Executive Summary
As markets bounce back from spring turmoil to new record highs this summer, and growth of financial advisory firms continues unhindered by the purported threat of AI, the industry has shifted an ever-greater focus onto the challenges of scaling firms as they grow, and coming up with ways to tackle the emerging shortage of experienced advisor talent. The good news is that most advisory firms still retain sky-high client retention, which provides a steady runway for firms to adapt and expand capacity. The bad news is that it's still challenging to attract and retain quality talent.
Our growth at Kitces.com has faced similar capacity challenges in recent years, amplified by our ongoing commitment not to use AI in the development of educational content… which means we have no choice but to continue to build our on-team talent, coupled with our network of industry experts, who can deliver human-expert-crafted content that is up to our Quality, Nerdy, and Relevant standards at Kitces.
Yet also similar to many advisory firms, we have found that our recent growth has increasingly been constrained by legacy technology decisions we made years ago that no longer served the current needs of the business. And so in 2025, we kicked off a two-year cycle in which we have been systematically rebuilding nearly all the core technology components of our business.
Last year, we started with a total from-the-ground-up rebuild of our Members Section, which now features a new CE catalog, new CE quiz system, enhanced reporting on the status of your CE programs and whether they've been submitted to the accrediting organizations, and an improved My Account interface to manage all of your various CE numbers. With our new framework built, we're now also working on a number of additional enhancements, including:
- a new "Research Scorecard" report that will allow advisors who participate in our research surveys to see how their firms compare to other (anonymized) advisor peer groups
- updates to our Live Events page to make it easier to see all of our scheduled live Kitces offerings in one place.
We're also excited to introduce two new programs getting underway in the second half of 2026: Level Up, and the Financial Advisor Technician podcast!
Our new Level Up program is specifically designed to help solve the industry's talent (or what we believe is actually a training) shortage: Every other week all year long, we'll conduct a live case-study reviews of real-world client scenarios, giving new advisors a chance to "get their rep(etition)s in" on more complex clients, with an opportunity to compare notes and role-play scenarios with peers, all guided by a Kitces instructor who will debrief the case study to highlight key planning opportunities, and how those recommendations could be framed and communicated most effectively to the client. This month, we'll be starting a three-month pilot program for Level Up, which is already sold out, but you can sign up now for the waitlist as we prepare for a broader rollout in 2027!
Our other new launch is the Financial Advisor Technician podcast (or "F-A-T" for short), which will be our first podcast eligible for CFP (and other) CE credit! Hosted by our own financial planning nerd Adam Van Deusen, each week a new episode of F-A-T will interview the author of our Wednesday articles (on various advanced planning topics), exploring the important information and key insights, and how advisors can take action with their clients. And because our Wednesday articles are already CE-eligible (readers must successfully complete the requisite accompanying CE quiz), listeners to the F-A-T podcast will also be able to earn the same CE credit by logging into the Members Section to take the quiz! Stay tuned for the first F-A-T episode to drop on Wednesday, July 22!
In the meantime, we continue to grow our full breadth of CE, practice management, and advisor development programs now, including our series of nine on-demand Training Courses, quarterly virtual events including our two half-day, virtual Practice Management Summits (one on Marketing and the other on Financial Planning Value) and our two full-day CE Intensives (one on Tax and the other on Ethics to fulfill your CFP Ethics and IAR Ethics requirements), our bi-weekly webinars, growing Directors of Financial Planning (DFP) community and its monthly peer group meetings, and the full breadth of our daily articles and two (soon-to-be three) podcasts! And we remain an active provider for all of your (multi-designation/multi-license) CE needs, including CFP, CPA, all the designations from IWI, College for Financial Planning, the American College, and state-based IAR CE obligations.
Likewise, our own Team of Nerds continues to expand. We recently hired several new team members, including Director of Member Success Kristin Dammacco, Director of People Operations Libby Sparks, and Senior Technical Editor Natalie Trevisan, and are actively hiring now for a new Executive Assistant to work directly with yours truly, Michael Kitces! If you know someone who would be a fit for our open Executive Assistant role, or are wondering how you can get more involved with the Kitces team, you can also sign up for our separate Career Opportunities mailing list (via our Career Opportunities page) to be notified when new positions open up! And for those who don't want to join the team full-time but would simply like to "Nerd out" with us for a bit and share what they do or know with their fellow advicers, remember to check out our "How To Contribute" page to see how you can engage with the Kitces platform as a guest writer, presenter, or podcast guest!
Throughout it all, we remain focused on advancing our core mission – to "Make Financial Advicers Better, And More Successful" – through our four strategic pillars of supporting ‘Nnovation of AdvisorTech tools, delivering insightful Education, conducting original advicer Research, and facilitating the Development of financial advicer skills across the spectrum of experience and firm sizes (and yes… our organizational strategy does spell N-E-R-D). We look forward to continuing the journey with you in 2026 and beyond!
Introducing The Level Up Program To Train New Advisors And The Financial Advisor Technician Podcast
In recent years, there has been a growing level of angst in the industry about the future pipeline for advisor talent. Cerulli projects about 100,000 financial advisors (or nearly one-third of the 300,000 current financial advisors) to retire in the next 10 years. McKinsey anticipates that, with growing demand for advisors, the industry will need to grow to 400,000 financial advisors by the mid 2030s, leaving us 100,000 short of future demand (and a need to bring in 200,000+ new advisors if we're also going to replace the outgoing retirees).
Yet the irony is that financial planning is an amazing career to pursue. It is very financially rewarding in career earnings, it is psychologically rewarding in client relationships, it is tied to businesses with extremely stable revenue owing to multi-decade average client tenures, and it is proving to be remarkably robust against the threat of AI. When introduced to young people as a future career path, it is a compelling opportunity.
But most advisory firms struggle to attract and retain new talent. Developing new professionals is still costly and time-intensive unto itself, and most advisory firms do not have the depth of team to build internal programs or provide dedicated time to training… to the extent that, arguably, the industry's biggest challenge is not a talent shortage, but a training shortage!
"Level Up" New Advicer Development Program To Tackle The Training Shortage
Learning to be a financial planner is hard, because in the "real world" clients show up in ways that are more complex than what the CFP textbooks teach. The individual issues are still there – the rules for a Roth conversion, the capital needs analysis for life insurance coverage, using a 529 plan for college – but when they interlace across the household (is it better to pay the taxes on the Roth conversion, or contribute more to the 529 plan, and should the client use permanent life insurance as a supplemental retirement or college savings vehicle or instead "buy term and invest the rest"?), it's far more difficult for new advisors to weave all the information together.
For which the best way to learn is often simply to get in more repetitions with clients, working actively on various case scenarios – ideally alongside a more senior advisor, who can help with the analysis, give feedback about potential recommendations, and demonstrate best practices.
Except many (or even most?) advisory firms struggle with the capacity of senior advisors to actually teach and give feedback. Case reviews of prospective client recommendations, and debriefs after client meetings, are rare. Most associate advisors are, at best, expected to learn by osmosis, whereby simply being in the presence of senior advisors with greater experience who are delivering advice to clients will allow some of that expertise to diffuse across the barrier to the new advisor's brain.
And so Kitces is launching a new "Level Up" program to fill the void! Every other week on an ongoing basis, participating advisors will get to "meet" a new hypothetical (but based on real life) client scenario, get introduced to the details of the case, have an opportunity to work in small groups to ideate and even role-play how they would handle the client scenario, and then hear a Kitces facilitator debrief how they would handle the situation, what recommendations they would make, and how they would explain it to the client.
Similar to our Kitces Courses, the Level Up program is intended primarily for advisors in the early years of their careers, who may have their CFP marks (or at least have completed their CFP educational requirement) but don't yet feel confident that they have enough real-world case experience to operate independently and advise on complex client scenarios. However, while our Courses are four- to six-hour, on-demand programs to teach a structured curriculum, the Level Up program will be live and ongoing, covering two case studies each month at a specified meeting time (with more time slots available as we grow) for 90 minutes each.
We anticipate the cost when Level Up is fully rolled out in 2027 will be $130/month, for access to the two live-instruction case-study meetings each month, and access to the private community, and that most new advisors will be involved for 18 to 36 months while they learn (though staying longer or joining as a more experienced advisor is welcome, too… it's never too late to brush up!).
And for the rest of this quarter, we'll be running a three-month pilot of the Level Up program. The 90-minute live case-study sessions will run every other Friday, starting Friday, July 17, at noon EST, and will award nine hours of CE credit across the three-month window as well!
While the pilot program is already sold out to capacity, those who are interested in joining the wait list for any spots that might open up, or to be notified when the broader Level Up program opens for registration of its first 2027 cohorts, join the Waiting List here!
Our pilot offering of our new Kitces Level Up Advicer Development program is now getting underway, with bi-weekly live case studies facilitated by a Kitces instructor, and the first session launching on Friday, July 17 for the entire three-month pilot (and nine hours of CE credit!). Join the waiting list to be notified if spots open, or when our first 2027 cohorts open for registration!
New Financial Advisor Technician Podcast To Cover Advanced Planning Topics For CE Credit!
Kitces.com and the Nerd's Eye View blog have long been known for our in-depth articles on technical planning topics, going all the way back to our roots as The Kitces Report monthly newsletter in 2008. In the 18 years since, we've expanded into practice management topics and advisor technology, and gone from being a written-only content provider into providing audio podcasts (including Financial Advisor Success and the Kitces & Carl podcast), and a growing number of video webinars (live and recorded) in our Members Section.
However, when it comes to our blog articles themselves, the content has remained written-only. Yet over the years, readers like you have revealed in our annual Reader Survey a growing interest in an audio podcast version of our articles, to provide an alternative format for those who don't want to read it all.
And so we've decided to 'fix' that, with the launch of our new Financial Advisor Technician podcast, hosted by our own financial planning nerd Adam Van Deusen! The purpose of this new podcast – we're calling it F-A-T for short – is not just to be an audio narration of the article content itself, but instead will feature an interview with the author of each new technical-planning Wednesday article, covering the key information and insights from the article, and sharing even more about how advisors can apply it all in their practices.
For those who already read and enjoy our Nerd's Eye View content, the F-A-T podcast will be an opportunity to supplement the topic and explore it from a different (interview-style) perspective. And for those who aren't inclined toward reading our long-form content, the podcast is meant to provide an alternative listen-instead-of-read format to consume the content itself.
And even more exciting, the CE credits we offer for our Wednesday articles will apply for readers and listeners of F-A-T. Advisors who listen will still need to log in to the Members Section to take the accompanying CE quiz, but, once they do, CE credit will be reported for either the written or audio format! (Michael's Note: For the time being, our Wednesday articles are still paired two at a time to enable a full hour of CE, but if we see strong uptake to the podcast, we are looking at splitting our content into smaller 0.5-hour units so advisors can just choose a single article or podcast and then take the CE quiz for 'only' that content.)
The new Financial Advisor Technician (F-A-T) podcast will feature interviews with the authors of our Wednesday technical-planning articles, and be eligible for CFP CE and other types of continuing education credits by completing the accompanying CE quizzes in our Members Section, with the first F-A-T episode going live on Wednesday, July 22!
For advisors who are interested, stay tuned for the Wednesday, July 22 launch, when the F-A-T podcast will be embedded within the Wednesday article, or you can subscribe now via your podcast player of choice to get the first (and ongoing) episodes as soon as they're available!
Ongoing Technology Improvements To The Members Section And The Nerd's Eye View Blog
Last year, we began a total from-the-ground-up overhaul of our back-end technology platforms we use to power all of Kitces.com, starting with a total rebuild of our Members Section. (For the tech nerds: we were previously attached to the backend of WordPress, using their member management systems to control access to individual protected pages, and, to replace that, we built an entirely standalone new Members Section app from scratch in React.)
As we highlighted back in January, this gave us a "Members Section 2.0 chassis" on which we made immediate improvements (a new CE catalog to find your programs of choice, a new CE quiz system to make it easier to navigate and take the required quiz). And over the first half of 2026, we've been continuing to build, including a new login/authentication process, a new guided onboarding experience for new members, and a streamlined My Account page to more easily manage all your CE numbers.
In the coming weeks, as we prepare to release the results of our latest Kitces Research on Advisor Marketing, we'll also be rolling out our new "Research Scorecard" reports, wherein those who participated in our research survey will get an opportunity to see how their inputs compare to (anonymized) advisor peer groups.
We've also been making further enhancements to our Live Events page, which showcases all of our upcoming live programs, from our Marketing and Value Summits, to our Tax and Ethics CE Intensives, to our bi-weekly CE webinars. You can use it as a single location to view all the available live programs, save the dates, and outright register when available!
We're also making it easier to manage and stay up to date on the status of all of your CE reporting with our expanded CE Center capabilities. With the latest updates, you're now able to see what's been reported (or if it hasn't, why not), and confirm the reporting status for your various designations on each program you've completed. In the second half of the year, we'll be rolling out enhanced error reporting capabilities (to make it easier for you to make corrections if your CE submission is rejected for some reason), and improving the notification messages you receive to keep you apprised on your CE status.
Later this year, you'll see the next wave of big changes coming... this time on the Nerd's Eye View side of the website, with a full visual re-design of the blog and our articles. Notably, we're as committed as ever to the content itself that we generate; the focus here is simply to bring the design of the Nerd's Eye View up to date with modern visual standards (and ensure it's on-target for Kitces blue!), and in the process improve upon the underlying technology infrastructure of the blog to make it easier to roll out additional features and enhancements for readers in the future.
Ongoing Delivery Of (NOT-AI-created) Kitces Programs Throughout The Year
While our big focus over last year and this year has been building out and improving upon the underlying infrastructure of our platform to support our ongoing growth, we continue to remain focused on the Quality, Nerdiness, and Relevance (our "Q-N-R" standards) of the core programs we deliver as well.
While our Nerd's Eye View blog article content, and our two (and soon to be three!) podcasts, remain the bulk of what we create for the advisor community every week and month of the year, our goal in recent years has been to more fully encompass three domains: Advicer Development (to support the training of new advicers), Continuing Education (to help all advicers get better), and Practice Management (to help advicers be more successful in their businesses or careers).
At this point, our Advicer Development programs include our series of nine Training Courses to help advicers learn and develop common skills (from reviewing tax returns to doing a Roth conversion analysis or conducting a client review meeting), the pilot of our new Level Up Advicer Development program to deliver ongoing bi-weekly case studies for new advisor training, and our DFP (Directors of Financial Planning) community with monthly peer groups and private forums to help the internal leaders at mid- to large-sized advisory firms who are leading their own internal training efforts.
When it comes to practice management, our main focus is our Monday articles (on various practice management topics) and our Finanical Advisor Success and Kitces & Carl podcasts, as well as our monthly-updated AdvisorTech and Services Maps, along with our year-round, on-demand navigational resources such as our Master Conference List and CFP Scholarships List. In addition, we continue to grow our two practice management Summits, including our Marketing Summit in June and our Finanical Planning Value Summit in December, both featuring fellow advicers screensharing the actual systems and processes they're using to drive their success with clients.
And throughout, we continue with our continuing education core, including our Members Section where advisors can get CE credit for reading all our Wednesday blog articles (and/or listening to the new F-A-T podcast), our bi-weekly webinars, and now our two annual CE Intensives, with the Tax Intensive falling in the February/March time frame, and the Ethics Intensive (covering CFP Ethics and IAR Ethics) in late August.
One thing we can assure you of, though, is that our focus remains, as ever, on delivering expertise-driven content that meets our Quality, Nerdy, and Relevant standards, to advance the profession and make financial advicers better and more successful.
Which means that while we, like many businesses, are experimenting with AI for some internal systems and projects, we remain committed that our content itself is not and will not be AI-generated. To the contrary, we anticipate that at some point in the future, AI tools will increasingly use sites such as Kitces as sources in order to train, and we can't exactly feed their own AI-generated content back to train themselves. 🙂
While Kitces.com has continued to expand its content across CE, practice management, and new advisor development/training, we remain committed to creating expert-driven content that is quality, nerdy, and relevant, and is not AI-generated!
Ongoing Growth Of Kitces And Its Team Of Nerds…
With a commitment to not invest into AI as a path to create educational content, you'll continue to see Kitces.com grow by expanding the team and investing into hiring and developing our own expert talent (in addition to continuing to work with some great experts outside of Kitces!) to create the unique in-depth articles, podcasts, videos, and live events you can't find anywhere else, on the issues you most need to solve for in your firm and with your clients! In other words, because we are first and foremost a provider of education and professional development, the core of our business is not the technology platform or the CE and practice management programs we run… it's the people who make it all happen.
And so as our offerings to make financial advicers better and more successful continue to expand, so too does the Kitces team continue to grow, now up to 26 team members (and nearly half a dozen more in various part-time contractor roles). These are the people who not only create all of our various types of Kitces content but also manage our live events, administer our CE reporting, support Members when they have questions, write the code that runs our back-end systems, and provide the management and leadership that ensures that we keep running efficiently as a team!
In fact, we've added several team members in just the past six months, including new Director of Member Success Kristin Dammacco, Director of People Operations Libby Sparks, and Senior Technical Editor Natalie Trevisan!
We're actively searching for our next new team member now – an Executive Assistant to work directly with yours truly, Michael Kitces, and become an integral part of the internal operations that make Kitces things happen!
The Kitces team is hiring for a new Executive Assistant… do you know someone who fits this description? (And if so, have them apply via our Career Opportunities page!)
About You (our future Executive Assistant): You believe that behind every leader is a team empowering that leader, and you are excited to be the one at the center of making that happen. You gatekeep graciously, manage calendars carefully, plan logistics logically, and support skillfully. All with the utmost integrity, discretion when dealing with sensitive information, and the ability to command trust and respect in all communications. You believe that being an Executive Assistant and supporting Operations is about far more than being an ‘assistant' to an executive, and instead view yourself as an enabler for leaders to be a part of making great things happen.
Further details about our Executive Assistant opportunity, along with other future openings for the Kitces Team, will be posted to our Kitces Career Opportunities page, and those who want to stay apprised of future openings with the Kitces Team can sign up for the Kitces Careers mailing list to be notified as each new role opens up, too!
All in continued pursuit of our mission at Kitces.com – to Make Financial Advicers Better, and More Successful, through our N-E-R-D-y organizational strategy: supporting ‘Nnovation of AdvisorTech tools, delivering Educational Insights, conducting Research on Advicers, and supporting the Development of Advicer skills.
And notably, while we remain as committed as ever to creating our style of Quality, Nerdy, and Relevant content for the financial advicer community with our team of nerds, there are also plenty of opportunities for advisors themselves to get involved or become contributors.
So if you have some expertise or a best practice you'd like to share through the Kitces platform, you can do so as a writer, a guest who shares their personal and business success via our podcast or Summits, or by developing a formal presentation to be a paid speaker at one of our webinars or CE Intensives!
We encourage advicers to take a chance and submit their prospective contribution if any of our opportunities sound like a good fit (click here for the details on how, for each of our various contributor/writer/speaker opportunities, you can get started now!) – after all, we only grow as an advicer community by sharing our insights and solutions with others! (But it's totally OK to simply keep following the content journey with us!)
If there's anything else you think we should be working on that we've missed, please share your thoughts in the comments below!
