Tag Archives: financial planning

Advisor Innovations Podcast: Mark Miller on Rebooting a Retirement Plan

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Mark Miller is a career journalist who digs deep into the world of retirement planning, social security, medicare and the state of retirement “readiness” among people nearing the goal line. Miller has written regularly for The New York Times, Reuters, Morningstar and has been a long-standing columnist for Wealth Management magazine and WealthManagement.com. He is the author of the recently published Retirement Reboot: Commonsense Financial Strategies for Getting Back on Track. In this episode, Wealth Management editor David Armstrong speaks with Miller about the challenges of retirement planning from both an advisor’s and client’s perspective. 

Mark discusses:

  • Why for many, but certainly not all, clients, social security should be considered longevity insurance, and delayed for as long as possible.
  • What advisors get wrong about advising clients on Medicare choices, and where to go for unbiased, objective advice. 
  • Helping clients do the math around long-term care insurance and LTC riders. 
  • How new research models suggest a higher allocation to equities does not help a retirement portfolio in draw-down mode.
  • What many get wrong in the debate around the financial sustainability of Social Security and Medicare. 

Resources:

Connect With Mark Miller:

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About Our Guest:

Mark Miller is a journalist, author and podcaster specializing in coverage of retirement and aging. He contributes regularly on retirement to The New York Times, and writes columns for Reuters, Morningstar.com and WealthManagement.com. He is the author of Jolt: Stories of Trauma and Transformation (Post Hill Press) and The Hard Times Guide to Retirement Security (Wiley).



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Advisor Innovations: Dr. Daniel Crosby on Understanding a Client’s Money Mindset

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In this episode, David Armstrong talks to Dr. Daniel Crosby, Chief Behavioral Officer at Orion Advisor Solutions. The son of a financial advisor, Crosby holds a Ph.D in psychology from Brigham Young University, and has spent his career bridging those insights to help people understand how they think about, and plan for, money and finances. He was a consultant to the industry for many years (and a one-time columnist for wealthmanagement.com) before joining Brinker Capital as chief behavioral officer in 2018. He holds the same position at Orion Advisor Solutions following that firm’s acquisition of Brinker. At Orion, Crosby is bringing behavioral finance insights into the design of Orion’s advisory platforms to help advisors build – and maintain – better financial strategies for their clients.

Dr. Crosby discusses:

  • How to translate traditional advice into effective tools for financial planning
  • How to address the changing dynamic in a person’s life through their financial plan
  • The impact of personal ideology on major money decisions
  • The role of advisors against the stress of money and irrational decision making
  • And more

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About Our Guest:

Educated at Brigham Young and Emory Universities, Dr. Daniel Crosby is a psychologist and behavioral finance expert who helps organizations understand the intersection of mind and markets. Dr. Crosby recently co-authored a New York Times Best-Selling book titled, Personal Benchmark: Integrating Behavioral Finance and Investment Management.

He also constructed the “Irrationality Index,” a sentiment measure that gauges greed and fear in the marketplace from month to month. His ideas have appeared in the Huffington Post and Risk Management Magazine, as well as his monthly columns for WealthManagement.com and Investment News. Daniel was named one of the “12 Thinkers to Watch” by Monster.com and a “Financial Blogger You Should Be Reading” by AARP. When he is not consulting around market psychology, Daniel enjoys independent films, fanatically following St. Louis Cardinals baseball, and spending time with his wife and two children.

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Advisor Innovations: Carter Gibson on Planning for the Future of Your Firm

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In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Carter Gibson, vice president and head of advisor M&A at LPL Financial. Working with a network of some 20,000 independent advisors, Gibson and his team have consulted with firms across the spectrum, giving him unique insight into how advisors think about, plan for, and execute, successful succession strategies. Whether that’s transferring a firm to junior advisors or merging with another, the process, he stresses, should be based first and foremost on your objectives and goals for the future of the business and your career; identifying those aspirations is a crucial first step. Gibson discusses what is driving the recent frenzy in M&A, what to look for in buyers or merger partners, and the best post-transaction practices to ensure a successful integration. 

Carter discusses:

  • What’s driving the recent frenzy in M&A activity and firm transitions.
  • Why today’s challenge isn’t a lack of buyers –– but finding the right one for your firm.
  • How current succession-planning transactions are structured
  • How to identify “cultural fit” and why it’s so important, even if the plan is to sell the firm outright. 
  • The three lenses to every deal –– financial, operational, and emotional –– and why the emotional one is the trickiest and most likely to derail a plan. 
  • Why the fear of alienating clients during a transition is overblown—if the process is planned correctly. 

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About Our Guest:

Carter Gibson is a senior vice president at LPL. He brings 15+ years of experience across business strategy, corporate finance, investor relations, and mergers and acquisitions. Carter currently leads the company’s M&A, succession, and catastrophe planning groups.



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Advisor Innovations: Max Schatzow on The SEC’s New Rules for Advisor Marketing In 2022

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By November 2022, all advisors will have to be in compliance with the new rules for marketing and advertising their firms, including the use of client and third-party testimonials. Understanding what these new rules are and how they will impact an advisors’ ability to market their services is crucial. 

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Max Schatzow,  founder of RIA Lawyers, to dissect the new rules and compliance regulations surrounding marketing for advisors. Max shares some of the old prohibitions that carry over with the new rules and the importance of coming into compliance with the new rules before the end of November 2022.

Max discusses:

  • The biggest changes in marketing rules coming in 2022
  • What the opportunities, and risks, are under the new regulations
  • What the new rules say about touting a portfolio’s financial returns and financial performance
  • What we still don’t know, and what the SEC has yet to issue guidance on, regarding how the rules will be enforced.. 

Connect With Max Schatzow:

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About Our Guest:

Max advises investment advisors and broker-dealers on a range of financial regulatory matters. Max advises private investment vehicles, financial institutions, and other market participants on structure and operations, regulatory guidance and interpretation, investment adviser compliance and controls, and internal and regulatory investigations. He also advises these same entities through examinations, administrative proceedings, and enforcement actions.

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Advisor Innovations Podcast: Facet Wealth’s Anders Jones

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Facet Wealth’s Anders Jones on Building a Hyper-Efficient Financial Planning Firm for the Mass Affluent.

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Anders Jones, co-founder and CEO of Facet Wealth, to discuss the firm’s recent $100 million equity raise, how the business model of Facet Wealth has evolved from a buyer of clients’ business from other RIAs to a consumer-facing, subscription-based financial planning firm for clients who may not at first have the assets to sit comfortably at a more traditional RIA, and how the company is using technology to improve the efficiency of its over 100 in-house CFPs to the point where each advisor can take on more than twice the number of clients than the industry’s average. 

Anders discusses:

  • How Facet’s original intention of buying smaller clients from existing RIAs didn’t really work, and why that’s a testament to most advisor-client relationships.
  • How they’ve grown to 11,000 clients, 75% of whom have never had a financial advisory relationship, with an aggressive digital marketing strategy, taking in thousands of leads a day.
  • How Facet’s technology model creates highly efficient advisor workflows, separating prospecting and onboarding of clients from the responsibility of financial planners. 
  • How the firm plans to use its newest round of capital—not to hire more advisors necessarily, but to expand the service offerings into areas like taxes and estate planning.  

Connect With Anders Jones:

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About Our Guest:

Anders Jones is the co-founder and CEO of Facet Wealth. He is a venture partner with Argyle Ventures, and previously was on the business development team of LiveRamp, an enterprise data marketing platform, prior to its acquisition by Acxiom.

 

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17. The Wealthtech Landscape with LPL’s Gary Carrai

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In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Gary Carrai, former financial advisor, co-founder of Fortigent with Steve Lockshin, and currently executive vice president of LPL Financial in charge of third-party technology partnerships. Gary discusses the evolving affiliation options LPL Financial has opened for financial advisors and how he views the fintech ecosystem around wealth management, where he thinks LPL will turn next for fintech partnerships and his views in Cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence as it relates to financial advice. 

Gary discusses:

  • His career in financial services, including his early days as an advisor and selling his technology firm to Fortigent to LPL.
  • His current role overseeing wealth technology partnerships for LPL
  • What many advisors get wrong about their technology stack
  • The great bundled, to unbundled, to bundled again pendulum in technology ecosystems for independent advisors
  • How COVID-19 impacted financial advisors’ decision-making
  • LPL’s approach to cryptocurrency

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16. Adam Holt on The Role of Technology for Advisors in Creating a Client’s Plan

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Winners of Wealth Management’s 2021 Best Financial Planning Technology, Asset-Map  has grown from personal use cases to helping thousands of financial advisors make meaningful decisions to grow their business. 

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by the CEO and founder of Asset-Map, Adam Holt. Adam shares why he started Asset-Map, and how its success reflects the need for advisors to expedite the process of explaining each aspect of a client’s financial plan. He discusses how automation has entered the financial planning industry and the influence of technology for current and future financial advisors.

Adam discusses:

  • Why he started Asset-Map
  • How technology impacts how financial advisors deliver financial planning services to clients
  • How Asset-Map removes the “set it and forget it” expectation for a financial plan
  • What the six L’s are and how they pertain to a client’s plan
  • Expectations of the next generation of advisors

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About Our Guest:

Adam Holt, Asset-Map’s Founder and CEO, was a financial planner frustrated by financial planning.

The long, research-packed reports he prepared for client meetings didn’t seem to engage clients or provide clarity. Adam realized that to better serve clients, he needed to help them focus on what matters most—making good financial decisions so they could reach their goals.

From that realization, Asset-Map was born. Created first as a tool used by Adam and his staff, his financial planning business became our software’s first success story as it grew by 300% revenue in three years and reached nearly $1 billion in assets in under a decade.

Today, Asset-Map is used by thousands of financial advisors across multiple currencies and languages to help families focus on what matters, make more engaged and confident decisions, and reach their financial goals.

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15. Ric Edelman Looks To the Future

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In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Services (now Edelman Financial Engines) and the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. Edelman discusses how he founded his firm with a focus on middle class savers when every other advisory firm was only looking for HNW clients, and grew the business $22 billion in AUM before merging it with Financial Engines. Stepping away this year from the firm he founded, he is now focused on investments based around technologies that he says will transform our lives, including blockchain, genomics and artificial intelligence, and is on a mission to educate financial advisors about cryptocurrency.  

Ric discusses:

  • How his earlier career as a journalist helped set him up for success as an advisor and entrepreneur. 
  • His views on the “holier-than-thou” critics of advisory fees based on AUM. 
  • Why he thinks this is the right time to step away from Edelman Financial Engines, even as he remains the largest individual shareholder. 
  • Why he convinced Morningstar and Blackrock to partner with him in launching the iShares Exponential Technology ETF (ticker: XT), the first of the thematic ETFs focusing on transformative technologies. 
  • How most financial advisors are failing in their fiduciary duties by ignoring the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a new asset class. 
  • Why he created the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals.

Connect With Ric Edelman:

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About Our Guest:

Ric Edelman co-founded Edelman Financial Services with his wife Jean in 1986. He sold a majority stake to Sanders Morris Harris Group in 2005 and merged the firm with Financial Engines, to become Edelman Financial Engines, in 2018. He helped Morningstar create the Morningstar Exponential Technologies Index from which iShares launched the Exponential Technology ETF (ticker: XT). He founded the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals to educate the financial services industry about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. 

 

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14. How To Invest Sustainably with Jay Lipman

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Clients largely respond positively to values-based investing—when it can be explained to them. 

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Jay Lipman, co-founder of Ethic, a direct-indexing investment platform for advisors. Ethic can demonstrate to clients how to construct portfolios that reflect their values, or demonstrate how far their current portfolios are from their personal ideals. Jay shares how Ethic provides advisors with comprehensive data about each company’s impact on different social and environmental issues.

Jay discusses:

  • How Ethic helps advisors dig deep into data based on the values and priorities of the client
  • The biggest hurdles advisors face when it comes to sustainable investing.
  • The trade-offs between “off-the-shelf” ESG portfolios and customizable portfolios when it comes to values-based investing.
  • The trouble with data and standardization when it comes to current ESG investing.
  • Why investment impact is an area where many investors want more information.
  • How Ethic’s founders started the company and the technology incubators and early investors that supported them.

Connect With Jay Lipman:

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About Our Guest:

Jay Lipman seeks to understand and simplify sustainable investing, climate change, human rights and how investing can be a driver of positive change.

At Ethic, the mission is to accelerate the global transition to sustainable investing. Jay works closely with investors to help them understand and craft their unique approach to sustainable and impact investing.

Jay has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30.

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13. LPL’s Tom Murphy on the Firm’s Efforts Toward Modernizing the Advisor-Client Relationship

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In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Tom Murphy, senior vice president of LPL’s advisory program. Tom discusses how LPL has augmented advisor services while the industry has evolved from facilitating transactional relationships with clients toward a more holistic planning approach, with all the inefficiencies and customization that requires. He gives an insider look into how LPL is arming advisors with investment and planning platforms to.

Tom discusses:

  • How LPL has helped advisors transition their relationships with clients.
  • What types of client investments fit best in a traditional brokerage service.
  • Why LPL’s model wealth investment platform is growing twice as fast as LPL overall.
  • How advisors are using LPL’s investment platform to customize portfolios for clients with a combination of sleeve-based models and the advisors’ portfolio decisions. 
  • LPL’s advice, and tool, for advisors looking to use digital marketing platforms for growth. 
  • How advisor technology does not have an innovation issue, but rather an adoption issue, and how it is incumbent on the platforms to help advisors better use the tools available to them.  

Connect With Tom Murphy:

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About Our Guest:

Tom Murphy currently serves as Senior Vice President of LPL’s Advisory Programs within the Wealth Management Solutions team.  In this capacity he is responsible for the management and strategy of LPL’s fee based investment programs.  This includes the programs’ investment offering, technology capabilities and pricing.  Prior to this he has held a variety of investment product and advisory roles at LPL.
Mr. Murphy joined LPL Financial in 2006 from Wells Fargo where he held positions in both finance and investment product management.  He served on LPL’s Finance team for five years prior to joining the Wealth Management Solutions team ten years ago.
Mr. Murphy has a Master’s of Business Administration from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.  He also has a Bachelor of Science in Commerce from Santa Clara University.

This podcast is sponsored by LPL.

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