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News Highlight – FINRA Backing Away From Push To Oversee Investment Advisers?

February 7, 2013 03:39 pm 4 Comments CATEGORY: Industry News

In a surprising interview article just released today by Reuters reporter Suzanne Barlyn, FINRA Chairman and CEO Rick Ketchum goes on record stating that he sees "no sign [FINRA] can convince lawmakers in Washington to support a change in the way [investment] advisers are regulated anytime soon."

Ketchum attributes this primarily to the leadership changes in the House Financial Services Committee after the 2012 election, as Representative Jeb Hensarling has taken over for Representative Spencer Bachus (it was Bachus who had put forth the 2012 legislation that was widely viewed as paving the way for FINRA to regulate investment advisers). The matter was further complicated by the lack of clear support from the SEC.

The bottom line - Ketchum believes that continuing to push FINRA as overseer of investment advisers will make no progress in the foreseeable future, so it's backing off.Read More...

Safe Withdrawal Rates In Today’s Low Yield Environment – Walking On The Edge Of A Cliff?

February 6, 2013 12:05 pm 17 Comments CATEGORY: Retirement Planning

Safe withdrawal rates have been under a great deal of criticism in recent years, as both investors and planners ratchet downwards their expectations of market returns in the face of a low return environment. Of course, the reality is that safe withdrawal rates are actually based upon low-return environments in the first place, and do not rely upon long-term historical average returns. Nonetheless, a growing body of research suggests that expectations of the safe withdrawal rate should be adjusted based on the current market conditions that apply at the time of retirement.

Accordingly, today's low-yield environment, where the real return on TIPS is actually negative in the coming years, arguably represents one of those times where safe withdrawal rates should be applied with caution. And in fact, a recent draft study by Finke, Pfau, and Blanchett affirms this concern, finding that the probability of failure for today's retirees could be much higher than commonly recognized, given today's real returns on TIPS.

Ultimately, though, just because starting conditions are suboptimal does not guarantee that safe withdrawal rates will fail for today's retirees. By analogy, just because you're walking along the edge of a cliff does not mean you're certain to fall off of it; nonetheless, being closer to the edge of the cliff is certainly more dangerous than being safely inland, and similarly starting a retirement in today's market conditions clearly merits more caution and monitoring!

How All Financial Planning – Even Fiduciary – Is About Sales, Sales, Sales

February 4, 2013 12:01 pm 17 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

As financial planning continues to shift further and further away from selling products and towards the delivery of quality advice, many have suggested that financial planning may soon reach the point where it departs entirely from its "sales" roots - a vision widely supported by both consumers and new financial planners entering the profession, who all view sales with a highly negative stigma.

Yet the reality is that at its purest level, "selling" is really just about persuasion and influencing the decisions of others, and financial planners really are in the business of persuasion, convincing clients to: 1) pay the planner for services; 2) to engage in the financial planning process; and 3) to implement the advisor's recommendations. As a result, if you - as the planner - don't know how to "sell" your clients on the value of you, the financial planning you offer, and motivate them to act on your recommendations, then you simply can't succeed as a financial planner, regardless of whether the sale of an insurance or investment product is ever involved (though especially if clients really do need to implement such products!).

Accordingly, the reality is that perhaps it's time to ditch the sales stigma in the financial planning profession, and take a fresh look at how the noblest implementation of sales, persuasion, and influence is at the very core of what it takes to be a successful practitioner. To do this, however, also requires dropping the embarrassing history of how "sales" has been done in financial services in the past, and instead look to the latest tools and research available, so that we can develop proper training for how to "sell" effectively in the 21st century.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Feb 2-3)

February 1, 2013 07:30 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's issues starts off with a fascinating article that studied brain images of investors working with CFPs or non-CFPs in volatile markets, and found that those following a CFP-credentialed advisor were more likely to stick with the advice and less likely to second guess than with a non-credentialed advisor. A second article looks further at some recent brain research and what it's beginning to tell us about not just how clients behave in general, but about how they interact with advisors and why they often don't implement an advisor's recommendations.

From there, we look at a few articles on the regulatory front, including one that suggests the SEC's recent crackdown on advisors misrepresenting AUM may be partially the regulator's own fault for having such a poor and ambiguous definition of what constitutes AUM in today's complex marketplace, a second looking at how fiduciary rulemaking is very likely to proceed this year from the DOL even if the SEC's own rulemaking progress has slowed, and a third striking piece by Don Trone suggesting that the real roadblock to moving forward on the fiduciary issue is that fiduciary advocates are spending too much time talking about principles the industry already agrees with and not enough time focusing on developing the fiduciary best practices and safe harbors that are really necessary for wider fiduciary adoption.

We also have a few technical articles this week, including guidance from Joe Tomlinson about how to craft better asset class return expectations for financial plans, a fascinating look from John Hussman at how the "great rotation" from bonds to stocks is a myth, a look at how "career asset management" is a new frontier for financial planners to deliver value to clients, and a deep look at the new "play or pay" tax rules for employers offering health insurance (or not) that will kick in starting next year.

We wrap up with three articles looking more broadly at the industry - the first suggests that financial advisor conferences are broken and need to be fixed (with a few suggestions about how to do so), and the last two provide a striking look at the research that's come out in recent years trying to quantify whether or how much value financial advisors really bring to the table for their clients - research that shows promising signs for the value of a financial planner, but research that is unfortunately confounded by the fact that apparently researchers often can't tell who's an advisor and who's a salesperson any more than consumers can! Enjoy the reading!

MailBag: Is A Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) From An IRA Better Than Donating Appreciated Securities?

January 31, 2013 12:10 pm 17 Comments CATEGORY: MailBag

Many readers of this blog contact me directly with questions and comments. While often the responses are very specific to a particular circumstance, occasionally the subject matter is general enough that it might be of interest to others as well. Accordingly, I will occasionally post a new "MailBag" article, presenting the question or comment (on a strictly anonymous basis!) and my response, in the hopes that the discussion may be useful food for thought.

In this week's MailBag, we look at a recent inquiry regarding whether it's still a good deal to donate appreciated securities to a charity, now that the rules are back allowing Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) directly from an IRA to a charity.

Understanding Marginal Tax Rate Vs Effective Tax Rate And When To Use Each

January 30, 2013 01:03 pm 15 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Effective financial planning for clients often has tax-related consequences, which in turn requires a good understanding of not only the tax laws themselves, but also the client's tax rates. Unfortunately, though, significant confusion abounds regarding what tax rates should be used when analyzing various problems. Is it the client's tax bracket? Or a marginal tax rate? Or an effective tax rate? When should each be used? The key is that in the end, marginal tax rates should be used to compare strategies, and effective tax rates should be used to compare people.

Accordingly, if you want to know who commits a larger portion of their total income to their tax obligations, use an effective tax rate. But if you want to know whether to do that Roth conversion/IRA withdrawal/annuity investment/sale for a capital gain or loss/etc., the marginal tax rate is what should be used. In point of fact, this actually means that the marginal tax rate is really the only rate that should be used for financial planning scenarios!

The caveat, however, is that in practice determining a client's marginal tax rate requires more than just looking at his/her tax bracket... so be certainly to calculate the marginal tax rate correctly, too!