Kitces.com - Advancing Knowledge in Financial Planning

Announcing CPA CE Credits And Other 2018 Updates To The Nerd’s Eye View!

January 8, 2018 07:01 am 8 Comments CATEGORY: Nerd's Eye View

Running a successful business requires continual reinvestment… which is why, every year, we survey our Nerd’s Eye View readership to find out what we could be doing to deliver more value to you, and/or to make the reader experience even better. And so, as 2018 kicks off, I wanted to share a little perspective on the current State Of The Blog, and some of our plans for the upcoming year.

Overall, this past 2017 was another big year of growth for Kitces.com. Our total site traffic was up nearly 25% over 2016 – which at our size, means the blog grew more last year than it did in the first 6 years cumulatively. Our new Financial Advisor Success podcast has quickly become the most highly reviewed podcast for financial advisors on iTunes, and finished its first year just shy of 1,000,000 advisor downloads. And our team expanded, with the promotion of Rachel Zeller to Operations Manager, and the hire of Derek Tharp (who just successfully defended his dissertation and is now Dr. Derek!).

These new hires gave us additional capacity to begin a process of major reinvestments into the Kitces.com platform itself, and the services that we provide to our readers. Which means we’re have a number of exciting announcements to make!

First and foremost, the Nerd’s Eye View blog is now providing CPE credits for CPAs, in addition to the CE credit we already provide for CFP certificants and IMCA members with the CIMA or CPWA designations in our Members Section! In fact, Kitces.com has joined the NASBA Registry of CPE Providers – a significant national recognition for the quality of our CE content and instructional design – in addition to becoming a CFP Board CE Quality Partner. To our knowledge, we’re one of less than half a dozen CE providers for financial advisors in the entire country to have been recognized by both organizations, as we continue to reinvest into the quality of the content we provide.

Second, we’re beginning the process of a major technology overhaul in our back-end systems used to run the blog itself. The primary purpose of these changes are to make it feasible for us to better customize the reader experience for you – from sharing more relevant article suggestions, to removing prompts to sign up for our updates when you’re already a subscriber (which is a surprisingly difficult technology challenge to implement!), and giving you more flexibility to select which email updates you receive (e.g., the ability to exclude certain content categories that may not be of interest to you). You’ll see these changes roll out incrementally throughout 2018. We also plan to leverage these new tools to conduct more survey research of financial advisors, on key practice management topics that aren’t being sufficiently studied elsewhere.

Third, the growth of the Nerd’s Eye View means we’re hiring again! A new Research Associate position is currently listed in our Career Opportunities section, and we’ll be hiring a “Director of Digital Engagement” to help us roll out our customized content enhancements later this year. So if you know anyone who might be interested, please send them our way!

In the meantime, we’ll also have more opportunities in 2018 for Guest Posts, and another year of the Financial Advisor Success podcast means 52 new podcast guest opportunities as well! If you’re interested, please reach out directly via our Contact page to let us know!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (January 6-7)

January 5, 2018 02:40 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that both New York and California are now working on plans to convert their no-longer-fully-deductible state income taxes into either a higher state payroll tax, or an option to making a "charitable" contribution to a state fund instead (where the state would offer a dollar-for-dollar credit against taxes, and as a charitable contribution it would remain deductible for Federal tax purposes). Also in the news is the announcement that Citigroup is also leaving the Broker Protocol, but that even as the Protocol unravels, FINRA still doesn't believe there's any reason for the organization to get involved even as the number of temporary restraining orders and arbitrations by wirehouses against former brokers begins to rise.

From there, we have a number of retirement-related articles this week, including a research study that finds what appears to be a significant increase in male mortality rates immediately after early retirement (at age 62), another study showing that mortality rates are rising and that life expectancies in retirement may be starting to shrink (especially as prospective retirees struggle to save and retire later, although ironically shorter retirement time horizons may mean retirees need less to retire than they once believed), a look at all the different types of senior housing arrangements that are emerging as the mass wave of Baby Boomers decide how they want to live in retirement, and why the key to helping retirees be happy may be less about maximizing their retirement portfolios and more about minimizing their regrets in retirement.

We also have several articles on practice management and career development, from tips on how to better navigate your career in an existing advisory firm, to best practices in how to find a mentor, and why truly being a professional financial advisor is about more than just being financially successful but actually committed to being a bona fide professional.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of (non-traditional approaches to) New Year's resolutions and improving your business and life in 2018: the first explores what it takes to have a truly impactful New Year's resolution for your advisory firm (hint: it's about actually establishing a better infrastructure for the firm to be successful); the second explores how it may be better to set goals on how you will allocate and use your time rather than just setting business goals for revenue or growth; and the last looks at how the perennial New Year's resolution of trying to be more productive may just be a mental trap, because the real issue is not figuring out how to be more productive to achieve your goals, but taking a fresh look at why you're pursuing them and whether you're even pursuing the goals that will actually make you happier in the long run!

Enjoy the "light" reading, and hope you had a Happy New Year!

AdvisorEngine Acquires Junxure Users And Gets CRM Thrown In!?

January 4, 2018 02:05 pm 5 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Kicking off the 2018 New Year was some big advisor technology news: that robo-advisor-for-advisors AdvisorEngine is acquiring Junxure CRM, the popular CRM system for financial-planning-centric RIAs (that ranked second in adoption in last year's T3 Tech Survey, coming in behind Redtail and ahead of Salesforce). Yet while Junxure has been around for more than 15 years, AdvisorEngine is still a relative newcomer, having only pivoted away from being a consumer-oriented robo-advisor just a few years ago as it received a substantial venture capital investment from WisdomTree as a potential distribution channel for their ETFs. Which raises the question: Why did AdvisorEngine buy Junxure CRM? And what does it mean for all of Junxure's existing Cloud and Desktop users?

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss AdvisorEngine's acquisition of Junxure CRM, including why this is likely a good development for existing users in terms of enhancing Junxure Cloud and migrating away from Desktop, but also what I think was the real motivation behind this acquisition: AdvisorEngine's desire to grow by converting as many of Junxure's 1,400 advisory firms over to AdvisorEngine's technology platform with AUM pricing.

From the perspective of existing Junxure users, the AdvisorEngine acquisition should be good news. AdvisorEngine wants to grow, they’ve got capital to invest for growth, and that means they can hire more developer talent to accelerate the feature roadmap for Junxure Cloud - an area that Junxure itself has struggled as a capital-constrained advisor tech firm (and thus why still fewer than 50% of Junxure users have moved from Desktop to Junxure Cloud). With AdvisorEngine itself being a well-funded and entirely web-based platform, it has both resources and incentives to bring Junxure Cloud up to modern standards... which only benefits existing Junxure users.

That being said, it’s important to recognize that AdvisorEngine didn’t just buy Junxure to make Junxure better to get more Junxure users. They bought it to make AdvisorEngine better, and to get more AdvisorEngine users by leveraging the value of Junxure CRM. Which means AdvisorEngine is clearly also going to be spending resources to integrate Junxure Cloud with AdvisorEngine, and these improvements don’t necessarily help Junxure users. They help AdvisorEngine users (or Junxure users who decide to adopt AdvisorEngine). And as AdvisorEngine continues to flesh out its own offerings, this creates some awkward tension with AdvisorEngine's other partners, since the company has lauded itself as being "open architecture", yet appears in practice to be less so as it's acquired and now is deeply integrating with its own proprietary financial planning software and now its own CRM system.

Yet at the same time, this also raises what I think is the most concerning part of this deal of AdvisorEngine acquiring Junxure CRM: AdvisorEngine needs Junxure users to adopt AdvisorEngine for this to work out. Because the reality is that AdvisorEngine still has the clock ticking on a $20 million dollar equity investment that WisdomTree made back in late 2016. For which, after a full year, AdvisorEngine is only reporting about $3 billion of assets on their platform from 60 advisory firms. Which, even if we're generous and assume they are receiving their full top rate of 10 bps on all assets, only amounts to about $3 million of revenue so far, which is not a good sign, relative to the amount of capital AdvisorEngine raised. The pressure on AdvisorEngine to bring more assets must be tremendous. Which I think means AdvisorEngine isn't just acquiring Junxure to make it a more holistic platform, but to specifically convert as many of Junxure's 1,400 advisory firms over to AdvisorEngine as they can. And if AdvisorEngine can convert just 10% of Junxure users, that’s $60 million dollar revenue opportunity, in a world where Junxure's 12,000 users may have only been bringing $7 million of revenue or so. Cross-selling Junxure users on AdvisorEngine's services (and pricing) is the real key to the acquisition deal.

Except, unfortunately, I’m not certain how well that’s realistically going to work for AdvisorEnginge, because Junxure users tend to be deep financial planning firms. However, AdvisorEngine is an investment-centric platform, with a client portal focused on investments, an onboarding process focused on investment accounts (because that AdvisorEngine onboarding data can't even go to actual financial planning software!), and an internal “financial planning light” solution through Wealthminder that you can’t even turn off in the AdvisorEngine portal if you’re using other third-party planning software like eMoney Advisor or MoneyGuidePro (and I suspect almost all current Junxure users are using third-party planning software!). And beyond this, it's not even clear if advisors will be interested in AdvisorEngine given its AUM pricing starting at 10 bps. Because charging 10 bps for technology when the typical RIA generates 70 to 80 basis points of revenue yield on AUM means AdvisorEngine would cost the typical advisory firm more than 15% of revenue, when the typical firm only pays 2% to 4% of revenue on all of its technology (which is more than just what AdvisorEngine provides)!

But the bottom line is just to recognize that while in the very near term Junxure users should see a big investment from AdvisorEngine into new Junxure features – particularly to finish getting all the Junxure Desktop functionality into Junxure Cloud – the real value of Junxure for AdvisorEngine is getting Junxure users to start paying basis points for AdvisorEngine’s technology. Which means Junxure users should probably expect a lot of phone calls from the AdvisorEngine sales team in 2018, making their case for consolidating more of their technology with Junxure-integrated AdvisorEngine. Ultimately, we’ll see what happens, and whether the AdvisorEngine value proposition is really compelling enough to make Junxure users break their existing technology relationships?

When It Pays To Pay Social Security Taxes

January 3, 2018 07:01 am 31 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

While being a tax-paying citizen of the United States does provide for certain benefits and protections, and several organizations are responsible for helping to oversee and ensure that tax dollars are used in a reasonably productive manner, most people don’t think of their tax dollars as something that provides a specific and tangible “return on investment”. Yet the irony is that when it comes to FICA taxes on wages or self-employment income, which are used to fund Social Security and Medicare benefits, it actually is possible to have FICA taxes produce a long-term Return On Investment (ROI).

The reason that Social Security FICA taxes can generate a positive ROI is that ultimately, any wages or self-employment income that is taxed for Social Security purposes is also income that will be considered when calculating Social Security benefits. And since Social Security itself is functionally an income-replacement formula – based on an individual’s highest 35 years of inflation-adjusted earnings, with means-tested replacement rates based on their income levels – the more income that is included for FICA tax purposes, the higher Social Security benefits will be.

In fact, those eligible for the lower and middle FICA replacement rates – up to $64,788 of lifetime inflation-adjusted average earnings – the ROI of paying FICA taxes can generate real returns that are actually competitive with current TIPS bond yields, potentially rising even higher for those in the lowest income tier, especially for individuals who are also older (in their 50s or early 60s) but very healthy (with a long life expectancy to continue receiving Social Security benefits in retirement itself). Although for upper-income individuals, even though with above-average health, the ROI on Social Security FICA taxes is generally negative.

The significance of the potential for Social Security taxes generating a positive ROI is that, at a minimum, paying FICA taxes for many is less of a “tax” and more of a forced-savings investment with a bond-like return (albeit not available as a liquid account balance and only as a lifetime Social Security annuity payment). And for those in more flexible situations to control their income reported as wages – from S corporation owners, to those with spouses or other family members who might be paid through the family business – the potential for a positive ROI from FICA taxes can substantially alter intra-family business tax planning strategies!

#FASuccess Ep 053: How Compassionate Communication Makes Us “No Longer Awkward” With Grieving Clients with Amy Florian

January 2, 2018 07:01 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 53rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Amy Florian. Amy is the founder of Corgenius, a consulting firm that teaches and trains financial advisors about how to work better with grieving clients.

What's fascinating about Amy, though, is that she actually is a trained Thanatologist – one who studies death, loss, aging, transitions, and the various forms of grief. A path that first started for her when she unexpected become a young widow herself at the age of 25 with a 7-month-old son after a tragic car accident, and ultimately evolved into running a support group for widows, getting a Master's degree and becoming a Fellow in Thanatology, and over the decades has expanded into conference presentations, workshops, a master class, and a series of books, with a primary specialization in working with us as financial advisors.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the real challenges as a financial advisor when trying to work with clients who are grieving, why the grieving process isn't just about death and dying but any time someone has a break with an attachment – which can even include the break from the attachments of existing social relationships and personal identity when someone retires – and how in the end our job as advisors working with grieving clients isn't about trying to make them feel happier, but simply to comfort them as they go through their own healing process. Even if that means there's a lot of crying.

Unfortunately, though, in practice this isn't what most of us tend to do when faced with situations of death, dying, and grief. Because these are situations that most are never trained to handle in the first place. Accordingly, Amy shares her expert perspective on how to be "No Longer Awkward" with grieving clients, what we should do and say to really comfort them, why saying "How are you holding up?" or "Is there anything I can do?" is not actually helpful for those who are grieving, why it can be even worse to try to hand a box of tissues to a crying client in your office, and why it's better instead to ask "What do you wish people knew about what this is like for you?" or simply "What kind of a day is this for you?".

And be certain to listen to the end, where Amy talks about how even though we as financial advisors aren't meant to be professional grief counselors, that ultimately we can be "grief companions" that provide our support... beyond just trying to help with the financial issues that arise in times of grief.

So whether you have been curious about how you can be less awkward around grieving clients, the specific challenges financial advisors should expect when working clients suffering a break with some type of attachment, or curious about the role advisors can play beyond just addressing financial issues that come during times of grief, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

The Latest In Financial Advisor #FinTech (January 2018)

January 1, 2018 07:01 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the January 2018 issue of the Latest News in Financial Advisor #FinTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors and wealth management!

This month's edition kicks off with the big news that the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) is working with Vanguard to put its Total Stock Market Index (along with several others) on a publicly available blockchain… which makes it feasible to instantly (and evenly) distribute updated index information to all market participants at once, and facilitate index implementation and maintenance at a far lower cost than today. For all the buzz of blockchain, this may be the start of an actual wave of new applications to put the cost-reducing technology to use in the advisory industry.

From there, the latest highlights also include a number of interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

Quovo launches PFM modules to make it easier for financial institutions to quickly deploy client-facing account aggregation tools
Risk tolerance assessment provider RiskPro is gaining traction with mid-sized broker-dealers by focusing on the compliance monitoring aspects of ensuring that client portfolios remain in line with client risk tolerance
Fi360 launches an expanded version of its Fee Benchmarking tool for retirement plan advisors
RetireUp announces that it is finalizing a patent on its real-time collaborative retirement projection tools… raising the question of whether the company is trying to patent a technique that is already in common use anyway, and the spectre of a years-old lawsuit between Wealthcare and MoneyGuidePro over a similar type of patent infringement case

This month’s Advisor FinTech news also includes a look at several new categories of emerging advisor technology, including industry-specific social media and digital marketing tools from Hyperchat Social, account-aggregated business intelligence tools from AdvisorClarity, and custom white-labeled chartbooks for advisors from Clearnomics.

And be certain to read to the end, where we take a retrospective look at just what a big year 2017 was for Financial Advisor FinTech from the perspective of new venture capital inflows, and what are likely to be some of the hot trends of 2018, including Direct Indexing 2.0 solutions, the rise of advisor technology as a product distribution channel, and the increasingly disparate demands of planning-centric versus investment-centric advisory firms when it comes to technology solutions.

I hope you're continuing to find this new column on financial advisor technology to be helpful! Please share your comments at the end and let me know what you think!

*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!