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Are Financial Plans Getting Too Comprehensive: How The “Sledgehammer Of Value” Isn’t Actually Paying Off

October 23, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

Many financial advisors take pride in the comprehensive nature of the advice they provide to clients and use the variety of services offered as a point of differentiation between themselves and other types of advisors. Though, at some point, covering a large number of financial planning topics can eat into an advisor's time, which is problematic if clients won't pay substantially more to receive that more comprehensive advice. For advisors who are feeling a time crunch from producing extensive comprehensive plans, but having trouble commanding a premium fee from clients for their additional work, there are a variety of ways to reduce this burden (from getting outside help, to changing the way plans are developed) while continuing to meet the planning needs that their clients are willing to pay for.

The results of the 2022 Kitces Research study on "How Financial Planners Actually Do Financial Planning" show that financial plan comprehensiveness has increased over time as advisors try to do more and more for clients to validate their fees, hitting them with a proverbial "sledgehammer of value". In the research data, this is reflected in a big uptick in advisors doing the most comprehensive plans: 54% of respondents offered "Extensive" plans (with at least 13 planning components) in 2022, up from 35% in the 2020 edition of the study and 39% in 2018. At the same time, the percentage of advisors offering "Broad" plans ('only' 10–12 components, less than the most Extensive plans) fell to 23% in 2022, from 35% in 2020 and 31% in 2018, and those offering "Narrow" plans (6–9 components) dropped to 18% from 23% in both 2020 and 2018. Further, the study found that client age was a key variable driving plan breadth, with a younger median client age being associated not with 'simpler' plans but instead with more extensive plans for their uniquely complex needs.

Unsurprisingly, service teams producing plans covering the widest breadth of topics tend to spend more time preparing them, according to the Kitces Research data, and this appears to come at a financial cost for these advisors, as those producing Extensive plans had lower median revenue per advisor and take-home income compared to those producing less-comprehensive plans. Which implies that advisors who are providing such "premium" financial plans – as measured by their breadth and comprehensiveness – are struggling to charge a "premium" fee for that work, resulting in a decrease in productivity and profitability.

However, this doesn't mean that advisors need to sacrifice the quality of service they provide their clients in order to reduce the time they spend producing plans. For instance, rather than trying to be an expert in the full range of planning areas, advisors could focus on 1 or 2 narrow but especially relevant service areas to 'go deep' for their ideal target clients, which not only would reduce the time spent developing plans on a broader number of topics but also could attract clients whose more specialized planning needs reflect the specific topics chosen. In addition, advisors could reduce the amount of time they spend on plan development by bringing on staff assistance (e.g., in the form of an associate planner or paraplanner) or engaging outsourced planning service providers. Finally, Kitces Research data indicate that developing plans in collaboration with clients (i.e., putting the planning software on a big screen to walk through together, rather than preparing a custom pre-written plan for each) could reduce the time advisors spend preparing plans.

Ultimately, the key point is that as advisors increasingly provide comprehensive plans that examine a wider range of planning topics for their clients, the question of whether using the "sledgehammer of value" meets both the specific needs of clients as well as supporting a healthy advisory business (by being able to charge effectively for the time it takes to produce such lengthy plans) becomes more important. And for advisors who do feel overwhelmed, there are a variety of ways to reduce the burden of providing the most comprehensive plans, from focusing on the advisor's unique value proposition to outsourcing financial plan preparation tasks to changing their approach to plan delivery, which can all help advisors reduce the time they spend on plan preparation while still providing a high level of service to their clients!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (October 21-22)

October 20, 2023 02:00 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 a recent study from Fidelity Institutional highlights the growing popularity of the RIA model and the success advisors have had after going independent. The study found that 1 in 6 advisors have moved firms in the past 5 years, with the majority opting for the independent channel. Notably, this decision has provided both qualitative and quantitative benefits for these advisors, as 85% said they now have more control over their future and 80% saw their assets under management subsequently grow, with a median increase of 42%.

Also in industry news this week:

The latest update on the status of the Department of Labor's proposed regulation related to fiduciary advice on retirement accounts and why the agency is referring to it as a "retirement security rule" rather than a "fiduciary rule"
A report suggests that RIA M&A surged in the 3rd quarter, as large acquirers resumed their brisk pace of purchases

From there, we have several articles on employee benefits:

Why high-deductible health plans with paired HSAs could be the most cost-effective and tax-efficient health insurance option for many clients
How financial advisors can help clients better understand their employer-sponsored healthcare options and make the best decision for their needs
How advisors can potentially save clients thousands of dollars by reviewing their elections for disability insurance, workplace retirement plans, and other benefits during the annual open enrollment period

We also have a number of articles on advisor marketing:

How to follow up with a prospect who 'ghosts' an advisor after the initial discovery meeting
Questions that advisors can ask prospects before and during discovery meetings to reduce the chances that the prospect will fall out of contact
A 2-part discovery meeting 'close' that can encourage prospects to take the next step to becoming a client

We wrap up with three final articles, all about technology and security:

While the increasing use of facial recognition technology could increase security and reduce wait times in a variety of areas, it also comes with potential privacy concerns
How the shift from passwords to passkeys could make logging into accounts more secure and convenient
Why encouraging consumers to focus on getting the 'big' things right, rather than trying to address every potential threat, could be a valuable practice for both cybersecurity and financial advice professionals

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 123: Does Every Prospective Client Fit A Niche, Or Do Advisor Specializations Leave More Underserved?

October 19, 2023 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

Kitces & Carl Ep Does Every Prospective Client Fit A Niche Or Do Advisor Specializations Leave More Underserved

Much of the marketing and practice management advice in the financial advisory space comes back to 1 recommendation: Specialize in a niche. Niching offers several advantages, allowing advisors to be more specific in their marketing, more targeted in their prospecting calls, and more efficient in their processes (since clients within a similar niche are likely to have similar problems, especially in niches of profession). However, raising the question of whether every client can be classified into at least one particular niche leads to another compelling hypothetical question: If advisors were to choose to narrow their practice down and serve only a specific group of people, would they be leaving other would-be clients out – not out of work with a specific advisor, but with all advisors who choose to specialize in niches?

In our 123rd episode of Kitces and Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss the validity of the implicit assumption that as advisors niche, every future client will fit into a niche of some sort, and whether this assumption potentially promotes an exclusionary model of providing financial advice, leaving out individuals who simply aren't profitable for advisors?

Most commonly, niches present as particular needs of a firm's clients. These needs are often understood in terms of a client's occupation (e.g., tech employees who need help managing equity compensation options), stage of life (e.g., pre-retirees with employer pension annuity choices), political or religious affiliations, or significant life events that create central themes and recurring concerns that an advisor can specialize in (e.g., divorce, widowhood, family members who develop special needs) – and because of the targeted services advisors offer to satisfy their clients' needs, they increase their value and the efficiency of their practice.

A second dimension to niches, however, involves the perceived profitability (or lack thereof) of a niche; if too few people face an issue, if the need isn't painful enough to be 'worth' the advisory fee, or if the client of the niche is simply unable to pay at a rate that would allow the advisor to support themselves, then making a certain niche the specialty of a viable practice becomes much more difficult. After all, in order to be sustainably profitable, a chosen niche must also be accompanied by the client's willingness and ability to pay.

While there is no 'silver (or blue) bullet' for financial advisors looking to serve those who may otherwise lack access to financial services, differentiating themselves by narrowing their focus on a specific area can still be a good first step. At its most extreme end, this might require an advisor's highly specialized area of expertise, allowing them to better serve those who might otherwise miss out because their issue is too narrow (because the depth of knowledge required to serve those who can't be served – because most advisors generally lack the required expertise to address their particular issues that are so highly complex and specific – represents a niche in itself!). And for financial advisors who want to offer planning services to individuals who may not have the means to work with a financial advisor on an ongoing basis, specializing in certain niches can even prove lucrative enough to profitably sustain incorporating pro bono or low-cost services as part of their practice.

Ultimately, the key point is that while accessibility is a real issue – both for prospects whose needs are highly specialized and for those who may not have the means to afford planning services – advisors can find sustainable ways to serve those who may have been excluded from traditionally offered advice services. Because as the industry continues to grow, so too will the demand for accessible financial planning advice!

Avoid Getting Caught Up In Big Market Delusions: The Case Study Of Electric Vehicles

October 18, 2023 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

A key value proposition for financial advisors is helping clients avoid common behavioral biases that can lead to suboptimal investment decisions. Even people who are normally rational decision-makers can be prone to fear, greed, and overconfidence, and the persistence of market bubbles where investors chase whatever company or sector is all the rage at the time (and often get stuck with losses when the bubble pops) shows that herd mentality in investing is as prevalent as ever. Which often leads to advisors counseling their clients to stay diversified and stick with a disciplined investment strategy to optimize their risk and return over the long term.

But even today, despite the evidence we have about our tendencies to make irrational choices, people still often fall prey to herd mentality in their investment decisions, as demonstrated by modern-day bubbles around meme stocks and cryptocurrencies. Even professional investors such as venture capitalists aren't immune either, with the rise and fall of companies like WeWork and Theranos showing that sophisticated investors can be enticed to abandon a disciplined approach by a sales pitch that's too good to be true. In fact, as more and more technology proliferates, with much of it promising to have a worldwide and life-changing impact, the temptation to chase the next big thing may grow even stronger.

However, it isn't just individual companies or speculative assets like Bitcoin that can be prone to bubbles. When a new technology or product is introduced that has the potential to reach a huge new market, investors tend to bet on many (or even all) of the companies that provide the technology as if they will each become the dominant player in that market. And because every company can't possibly become a winner (since they're competing with each other, and one company's success will necessarily come at the other's expense), this tends to result in the entire industry becoming overvalued. Investors' enthusiasm tends to feed on itself, resulting in increasingly unrealistic valuations, until suddenly reality comes into focus, and prices drop for all companies in the industry – often wiping out some companies and creating severe losses even in the ones that do survive.

There tend to be 4 main signs of this type of "Big Market Delusion", which have been present in market bubbles ranging from the 1990s dot-com boom to the 2000s digital advertising market to the 2010s cannabis industry. First, there is a story of a vast potential market for a new technology or product; second, investors and entrepreneurs tend to ignore the possibility that competition will squeeze profits for existing companies and reduce expectations for future revenues; third, companies focus overwhelmingly on growth in users or revenue as the primary metric rather than profitability; and finally, the valuations for these companies grow with no connection to their underlying fundamentals. And though it may not be possible to time exactly when a big market bubble will burst, these signs make it highly likely that a correction will happen eventually.

The key point is that when an investor bets on a new technology or industry becoming huge based on the size of its potential market, even 'diversifying' by investing in multiple companies within that industry won't necessarily protect them from losses, because when the entire industry becomes overvalued, the resulting correction is likely to affect everyone. The simple way to avoid getting caught up in big market delusions is by remaining broadly diversified across markets – and for advisors, the lessons learned from previous examples of big market delusions can help guide clients on avoiding the next one!

#FA Success Ep 355: Scaling Worksite Financial Planning As An Employee Benefit For The Average Worker, With Brad Arends

October 17, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Bradley Arends Podcast Featured Image FAS

Welcome back to the 355th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Brad Arends. Brad is the Co-Founder & CEO of Intellicents, an independent RIA with 12 offices across the country and headquartered in Albert Lea, Minnesota, that oversees $6 billion in assets under management for more than 3,000 client households.

What's unique about Brad, though, is how he built a multi-billion-dollar advisory firm not by moving 'upmarket' to gather multi-millionaire clients, but instead leveraged his 401(k) retirement plan advisory firm to begin offering comprehensive financial planning to the employees of large companies as an added employee benefit, and in the process scaled his financial planning business around the mass affluent American worker.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how, after realizing that his 401(k) plan participants were not being advised after they retired (and were being poached by brokers and agents trying to sell them on high-commission annuities), Brad decided to expand his business into wealth management so that he could offer advice to his mass affluent clientele into their retirement years, how Brad struggled to transition his retirement plan advisors into wealth management advisors because of the different mindset it takes to service an ongoing financial planning relationship but was able to acquire-hire the advisors he needed by finding a firm that had already established a business model working with the clientele Brad wanted to serve, and how Brad ultimately evolved a multi-pronged model of retirement plan advice, group insurance benefits, and personal financial planning to reach the $3,500 of revenue per client that he needed to be able to really scale the business.

We also talk about how the approval of the Pension Protection Act and the backlash against revenue-sharing agreements amongst retirement plan recordkeepers led Brad to decide that a flat fee would be the best way to provide their initial advice offering, why, to avoid the fee compression as a 401(k) recordkeeper (and reinvesting in expensive technology to keep scaling), Brad decided to sell the recordkeeping offering that was 80% of his business at the time to create more bandwidth to offer personal wealth management for their clients instead (and use the profits of the sale to help fund the new initiative), and how Brad leveraged the data he already had access to from providing 401(k) advisement for companies to create personalized one-page financial plans for its plan participants to illustrate the value of financial planning and connect them more directly to the firm's advisors.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Brad shares how even though he experienced multiple false starts with his business transition, with multiple failed hires, he stayed committed and ultimately found it was better to acquire a firm to get the talent he was seeking than to just try to hire it directly, how Brad now wishes that he got into wealth management sooner and believes that younger, newer advisors would benefit from acquiring their CFP designation as it can help them broaden their career opportunities in wealth management, and why Brad feels that even though he has built a sustainable firm with great talent that can live on beyond his leadership, he has no intention of selling his business and plans to continue his journey of expanding his firm to provide more affordable financial planning for more mass affluent American workers.

So, whether you're interested in learning about how Brad structures fees for worksite financial planning, how, when Brad sold his recordkeeping business, he was able to ensure that the 120 employees he would have to let go found a new home with the new owners of the business, or how, by combining group insurance, 401(k) planning, and wealth management, Brad was able to dramatically increase his firm's revenue, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Brad Arends.

Accelerating Growth By Marketing How Your Advisory Firm Is Different (Instead Of Better)

October 16, 2023 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Marketing

Consumers have a wide range of options when it comes to choosing a provider of financial advice, from larger wirehouses and asset managers to smaller Registered Investment Advisers (RIAs). Given that larger firms tend to have more substantial marketing budgets to attract clients, smaller firms and their advisors have had to look for alternative ways to differentiate themselves from the competition. Which led many firms to market all the ways they were 'better' than other sources of financial advice by highlighting their status as fiduciaries, fee-only advisors, or by offering (more) comprehensive financial planning services beyond investment management, as just a few examples.

However, while these attributes remain valuable for clients (and are worth highlighting), their value to smaller advisory firms as differentiators has eroded over time as what may have once been unique characteristics for these firms are now either increasingly common or have become harder to parse for consumers. For instance, even though RIAs are bound by a more stringent fiduciary standard, consumers might be unaware of the nuanced differences between that obligation and the seemingly similar requirements of broker-dealers under Regulation Best Interest. Similarly, consumers may struggle to understand the difference between a “financial plan” and a “more comprehensive financial plan” if they’ve never been through the financial planning process in the first place.

In this environment, another option for smaller firms to compete is to focus on how they are different, instead of marketing how they might be better than their competitors. And by using their website and other marketing materials to position themselves as different, smaller firms can demonstrate to their ideal target clients why they are the right choice for their financial planning needs.

Because the largest firms typically cast a very wide net when it comes to attracting prospective clients (whether in terms of age, profession, planning needs, or other factors), serving a client base with a narrower set of characteristics can help a firm stand out. Which means that if an advisor can demonstrate that they recognize (and can help solve) their ideal client's unique pain points, such prospects are likely to feel a stronger connection to the smaller, more targeted firm, and to believe that that small firm will be better understood by their advisor compared to a more generalist large firm with a bigger marketing budget.

Another way advisors can demonstrate how they are different is by explaining how, exactly, they do financial planning, and what specific services they provide for their ideal clients as a way to communicate their value. Because when a firm has an ideal client type, they often are able to go deeper into their clients' specific needs, and can communicate exactly how the process works to address those needs. This lets prospective clients know what to expect (and helps them understand the value they will be receiving in exchange for their fees!). This service specificity can be a differentiator for firms with ideal client types, as a firm that works with a broader client base will likely need to be more generic in its marketing, given that the planning needs of its clients will be significantly broader.

Ultimately, the key point is that while it has gotten more difficult for financial planning firms to show how they are better based on traditional characteristics such as being a fiduciary or providing comprehensive planning services, firms can shift their focus to emphasize how they are different and can meet the specific needs of their ideal target client as a way to adjust their marketing efforts. Which helps these firms attract more clients, and continue to thrive amidst competition from larger counterparts!

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Are Financial Plans Getting Too Comprehensive: How The “Sledgehammer Of Value” Isn’t Actually Paying Off

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (October 21-22)

Kitces & Carl Ep 123: Does Every Prospective Client Fit A Niche, Or Do Advisor Specializations Leave More Underserved?

Avoid Getting Caught Up In Big Market Delusions: The Case Study Of Electric Vehicles

#FA Success Ep 355: Scaling Worksite Financial Planning As An Employee Benefit For The Average Worker, With Brad Arends

Accelerating Growth By Marketing How Your Advisory Firm Is Different (Instead Of Better)

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Questions?

Now Accepting Applications!
Showcase What You Do Best At The 2025 Kitces Marketing Summit!