Enjoy the current installment of “Weekend Reading For Financial Planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with a recap of the CFP Board’s latest update to its 5-year strategic plan, which includes an ever-greater focus on its standards of conduct and enforcing them… but raising the question of whether the CFP Board is ready enough to enforce its standards even if it means the total number of CFP certificants might (temporarily) decline in order to clean its own house and build a more trusted foundation for growth in the future?
Also in the industry news this week are a number of other interesting industry headlines:
- A new study finds that almost 25% of SEC-registered investment advisers took PPP funds, and an estimated 6% of those may have claimed more than they should have (and those who did are disproportionately advisors who already had a history of client complaints, misconduct, or outright fraud, reinforcing the view that a small number of ‘bad apples’ are engaging in a disproportionate amount of bad advisor activity?)
- The majority of advisory firms (51%) report that the pandemic didn’t have any impact on their culture, but of those where it did, nearly 4/5ths reported that it was a detriment to their employee engagement
From there, we have several investment-related articles, including:
- Talking points on how to persuade clients to rebalance when they’re hesitant due to embedded capital gains
- The ongoing rise of alternatives as a substitute for ultra-low-yield fixed income allocations
- Why the real ‘investing nightmare’ is not a 40% bear market or a ‘lost decade’ in stocks, but a scenario where markets are down 40%+ even after a decade (which hasn’t been experienced in the US, but does occur periodically in other countries around the world!)
We’ve also included a number of articles on client communication:
- Why even good advisors can end out with regulatory complaints if they allow a gap to emerge between client expectations and reality (and fail to address it before the dissatisfaction escalates)
- How big life changes can affect client behavior, and lead to situations where advisors must dig deeper in client communication to unearth the underlying issues
- Why giving ‘blunt’ advice can turn off prospects… but it is also an effective way to screen out those who aren’t really ready to work with an advisor and implement their advice
We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of being decisive in our focus:
- Why the most successful businesses are not just the ones who take action, but are the ones that most often take decisive action
- How fear of our own mortality often stokes us to cram as much as we can into our time, instead of encouraging us to better focus that time instead
- Why sometimes the best decision we can make is to stop trying to be bigger ‘just for the sake of’, and instead focus on being better for those we want to serve most (from our family to our most ideal-fit clients)
Enjoy the ‘light’ reading!
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