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Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Nov 27-28)

November 26, 2021 01:58 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of “Weekend Reading for Financial Planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with a breakdown of how the Build Back Better Act is likely to change now that it has passed the House but is just now heading to the Senate for a fresh round of debates – including, most notably for financial advisors and their clients, the potential increase in the SALT deduction cap that was included at the last minute in the House’s version of the bill but faces resistance from the progressive wing of Democrats in the Senate.

Also in industry news this week:

IRS data showing that the amount of estate tax paid by Americans fell by over 50% from 2018 to 2020, the result of a combination of higher estate tax exemptions after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act… and higher adoption of more sophisticated estate planning methods (e.g., GRATs and FLPs) by wealthy individuals
A new report by Cerulli showing how investors, despite being increasingly aware of the fees they pay for financial advice, are also becoming more willing to pay for the advice itself, creating opportunities for advisors with non-AUM fee-for-service models

From there, we also have several articles on digital marketing, including:

The highest-performing types of financial advisor blog posts, including both topics that demonstrate the advisor’s expertise, and those that showcase their personality and client experience
How to create email subject lines that lead to higher opening and click-through rates with prospects
How video marketing campaigns outperform other media – as long as they are hosted natively on the advisor’s site (not just via YouTube or social media) and promoted effectively

We also have a number of articles on changes to the college financial aid process and student loan planning:

Upcoming changes to the Free Application For Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and the formula used to determine financial need
How distributions from grandparent-owned 529 accounts will no longer negatively affect a student’s eligibility for financial aid under new FAFSA changes in the coming years
Why the biggest student loan burdens are shifting from undergraduates to graduate students, and the challenge of ‘elite’ Master’s degrees that have a high cost but don’t lead to (materially) higher incomes

We wrap up with three final articles, all about financial advisory practice management and conveying our value as financial advicers:

Why ‘unbundling’ financial planning services can create value for both advisors and clients
How clients determine the value they get from a financial planning engagement, and the way advisors can (re-)price their services accordingly
A consumer survey highlighting that consumers may get initial introductions to advisors through friends-and-family referrals, but increasingly are looking to the advisor’s presentation of services, brand, cost, and communication style, to determine whether to hire (and stick with) the advisor

Enjoy the ‘light’ reading!

#FA Success Ep 255: Using An Advice-Only Approach To Quickly Grow With DIY Validators, With Cody Garrett

November 16, 2021 07:04 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 255th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Cody Garrett. Cody is the founder of Measure Twice Financial, an independent RIA based in Houston, Texas, who has managed to quickly grow to nearly $150,000/year in annualized financial planning fees in barely more than 6 months since launching.

What's unique about Cody, though, is his “Advice-Only” approach to financial planning, where clients don’t have the obligation, expectation, or even the option to have their investment managed by Cody’s firm… which has allowed him to quickly attract a waiting list of clients who may be Do-It-Yourselfers when it comes to implementation but are not Learn-It-Yourselfers and are happy to pay Cody for more personalized education.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Cody first came to the Advice-Only model after talking to a frustrated prospect who had interviewed 10 fee-only advisors looking for someone who would just charge him for financial advice and couldn’t find anyone who would do the plan without an expectation of also managing his money, how Cody has managed to find a niche with a certain segment of Do-It-Yourself consumers who are quite ready and willing to pay financial planning fees for advice and education, and how Cody has been able to quickly generate a steady pipeline of new clients by immersing himself into Facebook Do-It-Yourself FIRE communities of extreme early retirees.

We also talk about what Cody actually does in his financial planning process for DIY clients, the 3-month 3-meeting process for which he charges a $6,400 planning fee, why Cody eschews using traditional financial planning software in order to earn his planning fees, and the 25-plus ‘one-pagers’ that Cody provides as his educational financial planning deliverables to clients.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Cody shares how building an Advice-Only model has allowed him to build the ideal practice for his own lifestyle, the way he’s quickly systematized his process to the point that he doesn’t need to work any more than 10 hours per week to generate nearly $150,000/year in financial planning fees, how his lean approach to building his practice with high-value clients means he’s able to take home more than 90% of his gross revenue after all business expenses, and what he’s looking to do with the rest of his time in giving back to the advisor and consumer communities he’s involved with now that he’s been able to achieve his lifestyle goals.

So whether you are interested in learning how Cody provides advice-only services to DIY investors, how he gains referrals by "giving it all away", or why he charges all of his clients the same amount, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Cody Garrett.

The One-Page Financial Plan: Focusing Advice On What Matters Most

October 18, 2021 07:05 am 10 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

In the delivery of “the financial plan,” advisors have traditionally presented the thick, leather-bound, firm logo-embossed, three-inch binder to clients. On top of being a tool to present “the plan” to clients, this also was an outward demonstration of the sheer depth of analysis the advisor completed to compile this plan; a physical manifestation of the advisor’s “value”. Yet while that depth of meticulously compiled information can be helpful, it also comes with drawbacks. As, in practice, the especially thorough financial plan can be overwhelming to clients, if they open it at all. And at the end of the day, in-depth financial planning analyses can also quickly become out-of-date. To address this challenge, several years ago financial advisor and client communication guru Carl Richards made the alternative case – in his book The One-Page Financial Plan – that all of a client’s “need to know” information ought to be distilled into just a single page instead. In other words, the advisor would simply deliver a One-Page Financial Plan.

It’s worth noting that a One-Page Financial Plan (OPFP) doesn’t mean that the three-inch binder’s worth of information doesn’t exist; the OPFP is an alternative for a deliverable, not an alternative to the work itself. It’s about making a distinction between what advisors could share with a client, versus what a client needs (and really wants?) to know. Which means the creation of an OPFP is all about focusing that limited space to hone in on what each client truly needs to see and wants to talk about.

Beyond the sheer time savings of not producing such a lengthy physical financial plan deliverable, one of the major advantages of the OPFP is its ability to be a “living plan”. Because the traditional financial plan is often so long and time-consuming to produce, most firms only update it once every several years. By contrast, the OPFP can easily be updated on an ongoing basis every year, or even at every check-in meeting with the client throughout the year – which makes it easier for an advisor to pivot in unforeseen circumstances and disruptions (such as, for example, a pandemic!). Rather than reacting to a few years’ worth of changes, advisors can proactively adjust and update the plan as life happens.

Because the OPFP is a living document, a first draft can be constructed as soon as an advisor begins meeting with a new client, simply using standard Document and Spreadsheet tools (e.g., Word and Excel in Microsoft, or Docs and Sheets in Google). As while the Plan will shift a lot over the first few weeks, it nonetheless provides a framework that advisors and clients can work through together to reach mutual clarity. And once an OPFP has been refined and has buy-in from both an advisor and client, it can even become the centerpiece of meetings, because both parties agree that the OPFP has the most important information in order to make informed decisions.

Simmering down a financial plan to one page may be a hard adjustment at first, but it is certainly worth pursuing as a time- and information-efficient option to show clients what they need to know. Many advisors also refine their OPFP strategies over time, opting for more graphics (built from templates to ensure they’re easy to update), or building in automations to make the Plan even easier to compile and comprehend. But ultimately, the OPFP is useful as a tool to drill down to a client’s two biggest questions: “Am I doing OK?” and “What should I do next?” Providing a one-stop-shop to answer these two questions nudges clients (and advisors!) to stay focused on the right things—and work together to keep heading in the right direction!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (June 26-27)

June 25, 2021 02:59 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a look at the big media buzz around how Peter Thiel managed to built a whopping $5 billion Roth IRA by 'stuffing' it full of pre-IPO shares of his companies and early stage startup investments (first PayPal, then Palantir, as well as Facebook), which as part of a ProPublica investigative journalism expose is already raising questions on whether the IRS needs to further crack down on how illiquid private investments are valued when being contributed to Roth accounts?

Also in the industry news this week are a number of other interesting headlines:

A recent study on consumer preferences in retirement shows that what retirees actually care about is very different than what they expected in the years leading up to retirement, with a major focus on health, family, and purpose, and not 'just' retirement finances alone
FPA hires a new "Chief Membership Experience Officer" as incoming CEO Patrick Mahoney attempts to change the tone and focus to turn around the beleaguered membership association

From there, we have several interesting articles on the rising focus on operations and the 'business' side of advisory firms:

PFI Advisors (an operations consulting firm) launches a new "COO Society" for advisory firm operations staff to learn and train
Angie Herbers launches a new practice management Academy for advisory firms focused on the core areas of business management for a scaling advisory firm
Why COOs are increasingly becoming a partnership-track role in larger advisory firms

We've also included a number of articles on the growing focus of 'data' in advisory firms, including:

A consumer study that shows consumers are very willing to share their data with their wealth managers (more so than their own financial institutions)
How "Chief Data Officer" may soon become a key role in larger enterprise advisory firms that manage their data as an asset
The trade-offs in being a data-driven leader (and why there is such a thing as being 'too' data-driven, such that the firm misses out on innovation by looking only in the rear-view mirror)

We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of learning from the past to inform the future:

How "The Office" itself has evolved over the past 100 years, and why repeated calls for it to decline in popularity haven't materialized for decades
Why it's becoming increasingly popular to (once again) look to antiquity for insights about what's healthy and best for us
The fascinating link between walking outside and improving our mental health and creativity

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

#FASuccess Ep 225: Generating A Positive Marketing ROI With Direct Mail Seminar Events, With Matt Gulbransen

April 20, 2021 07:06 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 225th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today’s podcast is Matt Gulbransen. Matt is the President of Pine Grove Financial Group, an RIA in Minnesota that manages over $550 million for about 325 families.

What’s unique about Matt, though, is that despite the widely held belief that direct mail and educational seminars have gone the way of the dinosaur, he has continued over the past decade to see positive marketing results from using direct mail to fill seats at in-person seminar events geared towards educating people about planning for the plethora of life transitions they face as they approach retirement… and then convincing them to work with him to navigate those retirement transitions.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the ROI that can still be generated from a marketing funnel built around direct mail seminars, Matt’s key realization around why fear-based marketing will only get you so far and doesn’t ultimately help clients move forward to do business, the reason Matt started to charge an upfront planning fee for new clients as he gained traction with his seminars as a means of demonstrating that the work he and his team was doing had value, how Matt has adapted his process in a world where in-person events haven’t happened for a year, and why Matt feels that pre-retirees and retirees are still an attractive target market despite the level of competition in the niche.

We also talk about the way Matt has been able to leverage a relatively lean (at least by industry standards) team of nine people to service $550M of AUM by building out workflows and integrations within their tech stack in order to become ultra-efficient at their most common tasks, why the firm’s desire to focus on tax-savvy household-level allocations led Matt to choose 55IP as their core portfolio management software instead of more popular alternatives, and the various other technology tools that Matt’s firm has implemented to support “tax alpha” as a key value-add they bring to their clients (especially given that Matt and his clients live in a high-tax state).

And be sure to listen to the end, where Matt shares the challenges of starting his career as a young advisor at a wirehouse, how the challenges of prospecting led Matt to shift to the bank channel that had a more captive audience of prospects that could be referred to him, how it was Matt’s initial success with seminar marketing and the realization that he could grow an advisory firm without having a big-name brand behind him that eventually led him to launch his RIA, and how Matt has started to further scale the efficiencies he’s already built in his practice by bringing on outside advisor teams who are able to bolt on seamlessly to his system.

So whether you’re interested in learning how direct mail is still a viable means of attracting qualified prospects, how advisors can still use seminars to demonstrate the value of financial planning, or how Matt has been able to manage a relatively lean team with workflows and automations, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast with Matt Gulbransen.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Mar 6-7)

March 5, 2021 02:59 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a recent academic study that evaluated the activities that advisors engaged in with their clients in the midst of the pandemic and its market volatility last spring, which found that clients of financial advisors really did appear to sell less and buy more during the downturn, driven in large part by an uptick in proactive communication that advisors engaged in with their clients that helped keep client expectations positive (i.e., that the markets and economy would bounce back soon enough).

From there, we have several articles on the value of financial advice itself, including:

A reminder that in the end, financial advice isn't just about helping people identify and set a path towards their goals, but in navigating the complexities that arise along the way (that can block us from achieving those goals, without an advisor's help to navigate around them)
A framework to define an advisor's value across three dimensions of Portfolio, Planning, and Personal (and how to vocalize it in a prospect meeting)
Why it's so important to frame a value proposition in terms of how the client benefits, not just the positive traits of the advisor (e.g., "I'm a CFP professional" or "I'm a fiduciary")
How the value of financial advice is increasingly shifting towards financial wellness because of the way that money touches virtually everything in our lives

We've also included a number of articles focused on improving client communication:

6 'simple' but impactful actions that can be taken to show clients that you really care and are thinking about them
How the Asset Map software helps provide a one-page visualization to simplify a client's complex financial life
The power of being a client's "Chief Empathy Officer" (CEO) when often the blocking points to our goals are mental, not financial
How a personal finance columnist engaged a financial planner himself to navigate the challenges of his father's ALS diagnosis, and what she did to provide value to him along the way

We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of how we can try to become a little happier and wiser:

Why it's how we spend our time (not how we spend our money) that becomes the biggest driver of our happiness and wellbeing
The incredible impact that a simple compliment can have on making someone happier and more content
How the path to knowledge is about reading and learning, but also getting the broader perspective that often only comes with trying something and making a mistake, providing a pathway to wisdom through self-reflection and self-correction

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 53: Using Financial Plan Proposals To Show Planning Value To Prospective Clients

February 11, 2021 07:05 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

The evolution of advisor technology in recent decades has made it easier and easier for financial advisors to build (and manage) systematized model portfolios for a large number of clients. The good news of this shift is that it has greatly facilitated the scalability of advisory firms. The bad news, though, is that it centered the advisory firm’s value proposition around the portfolio, as the firm’s resources were literally focused on “investment management”. And in turn, to help convert the prospects to clients, advisors learned to create beautifully designed marketing brochures, “investment decks”, and engaged proposal generation tools to show why their bespoke portfolios were better than all the other bespoke portfolios out there.

However, as the industry has continued to evolve towards a more holistic and service-based (i.e., intangible) approach to the financial planning process (and away from such a focus on investment management and the attendant performance expectations), advisors often struggle with illustrating the increasingly financial-planning-centric value that they offer (often over the course of decades) to their clients. Which, in turn, raises the question: Is there such a thing as a “financial planning proposal”, or something similar that financial advisors can give to prospective clients in an initial meeting to illustrate how great all this ‘financial planning stuff’ really is?

In our 43rd episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication expert Carl Richards talk about the importance of meeting prospective clients where they are and asking good initial questions, creating a preliminary financial planning proposal and deliverable (and what that might include), and how to provide an even more substantial piece of supporting material that can help advisors show prospects what value they can expect to receive from the financial planning process.

As a starting point, it’s important to recognize that, in order for a prospect to decide to hire an advisor, the advisor needs to have asked the right questions to uncover and understand the specific pain point that prompted the prospect to book a first meeting. As it’s the clear understanding of this pain point as a motivator that led the client to take action that the advisor must address in a financial planning proposal (and communicate back to the prospect to make them feel they’ve been heard!).

From there, the advisor can create a one-page plan that lays out what the key issues are, which might include a preliminary statement of purpose, a list of initial goals that have been identified, and a 90-day action plan to start down the proverbial financial planning road. The key is to understand that prospective clients care far less about specific solutions than knowing that someone understands their problems (and can help them work towards a solution). Additionally, advisors can supplement that one-page plan with a full sample financial plan, which can really help prospects understand what exactly they will be getting, why the fees are what they are, and what the financial planning process really means (beyond what they may have encountered in prior experiences).

Ultimately, the key point is that the days of glossy brochures full of Morningstar reports and stock photos of compasses and lighthouses may not be as relevant as they were when an advisor’s main value proposition was investment management. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t valuable deliverables that advisors can use to help demonstrate the sort of value that prospective clients can expect. And at the end of the day, tools that help clients decide to move forward and engage a financial planner not only help them solve the problem that they came in to get solved in the first place but can expand further into a holistic financial planning engagement… and also help advisors grow their businesses in the process, too!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Dec 19-20)

December 18, 2020 02:57 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the industry news that the CFP Board is reversing its prior decision to remove compensation disclosures (e.g., "fee-only") from its Let's Make A Plan website and soon will begin to include even more information to consumers about how they will be charged for the advice they receive (e.g., commissions, AUM fees, hourly fees, subscription fees, etc.), after an internal consumer research study affirms that the most important factors for prospective clients evaluating an advisor are how they pay, whether they can afford it, and what the value will be (i.e., whether the service is worth the cost).

Also in the news this week is the unfortunate announcement that the SEC is tabling its long-anticipated proposed changes to RIA advertising rules that would have expanded guidance around the use of social media and (finally!) permitted advisors to use at least limited client testimonials (pushing any potential changes to a future yet-to-be-determined SEC Commissioner under Biden?), and the release of the Department of Labor's final new fiduciary rule that would for the first time allow ERISA fiduciaries to receive commissions (but has been issued so late that it will not take effect until after Biden's inauguration, raising the possibility that the controversial new fiduciary rule will be delayed and killed before it can be fully enacted).

From there, we have several articles around investment trends, including a look at the rise of "custom" direct indexing as an alternative to ETFs and mutual funds, an announcement that mega insurer Transamerica is halting all sales of fixed indexed annuities and variable annuities with living and death benefit riders due to the limited opportunity to offer compelling products to consumers in a low-interest-rate environment, and a fascinating look at the emerging work of Ole Peters who is challenging the traditional view of economics by taking a hard look at the "ergodicity" assumption and suggesting that perhaps investors aren't actually irrational but simply using a different framework to evaluate decisions than what economics has long presumed.

We've also included some articles on client retention, from a look at how clients may actually want to connect with each other through their advisor (from in-person social events to the virtual world of online networking or even message forums for clients), how driving client retention often isn't about having all the answers for clients but being able to ask better questions that engage them and make them feel understood, and some research on what really drives client retention that shows even very small increases in retention can have an outsized impact on the economics of an advisory firm (and suggests that advisors may still be "under"-investing in retaining existing clients over trying to get new ones?).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of advisor burnout and taking time off to rejuvenate (as we enter the holiday season!): the first looks at how often advisors can only recover from burnout by making a substantive change in their work (from taking on an entirely new role at the advisory firm, to leaving altogether and starting their own firm to better control their own time and focus); the second explores the rising phenomenon of employees not even using all of their vacation (and the potential ramifications of trying to "force" employees to take more time off in a busy work environment); and the last explores some of the data-driven research into the impact of taking vacation on the ongoing productivity of a firm's top employees.

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Implementing The WAVE Method To Build A Diversified Marketing Strategy

October 12, 2020 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Marketing

Growth is a real challenge for many advisory firms, from the advisor who got into the business to help people (not market to them), to the advisor who’s 'great' in front of prospects (with a strong ability to sell their value) but struggles to find prospects to get in front of in the first place. Often at best, advisors find one particular strategy that works at least ‘OK’ for them, and then focus all their time and energy there… and in the process, neglect (or never even attempt) the rest of the steps of a comprehensive marketing plan and doing what it takes to build a steady ongoing pipeline of prospects for growth.

In this guest post, Amy Parvaneh, Founder and CEO of Select Advisors Institute, explains the WAVE Method, a 12-step marketing plan created to apply the concept of diversification to advisor marketing strategy by engaging efforts across four categories: 1) Wealth Detection, 2) Asking For Referrals, 3) Visibility, and 4) Emailing Prospective Clients.

The Wealth Detection category is about advisors staying informed about their communities (through local magazines), and the areas relevant to their niche clients (through Google alerts), as well as creating a pipeline of potential business development leads (by taking notes on individuals and places encountered on a daily basis to ‘detect’ who has wealth or, better yet, money in motion).

Asking For Referrals focuses on using clients and Centers Of Influence (COIs) as primary referral sources, ideally with a systematic routine of asking for referrals regularly. Additionally, more passive strategies can be used to softly ‘Ask’ For Referrals, such as including a brief message in your email signature line or adding a call-to-action banner on your website that directs clients on where to go to “Give a Referral”.

The featured areas of Visibility that can help an advisor grow their business include Social Media Visibility, in which advisors post personalized and relevant content regularly to establish a captivated audience that wants to follow them; Humanized Visibility, in which advisors are encouraged to connect with others as much as possible either in person or virtually, through activities such as attending trade conferences, volunteering, and creating video content; and Public Relations efforts, in which advisors pitch and contribute content to editors or publishers of well-known media publications for brand-name affiliation.

Emailing Prospective Clients helps advisors connect directly with generating actionable leads ready to do business, and can include ‘cold’ emails that are targeted to commercially available lists, or specifically targeted people the advisor is interested in meeting. Alternatively, social media followers, such as connections on LinkedIn, can be reached by sending them a past post of interest (perhaps one that may have been featured on the advisor’s feed). Last, the production of an original, personalized newsletter can be an effective way to reach prospective clients (and then sending it outbound via email to ensure it gets in front of them!).

Ultimately, the key point is that there are many strategies available to advisors to market their firms, but that advisors don’t necessarily have to bet everything on one strategy, and instead, similar to investing, can diversify efforts across multiple areas. Just be certain to also engage in a periodic review of performance and results to understand what’s working!

The Latest In Financial #AdvisorTech (September 2020)

September 7, 2020 07:06 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the September 2020 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – 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!

This month's edition continues with new co-author (and AdvisorTech guru) Craig Iskowitz, along with guest contributor Kyle Van Pelt, and kicks off with a look at Schwab’s announcement that all existing Schwab clients will receive free access to a MoneyGuide financial plan that they can create for themselves using the MoneyGuide One guided experience (or work with a Schwab Intelligent Advisory CFP professional for an advisory fee as little as $30/month), and highlighting how financial advisors can no longer justify their financial planning value by just inputting client data into and presenting the output from comprehensive financial planning software, and instead will increasingly be required to specialize into niches, and/or demonstrate their value in the conversations they have around the planning software.

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

Apex partners with Marstone for a tech-plus-custody all-in-one in an anticipated effort to charge fees for RIA custody (and has hired Morningstar’s Chief Product Officer Tricia Rothschild to help execute!)
Riskalyze partners with Rowboat Advisors to support ‘tax alpha’ and tax-intelligent optimization as the new portfolio value-add
LPL launches a Meeting Planner solution to optimize the surprisingly-time-intensive meeting prep process for advisors
The SEC changes the Accredited Investor definition to include financial advisors themselves, in what may be a boon to AdvisorTech crowdfunding efforts to raise capital directly from their future users?

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including Envestnet preparing its own direct indexing overlay tools as technology increasingly becomes the new value-add layer, Vanguard begins to develop its own 'robo' platform for advisors to compete for custody, XTiva raises $10M to compete for the complex process of integrating advisor compensation systems in large-scale financial services enterprises, and Timeline raises $2.3M in capital to compete in the increasingly popular realm of specialized planning tools that goes beyond what ‘generalist’ planning software can provide (in the case of Timeline, to facilitate retirement distribution planning in the decumulation phase!).

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular new “Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map” as well!

I hope you're continuing to find this 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]!