Presentation Topics
Below is a list of a few of our speaking team’s most popular presentations. Please contact our team via the form at the end of this page if you wish to have us speak on a topic not listed, or if you are interested in a half-day or full-day workshop.
In addition, we are also available to participate as part of a panel, or in an “Ask Me Anything” style interview.
- Industry Trends/Keynotes
- Retirement
- Income Tax
- Investment
- Estate Planning
- Insurance/Annuities
- Behavioral Finance
- Practice Management
Industry Trends/Keynotes
Five Industry Trends Reshaping Financial Advice
The recent rise of the “robo-advisor” has called into question the relevance of financial advisors and the viability of current advisory business models. Yet the reality is that technology “disrupting” financial advisor business models isn’t new, and has actually happened repeatedly over the past several decades… forcing advisors to adapt and move up the value chain, or be left behind. In this session, we look at how technology is once again driving major changes in the business model of financial advisors, driving a Great Convergence across historically-separate industry channels, triggering a Crisis of Differentiation, a Search for New Business Models, and rising pressure on improving the Client Experience. And in the coming years, these trends will only be accelerated, as the consumers of financial planning – and financial planners themselves – shift from Baby Boomers, to the Gen X and Millennial generations that, as “digital natives”, will expect and demand advisors to both leverage technology, and add value on top!
This presentation is not eligible for CE credit.
At The Capacity Crossroads: 3 Visions For Scaling The Advisory Firm You Want
Historically, the transactional brokerage models of financial advice meant that one could never have “too many” clients; at worst, advisors just focused on their biggest clients with the best repeat business opportunities. However, the rise of recurring revenue relationship-oriented models, from charging AUM fees to monthly subscription fees, introduces a material capacity limitation for advisory firms – any one financial advisor can only handle “so many” ongoing clients, before there simply isn’t enough time (or mental bandwidth) to serve any more. And with retention rates commonly 90%+ for most advisory firms, it’s virtually inevitable that any and every financial advisor will eventually hit their personal capacity wall after enough years in the business. Once they reach this Capacity Crossroads, though, advisors must make a decision about how to scale their firm going forward, as either a “Lifestyle” firm (maximizing income for the advisor and building a small team around them, but without any intention or desire to grow past themselves), a “Small Giant” that tries to grow focused businesses serving their particular type of clientele a particular way (and will accumulate more advisors/team over time to reach a growing number of those clients), or as an Enterprise-builders who aspires to build truly large advisory firm enterprise. In this session, we will explore the different approaches for how advisory firms scale, help advisors understand which type is the best fit for their own personal vision and goals, and give them perspective on what they should (and shouldn’t) be focused on based on their desired approach to scaling their advisory firm (i.e., what they should do/build, what they should hire, what they should NOT hire, and what they should outsource).
This presentation is not eligible for CE credit.
Kitces Research on What Makes Financial Planning More Efficient
Financial planning may be valuable for clients, but it’s time-consuming to deliver as a financial advisor, which impacts everything from the price that advisors charge for a financial plan, to the breadth of clients that can be served, and the staffing and technology infrastructure to deliver financial planning advice. In this session, we explore the latest Kitces Research study on “How Financial Advisors Really Do Financial Planning”, to understand how long it really takes to create and deliver a financial plan, where time-savings opportunities are (or are not), the role of staff support in scaling financial advice, how technology impacts planning efficiencies, and the interaction between planning expertise (in the form of advanced designations like CFP certification), experience, and niche specializations, in making the delivery of financial planning more efficient.
AMA: Ask Michael Anything
This is an opportunity to take advantage of Michael’s vast knowledge base and create a session that is more personal to your audience. While this session does not include CE or slides, your audience can ask the questions that are on their minds and create a totally unique experience.
This presentation is not eligible for CE credit.
The Biden Tax Plan: Proposed Changes and Planning Opportunities
2020 has been an unusual year, to say the least. And as if normal year-end planning, combined with the complexities brought about by a pandemic weren’t enough to deal with on their own, 2020 offered an additional complication….a Presidential election! President Joe Biden has detailed a few substantial changes to the tax code, the focus primarily on individual income tax and investment tax. In this session, attendees will learn about each of the major changes proposed by President Biden, exploring both the new challenges, and planning opportunities, it creates.
10 Critical IRA Errors Advisors Must Avoid
For more than 40 years, IRAs have been available as a retirement-savings vehicle, but the rules surrounding them are constantly changing, and they are incredibly – and deceptively – complex. Each year, client mistakes, advisor errors and oversights by financial institutions cost clients millions of dollars in unnecessary taxation. This session seeks to reverse that trend by helping advisors to identify and avoid 10 of the most frequent and costly IRA mistakes.
Insights From The Latest Kitces Research Study On The Real Financial Planning Process
This presentation examines insights from the first Kitces Research survey on the real financial planning process. Specifically, this presentation examines topics such as the use of various financial planning technologies and related time spent in the financial planning process, the personality traits that are correlated with success as a financial planner, and what motivates financial planners psychologically. Additionally, broader industry issues are examined, including the gender pay gap and the divorce gap among financial planners. Practical insights and implications from the first Kitces Research survey on the real financial planning process are discussed.
This presentation is not eligible for CE credit.
Retirement
Strategies For Managing Sequence Of Return Risk In Retirement
For long-term investors, the reality is that even if markets are volatile for a period of time, as long as the portfolio stays invested, returns can average out in the long run. In the case of retirees, however, ongoing spending withdrawals introduce the possibility that if the portfolio experiences weak returns early on, it could be depleted entirely before the good returns finally show up. As a result, retirees must consider this “sequence of returns” risk when planning for retirement, and strategies to manage it, from reducing spending in the first place, to engaging in more dynamic asset allocation to reduce risk exposure, or dynamic spending strategies to adapt spending withdrawals to market changes along the way!
How The SECURE Act Changes Retirement (and Other) Planning
On December 20, 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, ushering in the most significant direct changes to the laws for retirement accounts since the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The ‘headline’ from the SECURE Act is its changes to the ‘stretch’ rules for designated beneficiaries, but that’s far from the only change that will impact advisors and their clients. The SECURE Act also changes the starting age for RMDs, eliminates the age limit for Traditional IRA contributions, creates a new exception to the 10% early distribution penalty, eliminates burdensome rules that prevented wider-spread adoption of MEPSs, reversed changes to the so-called “Kiddie Tax” made by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and much more!
In this session, attendees will learn about each of the major changes made by the SECURE Act, exploring both the new challenges, and planning opportunities, it creates.
Maximizing Social Security Benefits For Couples
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 eliminated the popular File-and-Suspend and Restricted Application claiming strategies. In this webinar, we discuss how those claiming strategies worked, the timing of when they are being phased out under the new rules, and transition planning for couples, single individuals, divorcees, parents, and widows, given the new rules. We also explore the overall dynamics of when to take Social Security early versus delay, and how claiming strategies will shift in the future given the limitations of the new rules!
Advanced Roth Conversion Planning Strategies
The natural appeal of a Roth-style retirement account is the potential for tax-free growth for life. However, the reality is that creating a Roth account has a “cost” – the upfront tax liability of contributing to (or converting into) the account, which is avoided with a traditional pre-tax IRA or 401(k). As a result, optimal Roth strategies involve not merely contributing to or converting into Roths, but managing the timing and leveraging the available tax law to maximize the strategy. In this session, we explore techniques to maximize Roth contributions, including so-called “Backdoor Roth” IRAs and “Mega Backdoor Roth” 401(k) strategies, and leveraging the Roth recharacterization rules to optimally fill lower tax brackets, and be able to ensure that an investment in a Roth has a positive return before being required to commit to it!
Expanding the Framework of Safe Withdrawal Rates (1 hr or 2 hr)
Determining a “safe” amount of retirement spending is an increasingly popular topic amongst financial planners, yet a great deal of confusion exists about the current state of research and how it should be applied. In this session, we will explore the evolution of safe withdrawal rate research, from its starting point with Bengen almost 20 years ago, to the subsequent breadth of additional research on the impact of factors like expenses, taxation, varying time horizons, greater diversification, spending flexibility, annuities, and more. Ultimately, the outcome is a richer framework for determining safe sustainable spending levels for clients, adapted to the individual’s own particular circumstances.
Tax Efficient Withdrawal Strategies in Retirement
The traditional approach to liquidations in retirement is very straightforward: spend taxable dollars first, and let tax-deferred retirement accounts keep growing, because “no one” wants to pay taxes any sooner than they have to! Except the reality is that there really is such thing as “too much” tax-deferred compounding growth, which makes future retirement distributions so large it drives the retiree into higher tax brackets and results in less wealth! In this session, we explore a more effective tax-efficient withdrawal approach of equalizing tax brackets throughout life, by mixing together taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts over time, and leveraging strategies like systematic partial Roth conversions and even capital gains harvesting to smooth out tax brackets from year to year and reduce cumulative taxation throughout retirement!
IRA Planning for Baby Boomers (2 1/2 hr to 4 hr)
Americans currently hold over $30 trillion in retirement assets. As such, a sound understanding of the rules surrounding these accounts is an absolute must for any serious practitioner. Those who understand the ins and outs of IRA planning are poised to benefit from the wave of Baby Boomers that are, or soon will be, tapping into their retirement assets. Conversely, those without such knowledge risk losing relevance, or worse, making the costly and irrevocable mistakes that can derail clients’ plans.
Realizing the Potential of Net Unrealized Appreciation
The number of individuals with large portions of their wealth in retirement plans is growing. Even though most individuals have a handful of options once they have separated from service, many choose what is typically the worst option, a lump sum distribution. In fact, research finds that this happens about 30% of the time! In this session advisors will learn about the nuances involving lump sum distributions, and how to make the most out of the worst situation by taking a deep dive into Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA). Learn when and why utilizing NUA makes sense, as well as situations where it does not make sense, and the important rules surrounding the strategy.
Managing and Minimizing RMD Obligations
A sound understanding of the RMD rules by advisors is a necessity, as RMDs are one aspect of retirement distribution planning that impacts nearly all clients at one point or another. Add to that the mass of Baby Boomers – the oldest of which are now in their 70s – who need RMD help and it’s easy to see a golden opportunity awaits the educated advisor. Sadly though, evidence shows that most advisors vastly overestimate their knowledge of core RMD rules, which can lead to disastrous consequences. In this program, advisors will learn about RMDs from the “ground up” to ensure they can give sound advice for years to come. Special focus will be paid to the intricacies and nuances of this deceivingly complex aspect of the law so that advisors can help clients correct mistakes that have already occurred and avoid others before they even happen.
Rethinking Monte Carlo Results for Better Client Conversations
The Monte Carlo analysis is a great financial planning tool, but it is not without its drawbacks.
For instance, it is uni-dimensional, focusing only on the probability of success. And certainly,
success is good, but the Monte Carlo does not ensure success nor does it tell a client what to do
when the plan is no longer successful, which is the larger issue. Join us for this month’s webinar
and learn how to adapt the Monte Carlo analysis, making it more useful and tangible for clients.
Advisors will learn practical conversation tips and approaches for working with clients and begin
to think about the Monte Carlo analysis in a new light.
How Real Retirement Spending Patterns Change Traditional Retirement Withdrawal Strategies (1 hr)
This presentation examines how real retirement spending patterns change traditional retirement withdrawal strategies. Specifically, commonly used retirement spending assumptions are compared to actual retirement spending patterns of retirees. This comparison reveals that typical assumptions of constant real spending often overstates retirement spending. As a result, commonly assumptions may overstate retirement savings need. Accounting for more realistic retirement spending results in higher safe withdrawal rates than prior research has typically indicated. Typical assumptions also fail to account for the potential to make adjustments in retirement that can keep a retirement spending plan on track.
How Earnings Growth Throughout The Lifecycle Impacts Retirement Savings Strategies (1 hr)
This presentation examines how earnings growth throughout the lifecycle impacts retirement savings strategies. Specifically, traditional earnings growth assumptions utilized in safe savings rate analyses are compared to actual Social Security data on earnings growth across the lifecycle. This comparison reveals that typical assumptions of constant real earnings often understates income growth in earlier years, while overstating income growth in later years. As a result, assumptions regarding both saving during one’s working years and spending during retirement may not accurately reflect the outcomes that are most likely. Accounting for more realistic earnings curves results in lower “safe” savings rates than research has typically indicated—particularly among lower income Americans. Typical assumptions also fail to account for the potential to capture greater earnings growth as one’s savings increase, as well as the decline in retirement savings need that corresponds with declining real earnings experienced in late, pre-retirement years.
Income Tax
The Biden Tax Plan: Proposed Changes and Planning Opportunities
2020 has been an unusual year, to say the least. And as if normal year-end planning, combined with the complexities brought about by a pandemic weren’t enough to deal with on their own, 2020 offered an additional complication….a Presidential election! President-elect Joe Biden has detailed a few substantial changes to the tax code, the focus primarily on individual income tax and investment tax. In this session, attendees will learn about each of the major changes proposed by President-elect Biden, exploring both the new challenges, and planning opportunities, it creates.
An Advisor’s Guide to the New 20% Pass-Through Deduction
For many business-owner clients, one of the most significant changes made by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the creation of the new 199A deduction. This deduction, better known as the 20% pass-through deduction, has the potential to be one of the biggest tax-savers for certain clients, but it’s also undoubtedly one of the most complicated provisions in the entire TCJA. The good news is that since the enactment of the TCJA, the IRS has issued a substantial amount of guidance intended to clarify varying aspects of the new provision. The bad news is that much of that guidance is counter-intuitive to what one might expect by simply reading the plan language of the statute. Advisors who can quickly and thoroughly learn the intricate ins and outs of the 199A deduction will easily stand out from the competition.
How The Secure Act Changes Retirement (and Other) Planning
On December 20, 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, ushering in the most significant direct changes to the laws for retirement accounts since the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The ‘headline’ from the SECURE Act is its changes to the ‘stretch’ rules for designated beneficiaries, but that’s far from the only change that will impact advisors and their clients. The SECURE Act also changes the starting age for RMDs, eliminates the age limit for Traditional IRA contributions, creates a new exception to the 10% early distribution penalty, allows limited tax-free distributions from 529 plans to reduce qualified student debt, and much more!
In this session, attendees will learn about each of the major changes made by the SECURE Act, exploring both the new challenges, and planning opportunities, it creates.
Investment
An In-Depth Look At Optimal Rebalancing Strategies
The conventional view of rebalancing is that it’s a way to enhance long-term returns for investors while keeping their portfolio on target to achieve long-term goals. The reality, though, is that when rebalancing across different asset classes like stocks and bonds, systematic rebalancing is more likely to reduce returns, albeit with the benefit of also reducing risk. And for those who wish to engage in the strategy, it’s still necessary to consider the optimal frequency for rebalancing – which, as it turns out, is not based on a fixed time horizon like monthly, quarterly, or annual rebalancing, but instead is best done by targeting asset allocation thresholds at which a rebalancing trade will trigger (however long it takes to get there!).
Generating Tax Alpha With Effective Asset Location (1 hr)
While it is ‘standard’ for advisors to diversify into an asset allocated portfolio, the question of where to locate those asset classes is more challenging. In this session, we will explore the various ways to handle asset location, taking into consideration tax efficiency, expected returns, and time horizons. We also take a look at how to build, use, and implement an asset location priority list based on the expected return and the tax efficiency of various assets. Finally, we review the caveats and concerns of asset location and approximate the value of utilizing an asset location strategy with your clients.
Rethinking Risk Tolerance for Retiring Clients (1 HR)
Despite being a requirement for FINRA-registered brokers and insurance agents, and a matter of fiduciary protection for registered investment advisors, most financial advisors today give short shrift to risk tolerance questionnaires. But does all this really mean that risk tolerance questionnaires are universally worthless, and that there’s no value to trying to measure a client’s risk tolerance by any means? Absolutely not! Instead, what’s necessary is to delve deeper on both fronts. This session will explore in greater depth exactly what risk tolerance is and what you’re trying to measure, and to consider what’s required to truly design a quality risk tolerance questionnaire or to properly assess risk tolerance for clients.
Estate Planning
Estate Planning for the Merely Affluent (1 hr)
In recent years, the rise of the Federal estate tax exemption has dramatically reduced the scope of “traditional” estate planning. Nevertheless, financial advisors can continue to provide an extraordinary amount of value in the overall estate planning process. In this session we’ll explore the paradigm shift in end-of-life tax planning, which has changed the focus from estate tax minimization, to basis management and planning to minimize income tax liability. We’ll also explore how the rise of the digital world has created a new wrinkle for estate planning: how to effectively transition “digital” assets, which may include assets with a monetary value, as well as assets with “just” personal or sentimental value, such as social media profiles and digital photos, and online subscriptions.
Trusts as Beneficiaries of IRAs (1 hr)
As the use of trusts in estate planning becomes increasingly popular for both tax and non-tax reasons, and clients continue to accumulate more and more assets in retirement accounts, the use of trusts as beneficiaries of IRAs is increasing desirable and necessary. Unfortunately, though, the rules pertaining to IRAs payable to a trust after death are complex and challenging. In this session, we will explore the unique requirements for IRAs to preserve and maximize their tax deferral after death when a trust is the beneficiary, with details about the rules for trusts to qualify for the IRA’s post-death tax deferral “stretch,” how to calculate the actual post-death required minimum distributions for the trust, and examples of specific wording from sample trusts.
Estate Planning For Income Taxes: Maximizing Basis Planning Opportunities
Given recent changes in the law, “tax planning” for one’s estate at death has become a lot less about estate tax planning, and far more about the income tax planning opportunities at death… particularly with respect to maximizing available step-up in basis opportunities. With that in mind, attendees of this session will explore topics including how pre-death asset transfers can help maximize step-up in basis, how other types of pre-death transfers can help avoid the potential for a step-down in basis, complications associated with these strategies for clients living in community property states, and the disadvantages of traditional credit shelter trusts that emerge in an estate planning environment driven by income- (rather than estate-)tax planning.
Insurance/Annuities
Understanding Longevity Annuities And Their Potential Role In Retirement Income (1.5 hrs)
A longevity annuity is similar in concept to an immediate annuity, but the lump sum payment is converted not to income for life beginning immediately, but instead with payments that may not begin until the distant future. Such a trade-off allows longevity annuities to provide “income that cannot be outlived” but at a fraction of the cost of a traditional annuity product. In this session, we look at how longevity annuities work, the ways they can fit into an overall retirement income strategy, how they compare to available investment alternatives, their caveats and concerns, and explore the potential role that they may play for retirement income in the future.
Behavioral Finance
Applying Behavioral Finance In Your Financial Planning Practice (1 hr)
An increasing volume of research is making clear what financial planners have long known – that clients do not always act in a purely rational manner. But it’s one thing to recognize that clients sometimes make irrational decisions, and another to really understand what drives those decisions and how to help clients avoid the most damaging mistakes. In this session, advisors will learn what the behavioral finance research has shown about our not-always-rational decision-making process, and how to consider making adjustments to the delivery of their financial planning services to help clients achieve more desirable outcomes through better communication and enhanced trust.
Practice Management
Rethinking Advisor Marketing To Generate More Scalable Growth
For decades, the most common way that established financial advisors grow is via referrals from their existing clients. And as a result, the average financial advisory firm spends just 2% of its revenue on marketing. Yet in practice, it’s not clear whether growing with referrals is really a best practice, or simply the only source of growth that’s left when advisory firms spend on little else to market their services! In this session, we delve into the latest Kitces Research on what financial advisors are actually doing to successfully market themselves, the typical cost to acquire new clients and how it varies by marketing channel, why some marketing strategies are significantly more scalable than others, and the best approach to determine the right budget for marketing expenses for your advisory firm!
At The Capacity Crossroads: 3 Visions For Scaling The Advisory Firm You Want
Historically, the transactional brokerage models of financial advice meant that one could never have “too many” clients; at worst, advisors just focused on their biggest clients with the best repeat business opportunities. However, the rise of recurring revenue relationship-oriented models, from charging AUM fees to monthly subscription fees, introduces a material capacity limitation for advisory firms – any one financial advisor can only handle “so many” ongoing clients, before there simply isn’t enough time (or mental bandwidth) to serve any more. And with retention rates commonly 90%+ for most advisory firms, it’s virtually inevitable that any and every financial advisor will eventually hit their personal capacity wall after enough years in the business. Once they reach this Capacity Crossroads, though, advisors must make a decision about how to scale their firm going forward, as either a “Lifestyle” firm (maximizing income for the advisor and building a small team around them, but without any intention or desire to grow past themselves), a “Small Giant” that tries to grow focused businesses serving their particular type of clientele a particular way (and will accumulate more advisors/team over time to reach a growing number of those clients), or as an Enterprise-builders who aspires to build truly large advisory firm enterprise. In this session, we will explore the different approaches for how advisory firms scale, help advisors understand which type is the best fit for their own personal vision and goals, and give them perspective on what they should (and shouldn’t) be focused on based on their desired approach to scaling their advisory firm (i.e., what they should do/build, what they should hire, what they should NOT hire, and what they should outsource).
This presentation is not eligible for CE credit.
Kitces Research on What Makes Financial Planning More Efficient
Financial planning may be valuable for clients, but it’s time-consuming to deliver as a financial advisor, which impacts everything from the price that advisors charge for a financial plan, to the breadth of clients that can be served, and the staffing and technology infrastructure to deliver financial planning advice. In this session, we explore the latest Kitces Research study on “How Financial Advisors Really Do Financial Planning”, to understand how long it really takes to create and deliver a financial plan, where time-savings opportunities are (or are not), the role of staff support in scaling financial advice, how technology impacts planning efficiencies, and the interaction between planning expertise (in the form of advanced designations like CFP certification), experience, and niche specializations, in making the delivery of financial planning more efficient.
Growing Your Practice By Partnering with CPAs; An Advisor’s Guide to Who, What, When and HOW
Referrals are the lifeblood of many financial advisory practices. And while referrals may come from a variety of sources, there may be no better way to cultivate a high-quality, continuous stream of referrals than by creating a meaningful partnership with a Certified Public Account (CPA), or other tax professional. Referrals from such sources are often ‘pre-qualified’, and tend to become clients faster, and at a higher rate.
As the old saying goes, though, “If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.” But while creating such relationships can be challenging, there are some simple, practical, and effective strategies that advisors can use to greatly increase their chances of success.
This presentation is not eligible for CE credit.
