Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week’s edition kicks off with the big announcement that eMoney Advisor has developed an integration with MoneyGuidePro, allowing MGP users to adopt the eMx Select advisor dashboard and client PFM portal while continuing to use MoneyGuidePro for financial planning purposes. Also in the news this week was the separate launch of MoneyGuidePro’s new “MyMoneyGuide” digital marketing solution, and a new study from Cerulli suggesting that robo-advisors need to significantly accelerate their ongoing asset growth just to survive (and that other industry studies projecting robo-advisor growth may be unrealistically optimistic).
From there, we have several technical articles this week, from some guidance on how early retirees can aim to maximize their premium assistance tax credits when buying health insurance until they’re eligible for Medicare, to a discussion of why ETF adoption has still been slow in the retirement plan marketplace and what it will take for the trend to shift, and a new study from retirement researcher Wade Pfau looking at various forms of variable spending strategies in retirement and how they line up to each other.
We also have a number of practice management articles this week, including: the growth of technology solutions that allow financial advisors to engage with prospective clients through their website before ever meeting with the prospect; how video conferencing with clients has grown, with almost 70% of advisors using video tools to meet with at least a subset of their clients; and a review of the new financial planning software solution RightCapital.
We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first provides a great reminder (and cautionary tale) of how digitally distracted we’ve allowed ourselves to become, and the importance of periodically “unplugging” to ensure you take time to engage in some critical thinking and strategic planning for your business; the second is a discussion of the ongoing “breakaway broker” trend, which appears to be accelerating into larger and larger teams breaking away from wirehouses and insurance company broker-dealers; and the last raising the question of whether the core topic areas of financial planning are still too rooted in the financial planning products of old, and whether it’s time for financial planning to evolve to the next stage, which might even include coming up with a new or different name for what it may eventually become.
Enjoy the reading!