Enjoy the current installment of “weekend reading for financial planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with the big news that Charles Schwab is launching a new financial-planning-for-a-monthly-subscription-fee solution as a new “Premium” version of its Schwab Intelligent Portfolios solution, providing full access to a CFP professional for ongoing financial planning advice, and accelerating consumer awareness of the new and increasingly popular financial advisor business model (particularly for ‘next generation’ clients who are willing to pay for financial advice but don’t have investment accounts large enough to merit a financially viable AUM relationship).
Also in the news this week was an announcement that FINRA is considering whether to modify or even just consolidate its suitability rule once Regulation Best Interest comes out, noting the similarity and overlap between the two… and ironically showing, by FINRA’s willingness to consolidate the suitability rule into Regulation Best Interest, that Reg BI apparently really isn’t a material improvement or change to broker-dealer standards in the first place (or it would be deemed ‘too disruptive’ to the industry to even try to consolidate the standards!).
From there, we have a number of articles around practice management, and specifically how to attract and retain top talent, including one article looking at the rise of “student loan repayment” as a popular new employee benefits to attract young talent, a second highlighting that more flexible paid time off (or flex time in general) is also an increasingly popular perk, best practices in how to structure interviews for prospective hires, and a fascinating look at how digital-media-savvy Ritholtz Wealth Management has been able to leverage its blog and social media presence to attract good advisors to the firm.
There are also several investment-related articles, from a look at the potential recessionary implications of the recent inversion of the yield curve (from the researcher who first pioneered the study showing how inverted yield curves can foreshadow recessions), to a new BlackRock study suggesting that there might not actually be an “illiquidity premium” after all (but that there is a premium for complexity and more challenging due diligence and governance in private markets that also often happen to be illiquid), and a discussion of how structured products are once again making a resurgence, not to the levels they peaked at in 2007, but driven this time around not only by investors who may be nervous about markets and want more downside protection, but also a number of new technology platforms that are trying to make it easier for advisors to shop more efficiently for structure note solutions in the first place.
We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of how to be more efficient and effective when running meetings: the first looks at some of the scientific research studies on how to run better meetings (along with a study that shows the leader of the meeting is not actually very good at judging the quality of their own meeting!); the second provides some tips about how to carve out or break up meetings that may have gotten “too big” (as invitee-lists tend to expand over time!); and the third provides a series of detailed tips on how to not just make meetings more efficient, but to literally make them more effective, from how the meeting itself is run to be inclusive of all participants, to more carefully considering the invitee-list to the meeting, and simply being especially cognizant of why the meeting is being called, its ultimate purpose, and whether it really needs to happen in the first place (or if another medium, from email to company intranet, would be better to accomplish the same meeting goal).
Enjoy the “light” reading!
source https://www.kitces.com/blog/weekend-reading-for-financial-planners-mar-30-31-2/
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