the launch of AdvicePay, a new payment processing platform for financial advisors specifically created to facilitate fee-for-service financial planning fees (both one-time and especially recurring retainers). Because the reality is that while there are already a lot of other payment processing platforms out there, from PayPal to PaySimple, to the Quickbooks Merchant account, most don’t even meet the compliance requirements of state regulators to avoid custody and provide proper notifications to clients, some prohibit financial advisors from using them at all, and none are built to integrate with the existing systems of financial planners (nor do they appear to have any intention to ever do so!)!

Yet after registering a few hundred independent RIAs with state regulators in just the past 2 years alone at XY Planning Network, we’ve learned exactly what regulators really expect and are looking for to ensure consumers are appropriately protected, especially when it comes to charging ongoing recurring retainer fees. And while we originally built AdvicePay simply to solve this problem just for XY Planning Network, we’ve realized that with the entire advisory industry shifting towards financial planning – leading to a growing demand for a payment processing system to handle all those fee-for-service payments – there is an opportunity to help even more financial planners, and more consumers who want to work with them. Especially given how many people might need financial planning, and would be willing to pay for it, but don’t even have liquid investment assets to manage – and need a way to pay for financial planning directly from a bank account or credit card.

As a result, we’ve spent the past several months expanding the capabilities of AdvicePay to handle the wider needs of the financial advisor community, raised $500,000 of venture capital funds to support further development, and are excited today to be rolling out AdvicePay to the entire financial services industry… so anyone who wants to build a fee-for-service financial planning business will now have the tools to do so (in a compliant manner!).

In the long run, we’re not certain if financial planning fees will simply become a supplement to the AUM model, replace it entirely (where advisors charge for financial planning, and give away asset management for free!), or branch out further into its own path as a means of serving new consumer segments who can’t be served by AUM fees alone. But we’re excited to see what AdvicePay can do to help support the ongoing growth of the financial planning profession!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (January 20-21)

January 19, 2018 02:47 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the fascinating letter that Blackrock CEO Larry Fink sent to business leaders, stating that they must make a positive contribution to society (in addition to delivering financial performance) to command Blackrock's interest (as the world's largest institutional investor)... and raising the question of whether SRI/ESG investing is about to make the shift from niche to mainstream (which, ironically, eliminate any potential performance differential for such strategies as they literally become the market!).

Also in the news this week was the first-time-ever release of a FINRA budget, that (finally) sheds some light on how the organization collects revenue and spends its resources... and recognizes that it must be "right-sized" with fewer staff and lower costs to be sustainable in the face of a shrinking base of broker-dealers. And the U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari to hear the case of Ray Lucia v. SEC, which may strike down the SEC's current process of selecting its administrative law judges as being unconstitutional (and force the SEC to adopt a more independent and better-reviewed appointment process, instead).

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning and research, including a look at how not to split an IRA in a divorce (and why it's essential to split an IRA after the divorce decree is finalized), why so-called "cash buffer" or "cash bucketing" strategies don't actually improve retirement income sustainability (and can actually harm it), and how the availability of reverse mortgages may change the 4% rule (taking an initial withdrawal rate equal to 1/25th of the available retirement assets) into a Rule of 30 (taking a 3.33% initial withdrawal rate against the combined value of the retirement portfolios and equity in the home, using a reverse mortgage line of credit to tap the equity in the future if/when/as needed).

We also have a few articles on financial advisor marketing strategies, including a reminder that the best way to get fresh new marketing ideas is not to ask other advisors what works but to ask your target clientele instead, a look at how to refine what your firm delivers to clients to truly create a differentiating client experience (beyond "just" trying to deliver better client service), and a great way of thinking about differentiating as a financial advisor by being capable of delivering something that other advisors either can't, or don't deliver themselves (though in the long run, a can't differentiator may be more sustainable).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of personal growth and development in an evolving business or career path: the first looks at why personal progress is all about continuously taking ourselves out of our personal comfort zone (because in the end, "if you want something in life that you have never had, you will have to do something that you have never done"); the second explores the "four elements of entrepreneurship", recognizing that it's more about the mental attitude of being willing to make decisions and attempt new things in the face of uncertainty than any particular skill or ability; and the last delves even further into the steps that successful advisors (and especially advisory firm founders) must take to avoid becoming the bottleneck in their own businesses as they grow.

Enjoy the "light" reading!