Enjoy the current installment of “weekend reading for financial planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with the interesting buzz that TD Ameritrade, long recognized as the open-architecture-with-little-proprietary-product platform for RIAs, might now be considering becoming less open and begin offering more TD-branded products under its new CEO (which will surely be part of the buzz with TD Ameritrade’s national RIA conference coming up next week!). Also in the news this week was coverage of the growing number of regulators and legislators adopting rules that will make it easier for financial advisors to report financial abuse of seniors (with much debate about whether advisors will be required to make reports).
From there, we have a few technical planning articles, including a reminder that now is the time to review (and if necessary, get corrections) on Form 1099-Rs being sent to clients, a look at how indexed annuities are getting more and more complicated and the concerns of new “exotic” volatility-managed indices, the risks and potential rewards of ESG-based investing, and how on average dollar cost averaging is a worse deal than just allocating a lump sum but may still be a good idea when P/E ratios are high (as they are today).
There are also a couple of practice management articles this week, from tips on how to better “program” clients to give regular referrals, how to better qualify prospects and have fewer “wasted” prospect meetings (where the prospect never follows through after the meeting), and how to actually run a first-time meeting with a new prospect to improve your chances of actually turning them into a client.
We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first covers the recent Consumer Federation of America report that a number of large Financial Institutions are holding out to the public as (fiduciary) advisors while representing to regulators and the courts that they’re just (suitaility-based) salespeople, emphasizing that the real battle is not about fiduciary vs suitability, per se, but whether salespeople should even be allowed to hold out as advisors; the second is an interesting look at Sanctuary Wealth Services, a platform for breakaway brokers transitioning to independent RIA that is shutting down after 8 years, and sends an ominous signal to the community of advisor support platforms that it’s still a challenging business; and the last is a discussion of whether the rise of call-center-based virtual financial planning solutions (like Vanguard Personal Advisor Services and the coming Schwab Intelligent Advisory) will become the future entry-level career path for financial advisors, and pondering whether that’s a bad way to train the next generation of financial planners, or actually a great improvement (at least compared to the past, where it was all about getting new business by “smiling and dialing” while reading cold-calling scripts!).
Enjoy the “light” reading!
source https://www.kitces.com/blog/weekend-reading-for-financial-planners-jan-28-29-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=weekend-reading-for-financial-planners-jan-28-29-2
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