Kitces.com - Advancing Knowledge in Financial Planning

Nerd’s Eye View 2017 Reader Survey – Your Input Is Requested!

June 12, 2017 07:01 am 15 Comments CATEGORY: Nerd's Eye View

Here at Kitces.com, the goal is always to make the Nerd's Eye View blog and the Members Section an ever-more-valuable resource for all of you, the readers. Which means we want to hear from you about what we can do to make this website even better for you.

Over the years, reader feedback has shaped everything from the visual design of the blog (from its original dense small font!) and the Disqus comment system we use, to the expansion of our Members section to offer CFP and then IMCA CE credit (and soon, CPE for accountants as well!) for Nerd's Eye View blog posts, the launch of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, and more.

And while I'm happy with the progress we've been making, I'm sure there's still more than we could do differently to serve you better. Accordingly, every year we conduct a feedback survey to all of you who read this blog, to get your thoughts and feedback about the features we're offering, some new ideas we're considering, and whatever other input you're willing to share about what we could do to make this a more valuable site (and a better user experience) for you.

So regardless of what kind of reader you are: an advisor, an individual consumer who reads this blog for your own benefit, a related professional that works with financial advisors, or you're associated with a vendor who serves advisors... I hope you'll participate in this year's survey. It's only 10 questions, should take no more than a few minutes, and will remain open until the end of next week (June 24th).

Thanks in advance for taking a few minutes to click through on the "Read More" link below to access our reader survey, and share your feedback! 🙂

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Jun 10-11)

June 9, 2017 02:56 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the implementation of the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule, with the previously-delayed Impartial Conduct Standards taking effect today, June 9th... even as the DoL begins the public comment process of modifying the rule, and Congress proposes further legislation to potentially kill it, suggesting that the fiduciary battle is far from over, especially given that full enforcement is still not scheduled to take effect until 2018 (allowing room for further debate and at least modifications to the rule and its requirements).

From there, we have several articles around marketing and business development, including some very practical ideas on how to improve your client onboarding process to improve trust (and generate referrals), marketing ideas on how financial advisors can build the business (hint: it's more about persistency of the marketing strategy than a super-creative idea to do something completely new!), and a look at the latest research on how we determine who to trust in the first place (in the context of both employees trusting company leadership, and prospective clients trusting a new advisor).

We also have a few technology-related articles this week, from suggestions on what financial advisor websites need to do to actually generate real prospects, to the new technology solutions coming forth (from financial planning software enhances to online risk tolerance assessment tools) to help aid in advisor digital marketing, a new kind of risk tolerance solution that uses facial recognition to detect when clients become financially stressed, a new digital 401(k) solution for financial advisors, and a look at the proliferating number of "client portals" that financial advisors can offer (none of which really do everything that a financial advisor actually needs!).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all focused around crafting and improving the financial advisor value proposition: the first is a fascinating look at "The Elements Of Value" from a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, finding that the key components of value break down into a series of 30 categories, organized around four categories of Functional, Emotional, Life-Changing, and Social Impact (where businesses don't need to offer all 30, but can excel but thinking about how to be especially good at 5-10 of them); the second looks at the way one financial advisor describes his value proposition to clients, emphasizing that while most people can do it themselves with available technology tools today, few have the time, knowledge, inclination, and behavioral focus to do it well (whereas the value of the financial advisor is knowing and ensuring that it will be done right!); and the last is a look at how the rise of a fiduciary duty, coupled with the rise of technology, is leading financial advisors around the world to struggle in articulating their value proposition going forward, and suggesting that ultimately the way forward will be a shift from helping clients with the "hows" (which they can just look up online), and instead work with them on their financial "whys" instead.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Investment Wholesaling And Segmenting The Four Types Of Financial Advisors

June 8, 2017 01:16 pm 6 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

Historically, different financial advisors operated different business models depending on their industry channel - RIAs managed investment portfolios, while wirehouses sold proprietary products and securities from their inventory, and independent broker-dealers sold third-party investment products. Accordingly, asset managers and product manufacturers aligned their investment wholesalers to those channels, with one for wirehouses, another for independent broker-dealers, and a third for the independent RIA community. The challenge, though, is that as the advisor value proposition evolves, along with industry business models, and the regulatory environment, the "traditional" industry channels are breaking down as a way to segment financial advisors!

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss, from the investment wholesaler perspective, the four different types of financial advisors that have emerged, how they differ based on client approach and value proposition, and how wholesalers can best add value to these different types of advisors!

The key issue is to recognize that financial advisors tend to have fundamentally different ways in which we frame our own value proposition, and approach client situations, that are no longer necessarily defined by industry channel. And this matters, because when companies with their own wholesalers are trying to reach advisors, the ways in which an advisor approaches their clients and define their own value proposition heavily impacts what that advisor will and will not see as valuable from their wholesalers!

For instance, some advisors taking a very financial planning-centric approach to clients, while others are more investment-centric. And when it comes to delivering value to clients, some are more advice-centric, and others are more product-centric. Thee various combinations result in four categories of financial advisors: (1) fee-for-service financial planners; (2) investment managers; (3) needs-based sellers; and, (4) asset gatherers.

From the perspective of the wholesaler, it is crucial to recognize that each of these segments receives different value from a wholesaler, and demands different types of products and services. Because if an advisor is an asset gatherer, they are going to want to see a product that can easily help them gather assets... but if they are needs-based sellers, they will want planning strategies and sales ideas... and if they are an investment manager, they will want products that they can manage to demonstrate their own expertise (without outsourcing to other active managers!)... and if an advisor is a fee-for-service financial planner, they will want solutions that help them simplify investment management to free up time to service clients and focus on planning. Thus, investment managers (which might be an RIA or a Rep-As-PM at a broker-dealer) tend to use stocks, bonds, and ETFs, but asset gatherers (which might be RIA or at a broker-dealer) are more likely to use multiple TAMPs and SMA, and fee-for-service financial planners (usually RIAs) will typically just use one TAMP for all of their assets and be uninterested in individual investment products at all!

The bottom line, though, is simply to recognize that the whole advisory industry is in the midst of reorienting itself, and trying to segment financial advisors by wirehouse, broker-dealer, and RIA industry channel no longer works. Advisors are reinventing their value propositions and where they focus, while DoL fiduciary further forces firms to re-draw their lines and tech innovation accelerates these trends. Which means, if wholesalers want to reach financial advisors and add value to them, wholesalers need to pay attention to the four different types of financial advisors!

Dynamic Retirement Spending Adjustments: Small-But-Permanent Vs Large-But-Temporary

June 7, 2017 07:01 am 9 Comments CATEGORY: Retirement Planning

The origin of the "safe withdrawal rate" approach was simply to set retirement spending low enough to survive the worst historical sequence of returns we've ever seen; if a future scenario was comparably bad, the retirement portfolio would make it to the end, and if market returns turn out better, the retiree simply has to decide what to do with their "extra" money.

The caveat, however, is that for at least some retirees, the approach of "be conservative upfront, and increase your spending later if returns permit" is not very appealing. Instead, it's more desirable to spend more in the early years, and simply engage in spending cuts if returns end out being less favorable. Except remarkably little research has ever delved into what the best approach is to cutting spending, if it actually does become necessary to make adjustments in order to stay on track!

In this guest post, Derek Tharp – our new Research Associate at Kitces.com, and a Ph.D. candidate in the financial planning program at Kansas State University – analyzes safe withdrawal rates based on various dynamic spending adjustments retirees could choose to adopt, finding that small-but-permanent strategies are generally both more effective, and realistically implementable, than large-but-temporary spending adjustments.

Notably, this is different than how many retirees often react when a substantial market decline occurs, where the instinctive response is often to engage in substantial spending cuts for a "temporary" period of time, until the market recovers. For instance, if there's a precipitous market crash of at least 20%, the retiree might trim spending by 20% as well for the next 3 years, until the portfolio recovers. Even if engaging in such spending cuts present serious strains to the retiree's current lifestyle.

Except as it turns out, engaging in a more rapid series of smaller - but permanent - spending cuts can be even more effective. For example, rather than cutting spending by 20% for 3 years after a market decline of more than 20%, if the retiree simply commits to trimming real spending by 3% (permanently) in any year that market returns are negative - approximately the equivalent of forgoing an inflation adjustment during the down year, and a fairly trivial spending adjustment for most retirees - the safe withdrawal rate rises by almost 0.5% (to more than 4.5%). With the large-but-temporary cut, the safe withdrawal rate only rises by 0.1%, instead.

Ironically, it may feel to retirees that engaging in "small" cuts aren't enough to ameliorate the consequences of a significant market decline early in retirement. Yet the reality is that the cumulative effect of small cuts really does add up - more than engaging in large-but-temporary cuts - in a manner that not only helps keep retirement on track if there's an unfavorable sequence of return, but arguably better aligns to how most retirees spend as well, where real inflation-adjusted spending typically declines in the later years anyway. And of course, if market returns are actually favorable, the retiree not only avoids substantial spending cuts, but enjoys the benefit of starting their retirement spending from a higher level in the first place!

#FASuccess Ep 023: Delivering Workplace Financial Wellness With A Salaried CFP Career Path with Liz Davidson

June 6, 2017 07:01 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the twenty-third episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

My guest this week is Liz Davidson. Liz is the founder of Financial Finesse, the largest independent provider of workplace financial wellness programs, that leverages CFP professionals to provide financial education and financial coaching to employees in the workplace.

What's fascinating about Liz's firm is that in a world where most financial services providers aim to deliver financial wellness and education as a lead-in to selling a product, or an avenue to build lucrative advisory relationships with the executives and key employees, Financial Finesse is truly dedicated to simply helping employees improve their financial wellness, and is solely paid on a flat-fee basis from employers to provide their services.

In this episode, Liz shares the way that Financial Finesse justifies and demonstrates to employers how paying to improve the financial wellness of employees really does lead to a Return On Investment for the employer by reducing employer costs on everything from employee absenteeism to health care claims, how they reach employees through a combination of an online platform, one-to-many workshops, and one-to-one coaching, and the ways they tried - and failed - to approach the challenge of financial wellness in a direct-to-consumer approach before pivoting to work through employers.

You'll also hear about the incredible business opportunity that Financial Finesse is creating for CFP certificants, who have the chance to earn an $80,000 base salary, plus bonuses that can take them to a six-figure income, simply by providing financial education and coaching to clients, without any obligations for sales, production, or business development - an entirely new channel and career path for expanding the reach of financial planning.

So whether you’ve been curious about the opportunities to deliver your own version of a financial wellness program in the employer channel, or are a CFP looking for ideas on a new career path, or simply want some fresh perspective on new ways that financial planning is being delivered, I hope you enjoy this latest episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

The Latest In Financial Advisor #FinTech (June 2017)

June 5, 2017 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the June 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 not-so-surprising news that “robo-advisors” are increasingly pivoting towards offering human advisors and pursuing a more affluent (i.e., not-necessarily-Millennial) clientele, and the somewhat-more-surprising news that one new robo platform – BrightPlan – has decided to enter the marketplace by raising $25M of capital and using it to buy an existing $3.6B life-planning-oriented (and human-advisor-based) independent RIA, raising the question of whether advisor tech companies could become an entirely new buyer category in the world of advisor M&A and whether existing RIAs may actually be a superior way to distribute new technology (rather than trying to compete with them!).

From there, the latest highlights also include:

Envestnet is beginning to reveal how it intends to leverage its Yodlee acquisition, by building out client-facing PFM (Personal Financial Management) solutions that help clients track not only their long-term financial plans, but their shorter-term cash flow and spending as well.
Apex Clearing appears to be making a move into the independent RIA community to compete against Schwab, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade, leveraging “robo-advisor-for-advisor” software solutions like RobustWealth and AdvisorEngine to reach financial advisors, even as Wealthfront pivots away from building on Apex.
Morningstar appears to be working on its own financial planning software tools, though it’s not yet clear if they’ll be for financial advisors, or it “self-directed” consumer tools offered to retirement plan sponsors.
Following on the heels of popular Social Security software for advisors, a number of providers are now building Medicare planning software solutions for advisors who want to further differentiate their expertise with retirees and justify their value proposition beyond the portfolio alone.

You can view analysis of these announcements and more trends in advisor technology in this month's column, including a fascinating look at why, exactly, performance reporting software for advisors is so expensive (the answer: a lack of quality data and poor data standards in the data feeds from custodians), whether Amazon Alexa may become a new communication channel for financial advisors to reach their clients, and the news that XY Planning Network is running its second annual FinTech competition for advisor technology startups (deadline for those who wish to enter: June 15th).

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]!