Nerd's Eye View blog

Business Buy-Sell Agreements In The Wake of Connelly V. IRS: Ensuring Clients’ Business Succession Plans Don’t Create Future Estate Tax Issues

July 17, 2024 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Buy-sell agreements are a common succession planning tool for business owners where, upon a triggering event like the death of one owner, the surviving owners have either the option or the contractual obligation to purchase the deceased owner's shares of the business. Traditionally, buy-sell agreements are structured either as cross-purchase agreements (where the surviving owners buy the deceased owners' shares directly from their estate) or entity-purchase agreements (where the business itself redeems the deceased owner's shares).

The agreements are usually funded by life insurance policies on each owner: cross-purchase agreements are owned by each owner on every other owner, and entity-purchase agreements are owned by the business on each owner. This has generally made entity-purchase agreements preferable for businesses with more than a small handful of owners, since an entity-purchase agreement only requires the purchase of one insurance policy per owner, while the number of policies needed for a cross-purchase agreement increases exponentially as more owners are added to the group.

Which makes it notable that, in a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Connelly v. Internal Revenue Service, the court ruled that life insurance proceeds paid to an entity-purchase agreement increase the business's value for the purposes of determining the taxable estate of the deceased owner, with the IRS arguing (and the court agreeing) that if a hypothetical third-party buyer were buying the shares, they would be willing to pay for them based on the full value of the company… including the life insurance proceeds.

As a result, business owners who have implemented entity-purchase agreements face the prospect of the insurance proceeds used to fund those agreements being at least partially included in their taxable estate, which, at a top Federal estate tax rate of 40%, could result in a significantly higher estate tax liability for owners whose estates either exceed the current $13.61 million estate tax threshold or for whom inclusion of the insurance proceeds would bump them over the threshold. And with the threshold scheduled to be reduced by 50% when the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act expires after 2025, many more business owners stand to be impacted by the Connelly decision in the near future.

The challenge of 'fixing' an entity-purchase agreement that may subject owners to higher estate tax is that it isn't possible to simply move ownership of the business-owned insurance policies to the business owners themselves, because doing so could trigger "transfer for value" rules that make the proceeds taxable on receipt for income tax purposes. However, one exception to the transfer-for-value rules makes it possible to transfer a life insurance policy to a partnership owned by the insured person – which potentially opens the door for business owners to create a new "special-purpose buy-sell insurance LLC" that is treated as a partnership for tax purposes and assumes ownership of the insurance policies, which would serve the purpose of moving the policies off the books of the original business without running afoul of the transfer-for-value rules.

The caveat, however, is that despite having recognized such insurance LLCs as legitimate in the past, there's no guarantee that the IRS will continue to do so – and in the wake of the Connelly ruling, they could potentially scrutinize new and existing insurance LLCs, challenging the legitimacy of ones that may lack a valid business purpose – which, if successful, could cause the LLC to be disregarded and the insurance proceeds to become taxable, either to the estate of the deceased owner for estate tax purposes and/or to all of the business owners for income tax purposes!

The key point is that while an insurance LLC may make it possible to transition away from an existing entity-purchase agreement to one that won't create new estate tax exposure without unwinding the entire buy-sell agreement and starting from scratch, doing so does add to the complexity of the business succession plan and introduces potential risks that it won't succeed in meeting the business owners' goals. Which, for some owners, means it might be preferable to simply start anew with a traditional cross-purchase agreement – but for others, who are willing to accept the risks and navigate the challenges of drafting and adhering to an insurance LLC, it may still be worth it for the potential for estate tax savings and flexibility.

#FASuccess Ep 394: Launching An Administrative Family Office Practice To Deliver Your Best Support To (HNW) Clients, With Christi Van Rite

July 16, 2024 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 394th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Christi Van Rite. Christi is the Founder of White River Consultants, a firm that provides administrative family office services to 17 ultra-high-net-worth households, and is on track to generate nearly $1.5M in revenue this year from its specialized services.

What's unique about Christi, though, is how she evolved her career into providing this type of unique family office service after nearly a decade of working as a more 'traditional' financial advisor, when she realized that she had developed a unique skill set to get very deeply involved in the (many) administrative demands of running complex ultra-high-net-worth households, slowly becoming the communicative and coordinative glue to manage each family's financial lives with her 8-person team.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Christi provides families with 4 primary pillars of administrative family office services – bookkeeping for their personal financial household, payroll for household employees, property management for their multiple homes, and information and document management – in order to both manage the day-to-day logistics such as paying bills, as well as managing their relationships with their other advisors, how Christi actually manages the financial needs of her complex client households, such as ensuring that all bills and household payroll are handled, while also maintaining a high level of cybersecurity and client privacy, and how, because Christi views her company as just one piece of the 'puzzle' that these complex families work with, she provides administrative but not investment management services, and intentionally uses a tech stack that the client owns themselves, not White River Consultants, so that the client can easily move to another administrative services company if they ever needed to.

We also talk about how Christi made the unexpected leap from traditional financial planning and into administrative family management simply by showing up to the unconventional opportunities as they presented themselves, how Christi avoids the sensitivity of marketing high-net-worth family "success stories" by instead building robust referral pipelines from attorneys, accountants, and even other financial advisors who manage their high-net-worth clients' portfolios but don't actually want to get this far into their top clients' billpaying needs and the associated liability exposure, and why Christi insists on her team tracking their time for everything they do (even though they don't bill by the hour) in order to measure team capacity and the complexity of their work.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Christi discusses how she curates, onboards, and trains highly specialized and competent team members to be able to run with the firm's highly sensitive client interactions, how Christi manages the risk of serving relatively few high-dollar families and the potential revenue loss of being 'fired' by even just one family, by maintaining a high cash reserve with a year's worth of payroll (to give her time to find a new client without having to let any team members go), and why Christi believes that administrative family office services is not only a viable and fulfilling career path for financial advisors, but also an underserviced part of the (traditionally very saturated) high net worth financial services industry, with space for new entrants and advisors looking to do less traditional planning and instead simply want to execute on all the tasks it really takes to run high-net-worth families' complex financial lives.

So, whether you're interested in learning about how to profitably provide administrative family office services, what it takes to make the leap from traditional financial planning, or how to build a highly specialized team to serve high-net-worth clients, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Christi Van Rite.

4 Ways To Boost Associate Advisors’ Client Confidence And Communication (Without Risking Client Revenue)

July 15, 2024 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

Associate financial advisors play an important role within a financial planning firm, for both their work today (e.g., preparing financial plan drafts and notetaking in client meetings) and their potential to become the next generation of lead advisors at the firm. Which means their development (and desire to stay at the firm) can contribute to the firm's long-term health. At the same time, working as an associate advisor can come with frustrations based on the extent (and limits) of their job responsibilities and the freedom granted to them. For instance, because they have relatively less experience than lead advisors, their firm might not yet be confident in their ability to present 'live' in client meetings, as a mistake made by the associate in the meeting could reduce a prospect's or client's trust in the firm.

Perhaps reflecting these frustrations, data from Kitces Research on Advisor Wellbeing show that associate advisors are less likely to be "thriving" (and more likely to be "struggling") than more senior advisors and indicate that they are significantly more likely to leave their employer within the next year. Which suggests that creating a collaborative development plan that allows associate advisors to build and practice the needed skills to increase their client interactions and reach the next level could not only lead to more engaged associates, but also better leverage the investment the firm has made in them.

Advisory firms have a variety of ways to gradually increase associates' client interactions, including external training, client-facing practice, and opportunities to progress internally within the firm. This type of support can empower associate advisors and get them ready to advance within the firm, while minimizing the potential for making mistakes in front of clients. External training options include development programs that help advisors build client communication skills (e.g., Amplified Planning's CORE program and FPA Residency) as well as pro bono planning opportunities that can give associates practice working with 'live' clients and give back to the community in the process. Internally, creating a progression that starts with asynchronous client communication to demonstrate the associate's expertise (e.g., drafting substantive emails to clients and/or writing for the firm's blog or newsletter) and leads to the associate presenting during client meetings on a single topic that they have mastered can allow the firm and the associate to increase their responsibilities in a structured manner.

Ultimately, the key point is that while associate advisors tend to have lower overall wellbeing scores than more senior advisors, finding ways to increase their skills and responsibilities, as well as creating a growth path that shows how they can play a bigger part in client meetings and eventually manage their own client households, could give them the confidence and feeling of empowerment that could not only improve their sense of wellbeing (and perhaps the likelihood that they will stay with the firm), but also increase the chances that the investment the firm has made in the associate will pay off in the form of a more skilled (and happier!) advisor who can help the firm thrive for years to come!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (July 13-14)

July 12, 2024 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 at a time when employee retention has heightened importance for advisory firms given the ongoing competition for advisor talent, recent studies indicate that factors such as firm culture and leadership, as well as providing advisors with a sense of autonomy, can play important roles in building advisor loyalty to the firm. Which suggests that while firms might be tempted to zero in on compensation when it comes to retaining advisors, focusing on these other factors (which do not necessarily involve hard dollar expenses) could pay off in the form of increased advisor (and client) retention over time.

Also in industry news this week:

2 House committees this week advanced legislation that would halt implementation of the Department of Labor's new Retirement Security Rule, which, combined with ongoing lawsuits, threaten to derail the regulation either before or soon after it becomes effective in late September
A Federal judge has put the future of the Federal Trade Commission's ban on non-compete agreements in limbo, issuing a limited temporary injunction and indicating that a final ruling on the regulation (with possible nationwide impacts) could come before the ban goes into effect in early September

From there, we have several articles on tax planning:

Why potential upcoming increases to marginal tax rates and recent changes to RMD rules for inherited accounts could make Roth-style retirement accounts increasingly attractive for many clients
How advisors can add value not only by regularly analyzing whether Roth conversions might be appropriate for a client in a given year, but also by communicating how they work in a clear manner to help the client better understand the strategy and its potential benefits
How working clients can get more money into Roth-style accounts, from in-plan 401(k) conversions to in-service distributions

We also have a number of articles on marketing:

How applying the principles of beauty, simplicity, and creativity when it comes to website design can help advisory firms stand out at a time when differentiation is becoming increasingly challenging
Why targeting a firm's website and marketing content to an ideal client persona can help prospects better understand whether the firm can meet their unique needs
How becoming a "knowledge sharer" online can help advisors build their brand and support higher quality personal financial information amongst a sea of "finfluencers"

We wrap up with 3 final articles, all about exercise:

While middle age is associated with a growing number of aches and pains caused in part by natural muscle loss, regular exercise can help mitigate these trends and potentially lead to a better quality of life
Why resistance training, in addition to aerobic exercise, is an important part of a healthy lifestyle and can ultimately improve longevity
How targeting 4 "pillars" of exercise – stability, strength, aerobic efficiency, and peak aerobic output – can help an individual lead a healthier lifestyle, even if their exercise routine dropped off during middle age

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 142: Carl’s 13 Magical Questions Of Conversational Goodness With (New) Clients

July 11, 2024 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

Meaningful communication is crucial to building strong, durable relationships, and asking effective questions is an essential part of facilitating impactful conversations. Being able to initiate and lead those conversations has become an important aspect of any financial advicer's skill set, but for many, it's one that isn't always as straightforward or easy to learn… particularly for advicers who might be happiest when nerding out with spreadsheets and flowcharts! The good news, however, is that every advicer can learn how to be a better communicator, especially when there's a certain podcast host willing to share his roadmap for having Meaningful Conversations About Money.

In our 142nd episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and aforementioned client communication expert Carl Richards discuss Carl's "Magical Questions Of Conversation Goodness", how an advicer can 'move through time' to help clients make meaningful connections around their relationships with money, and how advicers can effectively implement those questions in their own practices.

It's generally accepted in the financial planning world that people don't typically wake up in the middle of the night because they've realized they need a comprehensive financial plan. More often, initial outreach from a prospect occurs because there's some urgent issue they need help with. Accordingly, advicers can foster a space for deeper money conversations by helping the prospect (or new client) paint a picture of their desired future state, homing in on whatever the underlying issues may be (which won't always be the same reasons they reached out in the first place). Questions like "What brought you in today?" and "How do you think we could help with that?" are great places to start, while Dan Solin's "3 years", Bill Bachrach's "What's important about money to you?", and George Kinder's EVOKE questions can offer powerful avenues to help clients start to open up.

As conversations (and relationships) deepen, advicers can probe further by 'working through time', asking questions like "What was money like in your home growing up?" and "Were you one of the rich kids or poor kids in middle school (and how could you tell)?" From there, advicers can help clients explore their relationships with money by asking, "If you could go back and talk to yourself with the benefit of hindsight, what would you say?", potentially providing them with insight around experiences that have been informing their lives for years. From a forward-looking perspective, advicers can ask about how the client deals with money in their home, and (if they have children) what they think their kids would say if asked the same series of questions 20 years down the road.

It's important to note that the goal isn't to tackle all these questions in one meeting. Rather, advicers can have multiple conversations over time to deepen the relationship. Initially, advicers can focus on discovery questions to understand the client's future desired state, which (once defined) becomes the basis for a Statement Of Financial Purpose, which in turn becomes the foundation for well-informed goals. And with clear goals, the advicer can then ask about the client's current state, identifying what they owe and what they own.

Ultimately, the goal is to normalize the process of having meaningful conversations about money. And by implementing Carl's Magical Questions Of Conversation Goodness, not only can advicers help their clients buy into their financial plans, implement recommendations, and reach their 'desired future states', but they can also learn a skill set that helps them differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded marketplace while engendering long-term, durable relationships with their clients!

Planning For Changes In Client Marginal Tax Rates After TCJA’s Sunset

July 10, 2024 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed in 2017, was one of the most extensive pieces of tax legislation to be passed in the last 30 years, touching many aspects of individual, corporate, and estate tax. However, most of TCJA's provisions are set to 'sunset' at the end of 2025 – an event that would have at least as much impact as TCJA's initial passage.

From an advisor's perspective, TCJA's impending expiration raises the importance of planning for clients who will potentially be impacted, which, given the law's broad scope, could be nearly every client. And yet, the timing of the sunset provision at the end of 2025 means that the actual fate of TCJA will largely hinge on the uncertain outcome of the 2024 U.S. elections. In reality, any law that extends or replaces TCJA would likely not pass until well into 2025, creating a very limited window (potentially only days long) in which to implement any planning strategies. And so even though there's uncertainty today about whether or not TCJA will sunset as scheduled, it's still not too early to start making plans for either contingency so they can be triggered quickly once there is more certainty.

For many clients, one of the biggest questions is whether they'll have a higher or lower marginal income tax rate after TCJA expires than they do today, and whether it is therefore reasonable to accelerate income – i.e., to recognize it before the end of 2025, such as by converting pre-tax retirement funds to Roth – or to defer income to be recognized in 2026 or beyond. And although TCJA's reputation as a broad tax cut might give the impression that everyone's tax rates would increase after its expiration, comparing the current Federal tax brackets with their estimated post-TCJA equivalents shows that a fair number of households will actually see their tax rates decrease.

Beyond the tax brackets themselves, however, households will also see significant changes to how their taxable income is calculated post-TCJA. First, the combination of a lower standard deduction and the elimination of the $10,000 cap on deductible state and local tax payments means that many more people will be taking itemized deductions instead of using the standard deduction. Second, the reinstatement of personal exemptions means that households will be able to take an estimated $5,010 exemption per taxpayer or dependent, meaning that larger households could see a large reduction in their taxable income. With the caveat that the expiration of TCJA will also bring back the Personal Exemption Phaseout (PEP) and "Pease limitation" on itemized deductions above a specific income threshold, both of which effectively create a surtax on income within the threshold range, increasing the household's marginal tax rate above their nominal tax rate based on the tax brackets alone.

For owners of pass-through businesses like partnerships, S corporations, and sole proprietorships, the biggest concern around TCJA's sunset is the elimination of the Section 199A deduction on Qualified Business Income (QBI), which allowed for a deduction equal to 20% of the lesser of the taxpayer's QBI or their taxable income. For most pass-through business owners, the end of the QBI deduction will result in much higher marginal tax rates in 2026 or later, with one exception: Owners of Specified Service Trades or Businesses (SSTBs) like lawyers, consultants, and financial advisors, whose QBI deduction phases out above certain income thresholds, will have a much higher marginal tax rate on any income earned within the threshold range – meaning that while it might make sense for most business owners to accelerate income in 2024 and 2025 while the QBI deduction is still in effect, SSTB owners within the phaseout threshold range would be better off doing the opposite and deferring income until after TCJA expires.

The key point is that different households will experience the end of TCJA in a wide variety of ways, with income level, filing status, number of dependents, and QBI all factoring heavily into the impact that the TCJA sunset will have. And although TCJA's ultimate fate may still be undecided, for at least some clients the potential benefit of taking action today (e.g., to recognize income at a lower marginal tax rate today versus after TCJA expires) may be worth taking the risk that TCJA is ultimately extended – since in that case the client would have simply recognized income at the same marginal rate that they would have later on, merely 'costing' them the value of a few years of tax deferral. So by understanding how each client stands to be affected, advisors can narrow their focus on the planning strategies that will have the biggest benefit for their clients.Read More...

#FASuccess Ep 393: Taking The Risk Of A Multi-Million-Dollar Succession Loan To Make The Business What You Want It To Be, With Alex Lewis

July 9, 2024 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 393rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Alex Lewis. Alex is the owner of Blackbridge Financial, a hybrid advisory firm based in Irmo, South Carolina, that oversees approximately $330 million in assets under management for 415 client households.

What's unique about Alex, though, is how, at age 29, he took on a multi-million-dollar loan to purchase the firm from its founder as his successor, and, in the 4 years since, has made changes to everything from the staff to the technology to the service structure to make the business what he wanted it to be… and in the process, nearly doubled the firm's AUM.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Alex gained the trust of his firm's founder and its clients by gradually increasing his client-facing responsibilities over a span of 4 years in advance of a potential succession, how Alex and the firm's founder negotiated a valuation and transaction terms with a seller-financed note with protective covenants that met the needs of both parties, and how Alex got comfortable with a purchase whose first monthly loan payment was higher than his entire annual salary the year before the purchase and resulted in a net income of just $11 in the 1st year after the deal (but ultimately grew enough that he was able to refinance his succession loan to make the former owner whole and reduce the monthly payment).

We also talk about how Alex's firm now segments clients into 5 service tiers based on their assets under management and revenue (and the actual differences in services the firm provides to clients at each level), how Alex tracks his clients' individual preferences to create what he calls "Wow Factors", such having their favorite soda on the table when they arrive for a meeting, which strengthens the relationship between clients and the advisory team, and how Alex, shortly after taking over the firm, made the decision to hire 2 new advisors and support them through getting their CFP marks to be able to continue to offer high-touch services for his rapidly growing client base and ensure they stay under 150 clients per advisor.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Alex discusses how he first entered the financial planning industry, transitioning from the world of public accounting to seek better work-life balance but taking a more-than-50% pay cut to get his foot in the door, how Alex managed to not lose a single client after being forced to call all 400 clients to let them know he had to raise their fees after a service provider dramatically increased its own pricing to Alex's firm… only to cancel the fee increase after the service provider reversed course (and how that action in turn built even more trust with his clients), and how Alex dug into a series of business books to identify best practices to systematize his own firm's operations, from Gino Wickman's "Traction" to Matthew Jarvis' "Delivering Massive Value", as he continues to evolve the business he bought from its prior owner into the one that he wants it to be for himself.

So, whether you're interested in learning about navigating an internal succession plan, handling the financial realities of taking on debt to purchase the firm, or creating a plan to grow the firm and its staff after taking over, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Alex Lewis.

The Return Of IAR Ethics CE Day And The State Of The (Nerd’s Eye View) Blog

July 8, 2024 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Nerd's Eye View

After several turbulent years in both markets and workforces, 2024 appears to be the 'most normal' year of late, with strong market performance, cooling (or at least no longer rising!?) interest rates, and relatively little new tax legislation (yet).

Yet the need for advisor education – and the regulatory requirements to get it (in the form of Continuing Education obligations) – never ends, with the latest focus for most financial advisors being on the ongoing expansion of NASAA's 2020 Model Rule that implemented the first Investment Advisor Representative (IAR) requirements to get 12 hours of Continuing Education (CE), including 6 hours of Products & Practices and 6 hours of Ethics & Personal Responsibility, in order to maintain their IAR registration. This new model rule is enacted on a state-by-state basis and has currently been picked up by 18 states… though, because it applies not only to IARs physically located within those states but to anyone who is required to register as an IAR in one of those states, in reality, the new IAR CE obligation is quite far-reaching (especially with California and Florida IAR CE requirements taking effect this year!).

Given the continuing growth of advicers who fall under these new IAR CE Requirements, the Kitces platform is not only continuing to offer IAR CE (along with all of its other CE types) through its Nerd's Eye View blog articles, but, starting this year, has also expanded IAR CE eligibility to our webinars as well. And to meet the growing demand for the required "Ethics & Professional Responsibility" content in particular, we're also excited to announce the return of our IAR Ethics CE on August 29, 2024! Attending IAR Ethics CE Day allows advicers to fulfill all 6 hours of their required IAR Ethics & Personal Responsibility CE obligations in just 1 day, preventing an end-of-year CE crunch and providing high-quality education from top experts in the field of ethics and compliance (while also satisfying their CFP Ethics and IWI Ethics requirements, too!).

In addition to IAR Ethics CE Day, the ongoing growth of our Kitces Education team has allowed us to offer more frequent live CE webinars (now running the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month at 3:00 PM EST), and next month, we'll be rolling out our newest Kitces Course, a master class taught by our own Jeff Levine and Michael Kitces on "Optimizing Tax-Efficient Roth Conversion Strategies And Implementation", which will let advisors practice the skill of determining the 'right' amount to Roth convert, identify which clients should do Roth conversions and when, and also explore ways to explain the strategic components of Roth conversions to clients (who may otherwise resist the upfront tax liability, notwithstanding the long-term tax benefit!). Additionally, the upcoming Kitces Value Summit, coming December 12, 2024, will tackle how real advisors provide and communicate their ongoing value to their clients.

Along with the expanded CE offerings, we've also been reinvesting heavily into making the Kitces platform easier to use. Our major focus this year has been on supporting the growing number of multi-advisor firms buying Group and Enterprise subscriptions… and then needing to manage all of their Kitces Group members! Going forward, our new Group and Enterprise dashboards will make it far easier for firms administering their Kitces membership to add and remove individual advisors and to enroll their advisors into IAR CE (as more states add the requirement) with just a few clicks of a button! (And yes, in the coming year, we will be looking at a broader overhaul and re-design of the entire Kitces Members Section for all advicers to make it easier to navigate – we've heard your feedback!😊)

Of course, CE is not the only part of the advisory landscape that's changed. Our newly released Kitces Research on Advisor Marketing shows that fewer advisors are reporting client referrals as a methodology to attract new prospects (and the growthiest firms are relying on referrals the least!), but that there is no one dominant marketing tactic taking its place. Instead, the firms that are the most successful at marketing don't appear to be engaging in materially different tactics than the rest; they simply have more clarity of the ideal client they're pursuing, and how to communicate with them, such that they're executing the same marketing tactics but getting much better results (which, in turn, leads them to invest time and dollars into their marketing efforts and further compound their growth lead!).

In the meantime, if you (or anyone else you know) wants to join our Team of Nerds, stay tuned for more openings in 2024, including the Managing Editor role (available now!), an Operations Coordinator (coming soon!), and other roles. We'll be listing these roles as they become available on our Kitces Career Opportunities page, or you can sign up for our separate Career Opportunities mailing list (via that Opportunities page) to be notified when new positions open up! And for those who don't want to join the team full-time but would simply like to 'Nerd Out' with us or a bit and share what they do or know with their fellow advicers, remember to check out our "How To Contribute" page to see how you can engage with the Kitces platform as a guest writer, presenter, or podcast guest!

Ultimately, though, the focus remains the same as it always has been – on our mission to "Make Financial Advicers Better, And More Successful" – through our 4 strategic pillars of creating Navigational resources, insightful Education, original Research, and skills Development for financial advicers across the spectrum of experience and firm sizes (and yes… or organizational strategy does spell N-E-R-D😊). We look forward to continuing the journey with you through the rest of 2024!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (July 6-7)

July 5, 2024 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 U.S. Supreme Court decision shifting authority to interpret laws passed by Congress from Federal agencies to the judicial system could have significant impacts on regulation of the financial advice industry, including the potential for additional legal challenges to regulations from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Labor (DoL), and other agencies, with new groups already joining a lawsuit against the DoL's new Retirement Security Rule following the decision.

Also in industry news this week:

A separate Supreme Court decision struck down the SEC's use of in-house judges to adjudicate cases involving civil penalties (unless both parties in the matter agree to it), likely setting up more settlement offers from the regulator to avoid a drawn-out legal process in the Federal court system
At a time when it has seen an increased staff headcount and budget, FINRA, the self-regulatory agency for broker-dealers, has issued a smaller total dollar amount in fines as well as fewer press releases regarding enforcement actions during the past several years, raising questions about the extent of its enforcement of Regulation Best Interest and other regulatory measures

From there, we have several articles on retirement:

Why some clients have a hard time spending down their assets in retirement while others are more spendthrift
5 ways that can help financial advisors give hesitant clients 'permission' to spend more in retirement
An updated study suggests that for retirees, investment assets generate about half of the amount of additional spending as wealth held in the form of 'guaranteed' income (e.g., Social Security benefits, a defined-benefit pension, or a private annuity), offering a potential opportunity for advisors to help nervous clients boost their spending

We also have a number of articles on practice management:

The 3 types of firms looking to acquire RIAs and why the attractiveness of a deal goes well beyond a firm's valuation
How advisory firm owners can tell the difference between solicitations from M&A brokers solely focused on the financial bottom line of a potential sale and advisors who understand the full implications of a sale, including the importance of a solid cultural fit, for the selling firm owner
The considerations for firm owners considering selling a minority stake in their firm, including the importance of understanding what the investor brings to the table, in terms of the capital and industry knowledge they offer as well as their expectations for a financial return

We wrap up with 3 final articles, all about vacations:

How to set up proper boundaries at work before going on vacation to ensure needed work gets done without having to answer emails or phone calls while away
How to stop 'overplanning' vacations, from setting up loose guideposts for each day rather than strict itineraries to avoiding the rabbit hole of travel review websites
Why vacations that aren't particularly relaxing can still offer value, including the opportunity to have a 'fresh start' on work practices after returning to the office

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Why Quality Factor ETFs Have Seen Large Inflows Over The Last Year – And How Advisors Can Use Them In Client Portfolios

July 3, 2024 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

Over the past few decades, technological advances and plummeting transaction costs have facilitated the emergence of a dizzying variety of ways to gain exposure to very specific areas of the market. As a result, advicers have more options than ever to add value for their clients by tailoring investment portfolios that are specific to their unique needs, goals, and risk tolerance. One approach that has become increasingly popular is the use of factor-based ETFs, which are designed around certain shared characteristics of assets that go beyond the more traditional attributes (e.g., size, industry, location) of early mutual funds. While there are literally hundreds of identifiable factors, the most well-known are Quality, Value, Momentum, Small Size, and Minimum Volatility.

In this guest post, Robert Hum, a Managing Director and U.S. Head of Factor ETFs at Blackrock, discusses why Quality factor ETFs have seen large inflows over the last year, the characteristics that define Quality, and how advicers can implement Quality ETFs in their clients' portfolios.

As we head towards the second half of 2024, investors continue to grapple with many of the same issues that have influenced the overall market action for the past several quarters. While inflationary pressures have continued to trend lower and the jobs market seems to have tightened somewhat, the Federal Reserve remains in a wait-and-see mode in regard to any potential rate cuts, international tensions remain elevated, and the level of concentration in a handful of (arguably overvalued) stocks persists.

As a result, this macroeconomic and market uncertainty has ostensibly driven a preference for overweighting higher-quality companies in investment portfolios. Specifically, 'high-quality' companies share several similar fundamental characteristics. For instance, research has shown that companies whose revenue is driven by their core business functions (versus temporary accounting transactions) tend to have more sustainable earnings and higher future stock returns. Leverage also comes into play, as firms with lower debt-to-equity ratios are less risky, particularly in high-interest-rate climates. Moreover, companies that are more profitable (as measured by their return on equity) tend to outperform their less-profitable peers, even after accounting for the higher price multiples they often carry… and that relative outperformance has tended to increase with longer holding periods!

With those factors (no pun intended!) in mind, there are 3 primary ways that advicers can use Quality ETFs in portfolios. First is from a tactical perspective, where quality strategies that focus on companies with lower debt-to-equity ratios have lower total interest expenses and may be better positioned to weather the current higher-for-longer rate regime. Second, advicers can use Quality ETFs strategically. Quality ETFs tend to have a lower 'tracking error' in comparison to other factor-based products and, therefore, can be used as a large-cap blended fund. Finally, Quality ETFs can be an effective diversifier, particularly in portfolios that are tilted toward the Value factor.

Although Quality ETFs have already shown solid relative performance year-to-date, the longer-term case for Quality may still be compelling, given persistently high interest rates and the ongoing macroeconomic headwinds. Advicers can add value for clients who may be concerned about a possible economic slowdown by maintaining their overall portfolio mix consistent with a strategic focus on an area that tends to show relative strength during downturns. Ultimately, by offering clients strategies to respond to changes in the economic cycle, advicers can help clients stay disciplined and focused on their long-term goals!