Search results for: "FP+Careers"

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a look at the recent Focus Financial IPO, which did in fact go off as planned this week, at a lower price than the rumored peak, but far higher than first anticipated when the IPO was announced, with trading that began at $33/share and closed at $37.55 after the company's first day... which at a multiple of nearly 18X EBITDA, is both a tremendous validation of what markets in the aggregate still see as the promise of the independent RIA model, and will likely fuel a fresh wave of advisory firm roll-up aggregation and M&A.

Also in the news this week is a discussion of how CFP Board is beginning to gear up its compliance enforcement capabilities more than a year in advance of its new fiduciary Standards of Conduct that will take effect in October of 2019, and the questions that still linger after the FPA not only terminated its affiliation agreement with a challenged New York chapter but chose not to replace the chapter with a new independent nonprofit entity (as exists for its more-than-80 other chapters) and instead decided to roll the FPA of Metro New York into the national FPA organization, and raising questions about whether the approach may be a template for national attempting to centralize more of its chapter system in the coming years.

From there, we have several articles on investment themes, from a paper in the Financial Analysts Journal suggesting that Bill Sharpe's famous "Arithmetic of Active Management" (suggesting that the average active manager return will and must underperform the market in the aggregate, net of fees) may not be valid in practice due to the existence of IPOs and share repurchases along with additions and deletions from public market indices (which creates opportunities for active managers to still add net value at the margins), to a look from Research Affiliates at when and whether investment manager selection is really worth the effort (at least compared to simply trying to help clients better manage their own behavior), and a candid look from Morningstar at how its own new Morningstar Analyst Ratings have performed after their first 5 years (finding that Gold ratings do predict risk-adjusted outperformance, and Negative-rated funds underperform, but Silver, Bronze, and Neutral funds are ending up in a murky middle).

We also have a series of articles on client communication, including some good icebreaker questions on how to get clients or prospects to start talking about themselves, 10 "tactless" things that advisors often have to tell clients to help them face reality, and what to consider in the unfortunate situation you actually need to communicate to a client that it's time to end the relationship (i.e., to "fire" the client).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of how increased longevity, paired with increased connectivity, are changing the ways we work and the ways we take breaks from work: the first explores the rising interest, especially amongst Millennials, in taking sabbaticals (and even 1-2 year stints off from work) as an alternative to just working continuously for 40-50+ years (given increased longevity) and then taking the vacations all at the end; the second looks at how the conventional view is that you have flexibility to "goof off" and pursue your passions while you're young, but in reality, we often don't really know what we enjoy and want to pursue when we're young, and that perhaps a better formula is to just focus on working hard in the early years and aim to pursue your passions in your 40s and 50s instead (when your life is more stable and you better know what you actually would want to do); and the last makes an interesting case that, in a 24/7 ever-connected world, perhaps it's a good idea to deliberately live a "24/6" lifestyle, where we take one "digital sabbath" per week to completely unplug and focus on ourselves, our health, and our relationships... both because doing so seems to improve our happiness, and because the alternative has a greater risk of leading to burnout, anyway!

Enjoy the "light" reading!

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Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the announcement that the CFP Board is gearing up for a new round of advertising campaigns as part of its ongoing public awareness campaign, this time focusing on the emotional and psychological benefits of working with a financial advisor, including feeling more "confident, optimistic, secure, and at ease" with one's finances.

Also in the news this week is a controversial court ruling in Georgia that allowed an RIA to enforce an employment agreement that required its departing advisors to give 60-90 days notice in advance of leaving the firm (where the RIA sued after the advisors departed the firm abruptly to join Morgan Stanley under the terms of the Broker Protocol), raising the question of whether broker-dealers in turn might try to add similar "garden leave" requirements to their employment contracts as a way to subvert the Broker Protocol for departing brokers. And there was also a big announcement from Vanguard, just in time for "Independence Day", that starting in August it will begin to offer nearly 1,800 ETFs on an expanded no-transaction-fee ETF platform... and in the process, declaring war on other custodian's existing back-end revenue-sharing or shelf-space distribution agreements required to get onto their NTF ETF platforms (from which Vanguard has increasingly been booted in recent years for being unwilling to pay to play).

From there, we have a number of retirement-oriented articles, from a look at the rise of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, to a discussion from a longevity researcher about whether it would be more appropriate for people to spend their 20s and 30s "just" being trainees/apprentices and raising families and not starting full-time jobs until their 40s (given our increasing capability to remain productive well into our 70s thanks to medical advances), and an examination of whether advisors may be overestimating health care costs in retirement as recent studies have shown that beyond Medicare premiums themselves the medical expenses of retirees are actually remarkably moderate and stable (especially for those who have at least a "mass affluent" level of wealth).

We also have several practice management articles, including: an analysis of why the greatest challenge for advisory firm business owners to manage is the potential gap between workload obligations to clients and the staff resources necessary to deliver promised services; why especially in the early years of an advisory firm, 5-year (or even 3-year) business plans are largely useless; and how to demonstrate the ongoing value of a financial advisor by creating a "Client Confidence Index" that periodically surveys clients on their feelings of financial confidence, control, and clarity... and then reflecting those results back to them to show progress and the advisor's value-add over time.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of taking vacations to better maximize health and productivity: the first looks at the growing trend of workers not taking vacations, even when they're otherwise available, due to both the workaholic culture of many firms, and often simply a lack of systems to make them feel safe and comfortable to take a vacation; the second examines how even amongst the most productive people, there's often little more than 3-4 hours of "real" work that gets done in a day, suggesting that instead of trying to push employees to work harder throughout an 8-hour workday that it may be better to embrace taking breaks instead; and the last provides a remarkably simple and effective system to handle the pain of "digging out" from the email backlog after a long vacation... by simply creating an autoresponder to tell people to email you again if they feel it's necessary after you're back, and then just delete all the email in your Inbox on your first day back at work!?

Enjoy the "light" reading!

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Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals declined the motion by AARP (and several state attorney generals) to intervene in an effort to defend the DoL fiduciary rule... which means unless the Department of Justice suddenly (and at this point, unexpectedly) petitions the Supreme Court to hear the matter, it appears the DoL fiduciary rule will officially be vacated and gone and dead for good next week on May 7th (even as debate about the SEC's advice rule is just starting to gain momentum).

Also in the news this week was the announcement of a blockbuster private equity deal that will merge together Financial Engines and mega-RIA Edelman Financial (bringing human financial advisors to the 401(k) channel in a manner that could make it more challenging for independent advisors to access 401(k) rollovers in the future), and an interesting study that finds the average financial advisor is significantly more stressed than most U.S. workers, mostly about compliance and regulation and the difficulty in growing an advisory firm in today's environment... even as the majority of advisors still report they are overall very satisfied with their careers.

From there, we have several articles on marketing, including a look at how much less advisory firms spend on marketing compared to most industries (and where/how they should deploy the money if they do decide to start spending), a reverse-engineered analysis of how mega-RIA Fisher Investments spends its online marketing dollars for advertising and more traffic to its websites, and why the best way to connect with prospects is still about telling your own personal story and why it is that you chose to become a financial advisor in the first place.

We also have a few practice management articles, from a discussion of why it's a good idea for every advisor to take a week to track their time (and better understand how they're splitting their time between client service, growth, and administrative tasks) to understand what they might want to change to improve their personal productivity (and happiness), to an exploration of how to set the right "foundation" for providing a good experience to clients, and why it's better to not just be an expert for your clients but their counselor (or trusted "consigliere" instead).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of using credit cards instead of cash and the rise of travel rewards cards: the first is a review of the biggest and most popular standalone travel rewards cards (including American Express, Chase, and Citi); the second looks at how travel rewards cards have remained remarkably durable and popular over the span of more than 30 years now, but how their benefits are shifting away from increasingly devalued points and towards various "perks" instead, and how the rise of both credit and debit cards, online purchases, and systems like Apple Pay are making it increasingly easy to go "cashless" altogether... at least, as long as you don't need to tip your local service provider!

Enjoy the "light" reading, and Happy Star Wars Day!

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