Enjoy the current installment of “weekend reading for financial planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with the buzz that last-minute changes to the pass-through provisions of the proposed Republican tax plan could have a major impact on broker-dealers and RIAs, given that the version as written would have a substantial bias for independent broker-dealers over employee brokers (as the former would be eligible for favorable pass-through treatment while the latter would not), and would present significant challenges for large RIAs (that may struggle to raise capital given their less preferential tax rates than other industries). With a final tax plan due “imminently” soon, we’ll see what the final outcome will be.
Also in the news this week was a fascinating consumer study, which finds that the rise of “robo-advisors” and digital advice tools isn’t causing consumers to move away from human financial advisors, and instead is leading self-directed investors to adopt a combination of human and digital solutions – the first indication that the rise of digital tools could actually be a boon for human financial advisors (particularly those positioned to add value on top of what increasingly sophisticated digital tools can already provide to consumers directly).
From there, we have several articles about (digital and content) marketing for financial advisors, including guidance on how to effectively design a real lead-generation process on your financial advisor website, the typical content marketing mistakes that most financial advisory firms make when they get started with digital marketing, how advisors need to focus more on the “triggers” that make prospects actually seek out a financial advisor in order to drive more new business, and some ideas about how advisors can change their marketing in a world where client referrals appear to be on the decline.
We also have a few practice management articles this week, from a look at the recent Investment News Advisor Compensation benchmarking study that shows financial advisor compensation is up significantly (good news for advisors) but that growth is declining (an ominous sign for many firms), to a discussion of the recently emerging trend of large RIAs forming their own subsidiary broker-dealers (to manage old legacy B/D business, or even to facilitate the offering of alternative investments to new clients), and a discussion of whether the introduction of private equity firms to the RIA space could ultimately threaten their growth trends by introducing new conflicts of interest (in a world where RIAs thus far have thrived in part from their sheer lack of conflicts relative to other advisor business models).
We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of managing your personal productivity and creating a structured schedule: the first explores how the classic 8-hour workday may be an anachronism of the modern world, as while it was a humane change to long factory hours, in the modern world of knowledge-based work, a structure of 1-hour-on-and-15-minute-break appears to be far more conducive to productivity; the second looks at how structuring your day can help to facilitate better personal productivity when working from home; and the last discusses how the “ideal structure” for your day varies dramatically depending on whether you’re a “maker” (a creative type, who needs long blocks of uninterrupted time) or a “manager” (who needs a highly structured schedule of short meetings to put out all the necessary fires and manage a team in the right direction)… and the conflicts that can arise when makers and managers don’t respect the fact that the other has a very different ideal schedule.
Enjoy the “light” reading!
source https://www.kitces.com/blog/weekend-reading-for-financial-planners-december-16-17/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=weekend-reading-for-financial-planners-december-16-17
No comments:
Post a Comment