Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition starts off with an article about the FPA, its declining membership, and prospective organizational changes as the CEO retires in 2014. From there, we look at a number of practice management articles, including an overview of the emerging niche of firms that provide quality lead generation for financial advisors, how to sustain a study group, the importance of e-delivery of documents not only for your firm but for your clients, a new software package to help with investment advisory fee billing, and two marketing articles - both emphasizing the value of being unique and different and having a niche to grow the business effectively. From there, we look at an interesting interview with Jeremy Grantham about investing opportunities, a striking article that suggests the giant pile of cash corporations are sitting on may be a bad sign and not a good sign, an article from the Journal of Financial Planning about a new way to manage tail risk for client portfolios, and coverage of an emerging new product called a "stand-alone living benefit" designed to provide all the lifetime income guarantees contained in today's variable annuities but wrapped around a client's own investment account instead. We wrap up with a slightly more light-hearted list of investing tips and maxims that would probably be a good reminder for almost any planner and his/her clients. Enjoy the reading!
"Planners and academics need to work together to develop a profession with evidence-based practices." That is the message given at the FPA Retreat by Dr. Michael Finke, a professor of personal financial planning at Texas Tech University, and a co-author of mine at the Journal of Financial Planning.
Yet while the Journal of Financial Planning is a great resource, and it has been the go-to outlet for research on retirement planning from the perspective of practicing financial planners, especially regarding safe withdrawal rate strategies, the academic research approaches the retirement challenge from a different perspective and focuses on different tools and strategies.
Ultimately, researchers can use their technical skills to investigate optimal retirement strategies, and practitioners can guide these investigations by suggesting real world constraints and ideas for solutions, and even by sharing in the nitty-gritty process of conducting the research. Let’s encourage these interactions to get rigorous analyses which can be applied to real-world problems.Read More...
In planning for retiring clients, it's crucial to get an understanding of what the client's goals are in the first place - so that recommendations can be made about how to financially secure those goals. In the context of setting a spending goal, a popular delineation is to separate retirement spending into "essential" versus "discretionary" expenses - not unlike "needs" versus "wants" for accumulators - with the idea of using guarantees to secure the essential expenses, and less certain growth assets with some risk to fund the discretionary expenses (since they're 'only' discretionary and not essential, by definition).
Yet in reality, even discretionary spending still constitutes an important part of a retiree's overall lifestyle - the loss of which could be very psychologically damaging. As a result, merely securing the essential expenses of retirement and leaving the rest at risk still, in the eyes of most retirees, would constitute a failure of the overall retirement goal. Instead, clients often choose to ensure that all their spending can be sustained - by continuing to work as long as necessary (as health allows) to secure all of their goals. Does that mean the distinction between essential versus discretionary retirement expenses isn't necessarily helpful after all?
As the retirement income research evolves, an increasingly common question is whether the popular safe withdrawal rate approach is better or worse than an annuity-based strategy that provides a guaranteed income floor, with the remaining funds invested for future upside.
Yet the reality is that as it's commonly applied, the safe withdrawal rate strategy is a floor-with-upside approach, too. Unlike the annuity, it doesn't guarantee success with the backing of an insurance company; yet at the same time, the annuity is assured to provide no remaining legacy value at death, while the safe withdrawal rate approach actually has a whopping 96% probability of leaving 100% of the client's principal behind after 30 years!
Which means an annuity is really an alternative floor approach to safe withdrawal rates - one that provides a stronger guarantee while producing a similar amount of income, but results in a dramatic loss of liquidity, upside, and legacy. Does the common client preference towards safe withdrawal rates and away from annuities indicate that in the end, most clients just don't find the guarantee trade-off worthwhile for the certainty it provides?Read More...
Although Social Security benefits are a major part of retirement planning, since the Social Security Administration stopped mailing statements to workers last year, most planners have been limited in their ability to get updated Social Security information for clients - especially new clients who may not have a prior benefits estimate, and/or who may have never previously reviewed their earnings record.
Fortunately, earlier this month the Social Security Administration launched a new online platform allowing anyone to access their own Social Security benefits estimate and earnings record.
In response, many planners are now starting to walk clients through the process of claiming their online Social Security account - which can be done on the spot, in the planner's office, in less than 5 minutes! - and reviewing the benefits estimate and earnings record as a part of their new or existing client meetings!Read More...
As baby boomers continue into their retirement transition, two portfolio-based strategies are increasingly popular to generate retirement income: the systematic withdrawal strategy, and the bucket strategy. While the former is still the most common approach, the latter has become increasingly popular lately, viewed in part as a strategy to help work around difficult and volatile market environments. Yet while the two strategies approach portfolio construction very differently, the reality is that bucket strategies actually produce asset allocations almost exactly the same as systematic withdrawal strategies; their often-purported differences amount to little more than a mirage! Nonetheless, bucket strategies might actually still be a superior strategy, not because of the differences in portfolio construction, but due to the ways that the client psychologically connects with and understands the strategy!Read More...
Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition highlights a new analytical tool from Morningstar that can apparently help you to benchmark your (AUM) fees against the industry, an interesting perspective on what really makes clients refer you (hint: it's about what's in it for them, not for you), and a look at how easy it is to build a website these days (yet how many advisors still haven't done so). We also look at an article about how to have difficult conversations with clients, and two industry trends articles about Hartford's departure from the variable annuity space, and Prudential's departure from the long-term care insurance market (with Genworth stepping up to fill the void). We finish with an article about fixed income strategies that advisors are using in today's marketplace, a look at how the term financial planner is being misused around the world and what the Financial Planning Standards Board has to say about it, and a lighter look from the Harvard Business Review at two lists you should maintain every day - what you will focus on doing, and what you will commit to ignoring - to enhance your productivity and success. Enjoy the reading!
Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition highlights an interesting article about the benefits and risks of exchange-traded notes, and two new articles about retirement spending and how to consider more flexible retirement spending plans. We also look at two striking investment pieces, one from Morningstar Advisor that highlights upcoming research about how the rise of index trading may be increasing the correlation of markets and reducing the benefits of diversification, and Mauldin's weekly update suggesting that Greece's restructuring deal is not the end of the European debt crisis. We wrap up with a nice article from Bob Veres about what it takes to be a successful financial planner, some tips from a recent Harvard Business Review blog about how to make yourself more focused and productive to reduce feelings of burnout, and the big media news of the week - the very public resignation of a Goldman Sachs executive director named Greg Smith, suggesting that the company has lost its moral bearing. Enjoy the reading!
Once upon a time, the purpose of a client vault was to use it like a vault. It would store important client documents to be accessible if/when needed. It was designed to be the digital equivalent of a safety deposit box in your local bank's vault. But at some point over the past several years, we began to shift, and the client vault became not only the place we store the files we access rarely, but the ones we access regularly. Advisors increasingly made it the centerpiece of their efforts to securely share files and collaborate with clients. Yet in reality, this is quite impractical. Just as you don't regularly go to your local bank vault to constantly move things in-and-out of your safety deposit box, so too do we need to stop using our digital data vault like a collaborate file sharing tool. Just as going regularly to your bank every time you need to check on something would be a huge hassle and a negative experience, so too is using the data vault as a collaboration tool a negative client experience. It's time for a better alternative.
Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition highlights a few articles on advisor use of social media, an interesting look at whether promoting financial literacy is a red herring for real consumer protection in financial services, and a good technical article on planning issues for unmarried couples. Also included is a controversial discussion of how TIPS may not be quite as "safe" as we make them out to be, and a look at a new series of mutual funds that may attract increasing client attention in the coming years. We finish with a quick look at a Forbes article discussing the decision by a major firm with 80,000 employees to completely phase out email over the next 18 months in lieu of meetings, telephone calls, text messaging, and social media for communication; will this be a failed experiment, or a glimpse into the future of business communication? Enjoy the reading!
