There is Hope in #Fintwit

I am a student of prior wars. One of the craziest wars was World War I, sometimes called the Great War. Parts of this war took place in Northern France, Belgium and Southern Germany via trenches. The Germans advanced and dug large trenches over a vast stretch of land and then defended it. The Europeans also dug trenches very close to where the Germans dug their trenches. The Generals on both sides periodically ordered their men over the side of the trenches to advance to the other trenches. If you failed to get out of your trench when ordered, then you were likely to be shot dead right there by your own side. If you got out of your trench, then you were likely to be shot by the enemy. This insanity repeated itself for several years with neither side advancing. All that happened is thousands upon thousands of people were needlessly killed by incompetent military leaders.

Today's political climate reminds me of this trench warfare. Instead of playing out on a battlefield somewhere, it is playing out on Twitter®. This is just pure stupidity in more ways than one. First of all, nobody should believe that their opinion on Twitter matters in the grand scheme of things. Secondarily, if you are espousing your political beliefs on Twitter, then you will most certainly get attacked and perhaps even some will try and cause you to lose your job. This is all totally ridiculous. It really should stop. I have started to see it rear its ugly head in #fintwit. This is disturbing to me, because our industry already has to fight off all these stinking Ponzi schemers. We do not need to be sullying our reputations as a group over mindless political opinions.

Twitter is today's trench warfare. A bunch of people with way too much time on their hands send out tweets and foolishly believe that their words carry a lot of weight. The truth is Democrats do not care about a Republican's opinion and vice-versa. So, I am going to double cancel culture the both of you Democrats and Republicans. Cut it out. You are giving our profession a black eye.

I notice some things about our industry having been a part of it since 1988. For most of my career, other financial advisors have mostly looked at each other as competition. I recently had a financial advisor with an office in my building tell me that we were competitors. I told him that we were not. He disagreed. I tried to reason with him that the people that he knows in his circle are in a different circle than the people in my circle. He was unconvinced. Although, I could have offered a ton of help to this younger advisor, he was totally opposed to the idea of even having a further conversation, much less help from a competitor. I thought how sad. He was trying to branch out on his own, but months later, I noticed that he took a salaried job at Citibank. No surprise.

I met another financial advisor who once told me that he knew how much assets under management that I had. I replied, "You're kidding?" He said, "No. In fact, I have a list of every financial advisor in town and how much they have in AUM on an Excel spreadsheet." I was stunned. Why is this guy wasting his time worrying about what other advisors in town are doing? Seems pretty dumb to me. Must be a male ego thing, I guess.

There are some young people coming up today who are making changes in that attitude. Specifically, Jason Wenk, Tyrone V. Ross, Jr. Dasarte Yarnway, Brittany Castro, Emlen Miles-Mattingly, Douglas Boneparth, Ryan Hughes, Alex Rosenberg, Taylor Shulte, Justin Castelli, Breanna Reish , Alex C. (the Armenian) and Kyle Van Pelt. Forgive me, if I left you out. Those are the names that came to my immediate mind. These folks are all about helping each other. They do online seminars, video blogs and reach out to each other by social media. Others have businesses that help young advisors. These people are doing great things for our industry. I can tell you confidently that the future of the financial profession is in good hands with these young professionals. They get it and frankly, I do not care what their political beliefs are since they have no effect on what they are trying to accomplish and I strongly believe will accomplish. 

Let me know if I can be a resource.

https://riarules.com

https://marianfs.com

Avoiding Bad Advisors and Ponzi Schemes

It has happened again. Another high profile Ponzi scheme has been uncovered by the SEC that impacted professional athletes, Jake Peavy, Roy Oswalt, Mark Sanchez and others. How can, not only professional athletes, but regular investors avoid this same fate? Now, there is a way.

Although, it would be poo-pooed by the financial industry itself, I think the time has come for the complete removal of accounts from financial advisor access. Yes. You read that right. What is at the core of what good financial advisors do? They give advice. Can they give advice without having access to client accounts? Yes, they can.

The challenge has been to get access to the information from a client and historically, clients have had to move their accounts to a new advisor in order to provide that information or at the very least, copies of their account statements. Often times, financial advisors will give away a financial plan as long as the client will move their accounts to that particular advisor. This is the old, obsolete way.

The futuristic option is using an advisor who has a financial planning program that has account aggregation that authorizes the advisor to see the client’s holdings, but not their account numbers. Advicent Solutions has just such a software program called Narrator Clients™. As an advisor, all they really need to know is what type of account it is and the holdings within. In fact, account aggregation sends over the holdings without the account numbers and it even keeps the custodian hidden from the advisor. Imagine that. When you really think about it, if you really are a good advisor, then this is all you need. If you are a client, then doesn’t this make more sense? This allows the advisor to give much needed advice, but with absolutely no fear on the client’s part of the advisor stealing their money. I know what you are thinking, “Why didn’t somebody tell me this before?”

Of course, the advisor would be confused about how they get paid under this model which brings us to the new Department of Labor Conflict of Interest Rule. In my opinion, the DOL’s main goal was to force advisors to disclose all fees, commissions and conflicts of interest and recommend transactions that are in the client’s best interest. This rule is infinitely more complex than this simple statement, but this explanation is close enough for government work. It is funny to watch all these financial industry people jumping up and down over this new rule, but they are looking at it from the gathering client assets point of view. A big mistake in my opinion. Please bear with me and allow me to rescue both clients from Ponzi schemes and financial advisors from a bleak future.

In the DOL rule, there is a clause about Level Fee Fiduciaries. According to their definition, Level Fee Fiduciaries are advisors who charge a fee based on assets-under-management, or a fixed fee. Herein lies the solution for both clients and financial advisors. Instead of the fee based on the assets-under-management, clients would be better served by a fixed fee that is direct billed to the client. A lot of financial advisors would balk at this fixed fee method of earning fees. They are so used to gathering client accounts and charging an assets-under-management fee that they cannot see the future. Well, I hate to be the one to break the bad news to advisors, but fee compression is well under way with the advent of robo-advisors. Further, the major name brand custodians are getting in the robo-advisor game and doing exceptionally well at it I might add. The point being that this method of charging an assets-under-management fee is going the way of the dinosaurs.

Picture this, if you will. In order to take as much risk as possible away from getting financial advice, clients should pay a fixed fee to a financial advisor for their advice and keep their account at a major name brand custodian. In addition, do not let your financial advisor have access to any of your account numbers or social security numbers. All they need is the number of shares held and the name of the holding and type of account. If you do not move your accounts to a financial advisor, then you do not have to give them your social security number either. Isn’t that great? A good advisor would still be able to give you much needed advice and earn a living by setting an appropriate fixed fee for the amount of services they deliver.

In this future model of financial advice, how is a Ponzi scheme going to happen? I got your attention now, don’t I? The bad advisor would not have access to your accounts, your account numbers or your social security numbers, or even know where your account is held for that matter and therefore they cannot steal from you. Now, if you write the guy a check to invest in his Ponzi scheme, or excuse me, I meant can’t lose business venture, then I cannot help you.

Included in the DOL rule, advisors will now have to tell clients what they do for their fee. In other words, describe what services they will provide for their fee. With this fixed fee approach, I do believe clients would be more apt to go this route, especially when you consider they are taking the risk of being fleeced by a Ponzi scheme out of the picture. Plus, they cannot run off with your money! That is as long as you don’t write them a check for that can’t lose business venture.

If you are a financial advisor, then you need to change your ways. If you are a client seeking financial advice, then this is your future. A Ponzi scheme-less future to believe in.