Think about the branding of the message on this church close to my home: Now Serving Pumpkin Spice Communion. JK Y’all. The message is designed to get attention, but it also implies something about the church’s beliefs and personality. The branding is authentic to the extent that the messaging mirrors the culture of the organization. The disruption in the financial services industry is leading to what we hope is an increase in authentic branding and marketing. We …
We’ve written before about the often-cited Vanguard “Advisor’s Alpha” study. That research documents the data showing that a good financial advisor can add on average a full 3% in incremental return to a client’s investment portfolio annually. The study then breaks that 3% down into its component parts, showing that the biggest gains–a full 150 basis points–come from effective behavioral coaching that serves to prevent clients from engaging in detrimental investing behaviors (think buying high …
Control. Control. You must learn control. – Yoda, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back Approximately 57% of Americans are financially literate, typically measured by answering simple financial literacy questions correctly. The work of Anna Maria Lusardi and her colleagues have demonstrated the woeful state of the world related to financial knowledge and education in the United States and around the world. Often, this group of researchers measures financial literacy with a few …
The nature of relationships among financial professionals and their clients is changing, and one of the organizations committed to fiduciary financial planning is the XY Planning Network. We are proud to say that many of our clients are members of XYPN, and its mission is straightforward: XY Planning Network is the leading organization of fee-only financial advisors who specialize in working with Gen X and Gen Y clients. Of course, many clients of XY planners are …
A hot topic in the financial advisory space—or maybe more accurately a sore subject—is the high rate of attrition of heirs when clients die and leave their managed wealth to beneficiaries. We have discussed this topic before, noting that a host of factors are at play including critical features like communication with the family-economic unit, relationship building, and personal differences resulting from a generational divide between the heirs and the advisor. But at the end …