Between Now and Success

Should RIAs offer an automated investing Robo-Advisor service? What are the pros and cons? How should you price the service? Will it cannibalize your existing clients? In today's show, Tina Powell and I discuss how she launched automated investing Robo-Advisor SheCapital and why they kept it separately branded from the large RIA that she was affiliated with. We also discuss the difficulties in gaining traction with a Robo-Advisor and how that led to her shutting down SheCapital after just about one year in business.

It appears clients care much less about their advisor's digital technology than advisors do. The financial services industry spends a lot of time talking about technology and there are thousands of companies around the world and tens of billions of dollars being invested in financial technology or FinTech companies to enhance the digital offering. Yet, when you ask clients of financial advisors how important all this technology is, you get a surprising answer. In today's show, I discuss a number of digital technology issues including: Recent research which suggests a financial advisor's digital capabilities rank low in terms of the value the client gets from their advisor. The strategy behind offering, or not offering, robo advisor technology. The surprising result of my proprietary research on how many clients one advisor can work with and the real secret behind how to increase that number. The implications of all this emphasis on digital technology and what it means for client satisfaction and referrals.

I believe financial advisors can add the most value to their clients in the areas of financial and life planning, and not as much in the investment management area. I also understand that you can't forget about the investment side. In today's conversation, we discuss how to improve your investment performance by overcoming some of the behavioral investing mistakes that are so easy for all of us to make. My guest is Daniel Crosby, Ph.D. Daniel is a psychologist, a behavioral investing expert, a bestselling author, and president of Nocturne Capital. Checkout Daniel's new book, The Laws of Wealth: Psychology and the secret to investing success.

The second of two special episodes. What does the future of FinTech look like? It was on display recently in Park City, UT at the 3rd Annual Fuse Event sponsored by Orion Advisor. Fuse is a three-day coding event that brings together dozens of programmers from FinTech companies around the world who band as a community and solve advisor problems. It's part hackathon, part relationship-building all wrapped up in a spirit of making the industry better. Eric Clarke, the founder of Orion Advisor, (see my podcast convo with him) is the mastermind behind the event along with his crack team of technologists including Brad Burgess and Joe Leyboldt. Leading advisors and technologists including Joel Bruckenstein, Michael Kitces, J.D. Bruce, Bill Winterberg, Tina Powell, Billy Oliverio, Ryan Beach, and yours truly were also on hand to lend a hand. I spent three days hanging with the cool people and created two podcasts to chronicle the event.

This is the first of two episodes. What does the future of FinTech look like? It was on display recently in Park City, UT at the 3rd Annual Fuse Event sponsored by Orion Advisor. Fuse is a three-day coding event that brings together dozens of programmers from FinTech companies around the world who band as a community and solve advisor problems. It's part hackathon, part relationship-building all wrapped up in a spirit of making the industry better. Eric Clarke, the founder of Orion Advisor, (see my podcast convo with him) is the mastermind behind the event along with his crack team of technologists including Brad Burgess and Joe Leyboldt. Leading advisors and technologists including Joel Bruckenstein, Michael Kitces, J.D. Bruce, Bill Winterberg, Tina Powell, Billy Oliverio, Ryan Beach, and yours truly were also on hand to lend a hand. I spent three days hanging with the cool people and created two podcasts to chronicle the event.

The nature of financial planning advice will change dramatically as it becomes common for people to live to 100. The idea of a three-stage life where we go to school for 20 years, work for 40, then retire for 20 and die will go away. It will be replaced by a non-linear, multi-stage life where people will cycle in and out of education, work, leisure, re-creation, sabbatical, gig economy, and encore careers. How we define what an "asset" is will change and the ability to enhance your "intangible" assets will become critical to a happy life. The advice we give on saving for retirement and working in retirement will change as we need to make our money last as we live to 100 or beyond. Life planning will emerge as the dominant construct for financial advisors as our life pattern becomes more complicated and investment management becomes more automated. In today's show, my guest is Professor Andrew Scott of London Business School. Professor Scott is the co-author of an important new book titled, The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity.

What if you cut your AUM advisor fee in half and made up the difference by charging a retainer fee? That's what multi-billion dollar RIA firm Abacus Wealth Partners is experimenting with. With the DOL rule and increasing pressure on firms to be more transparent with their pricing, we're starting to see firms experiment with their advisor fee. In an earlier episode, I talked to Scott MacKillop who founded third-party investment firm First Ascent Asset Management. His firm capped its advisor fee at $1,500 for accounts larger than $300,000. In today's show, I talk to J.D. Bruce, president of Abacus Wealth Partners and Billy Oliverio, vice president of United Planners. We had a lively conversation about alternative pricing strategies from the RIA and broker/dealer perspective.

It doesn't cost twice as much to manage a $1 million portfolio as it does a $500,000 portfolio so why do clients have to pay twice as much? That question is getting asked more frequently and we are starting to see advisors and money managers move to a flat-fee pricing model in response. Long-time industry veteran Scott MacKillop is today's podcast guest and he recently launched a new third-party money management firm called First Ascent Asset Management that charges a maximum fee of $1,500 to manage a client's account. In today's show, we explore the industry standard AUM pricing model and discuss if it still makes sense in a world where technology and competitive pressures are forcing advisors to re-think how they do business.

For many years, I've started each business day by writing down my prioritized list of actions. I then spend a couple minutes searching for a quote that speaks to me that day and I write that quote on the top of my list. When that's done, I print the list and keep it on the top of my desk so it's front and center during the day. For today's show, I'm going to share with you 10 quotes that made my list recently and describe why they spoke to me and why you may be able to benefit from them, too.

Today's podcast guest, Alex Tapscott, is the co-author of an important new book called, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World. Alex describes blockchain as a vast, global distributed ledger where digital assets can be moved, stored, and managed securely and privately and where trust doesn't need to be established by a third-party or an intermediary, but rather can be established in collaboration, cryptography and clever code. Bitcoin, which we've all heard about, is the largest and most used blockchain in the world. Now, why am I talking about blockchain and why should you care as a financial advisor? One simple reason…blockchain could fundamentally alter the way financial advisors interact with and connect to consumers. And it could cut billions of dollars out of the intermediary cost structure of the financial services industry.