Tag: Retirement Planning

Advisor Innovations Podcast: Mark Miller on Rebooting a Retirement Plan

Advisor Innovations Podcast: Mark Miller on Rebooting a Retirement Plan

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:

Connect With David Armstrong:

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).



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

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

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. 

Connect With Carter Gibson:

Connect With David Armstrong:

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.



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

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

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

Connect With Adam Holt:

Connect With David Armstrong:

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.

15. Ric Edelman Looks To the Future

15. Ric Edelman Looks To the Future

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:

Connect With David Armstrong:

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.