The most consequential program in the financial planning world is being ignored by those to whom it matters most – aspiring advisors and the firms that will benefit from hiring them.
Some of you might remember last year’s FPA externship, which was created by Hannah Moore and her media production-savvy husband Charlie, with the help and support of the Financial Planning Association (FPA). Skipping ahead, the FPA is offering a new externship opportunity this summer, open not only to college students, but to younger advisors who want to broaden their perspective on the profession. It is even open to high school students and non-planning-major college students who want to see what the new planning career is all about.
The deadline to register is June 1, through this link.
Last year’s externship was an emergency response to one of the many (major and minor) calamities brought on by the pandemic. With planning offices closed and everyone working remotely, thousands of planning students were suddenly locked out from participating in their summer internships. This threatened their budding careers. Interns gain real-world exposure to planning work in planning offices.
“I was consulting with the FPA on new planner initiatives,” Moore recalls, “and the pandemic hit, and the FPA was asking: What are the core needs that need to be addressed?” The various committees, including a newly formed crisis response team, were hearing from students and professors at university planning programs who lamented the loss of internship opportunities. “We hosted some student focus groups, asking: What is it that you value most from an internship experience?” says Moore. “We quickly realized that we were never going to reproduce the traditional in-depth one-on-one experience,” she adds. “But we realized that there might be a way to do most if not all of the things that the students were telling us.”
The solution was to create a virtual program – the externship – where the students were given face-to-screen exposure to prominent advisors through recorded video presentations, along with hosted office hours where the participants could interact with the advisors, and access to the deliverables that the advisory firms were giving their clients.
Each week focused on a different topic with two or three different “hosts” who lent their expertise on that topic. Week 1: Keith Beverly of Grid 202 Partners in Washington, D.C.; Katie Brewer of Your Richest Life in Rowlett, TX and Daniel Yerger, of My Wealth Planners in Longmont, CO offered tips on how they construct client portfolios. The 1,100 participants were given access to eMoney and Morningstar, and using these tools, were given the task of building 60/40 model portfolios for hypothetical clients.
Week 2: Insurance planning with Carolyn McClanahan of Life Planning Partners in Jacksonville, FL and Charles Aid, of Blueprint 360 in Houston, TX.
The third week featured Carl Richards of the Behavior Gap; money psychologist Brad Klontz in Boulder, CO; and Sofia Bera, of Gen Y Planning in Austin, TX, presenting on and (in office hours) answering questions about the broad topic of client communications.
In all, the participants were expected to give the program between 15 and 25 hours a week for eight weeks over the summer – a template that was carried over into this year’s program.
With many planning offices opening this summer, why repeat this emergency program for 2021? Moore says that the externship experiment provided a number of unexpected benefits that the FPA decided should be a permanent feature going forward. In no particular order:
- Many traditional advisor internships are less-than-comprehensive in the training they provide, often because the advisors and staff are too busy or too distracted to prepare a comprehensive learning experience. With the externship, these firms can bring interns into the office, have them do the normal copying and filing, but also sign them up for the externship’s structured, comprehensive learning opportunities. It provides a platform for learning that many internship opportunities weren’t equipped to provide.
- Many times, says Moore, student interns come back from their programs with a very unhappy impression about financial planning, because they were exposed to a sales-oriented environment. “We’ve all heard about students who were asked, on the first day, to give the contact information of their relatives and friends,” she says. “And if that’s their first exposure to financial planning, they might decide to go looking for another career.”
- Moore was surprised to discover that advisors who were already employed in planning offices – typically advisors early in their careers – were also registering for the externship experience. Why? “It’s a really great, inexpensive, focused way to broaden your perspective on the profession,” says Moore. Younger advisors know how planning is done at the firm they work for. But what are the best practices from some of the well-known advisors who are hosting the different externship modules?
If the younger advisors happen to be working at a sales-focused office, this will open their eyes to what a real professional engagement would look like.
- If Moore was surprised when registrations came in from advisors who were already working in the business. She was astonished when she saw that high school students were signing up for the program. Then it became apparent that college students who were not in the financial planning major were also signing up.
“If you’re a person looking for a career,” she says, “the externship offers a taste of a profession that you might want to consider. We’re now able to reach people we’ve never been able to reach before,” she adds. “It’s especially a way for people in diverse communities to see this profession up close, to see a level of detail that was never possible before. It has resulted in one of the most diverse programs, from a participant standpoint, that I’ve ever seen.”
This year’s externship program will once again require participants to spend 15-25 hours a week for eight weeks, but except for the open office hours with the weekly hosts, they can work at their own pace, at whichever flexible hours they choose. Each of the eight modules – investment planning; insurance and risk management planning; cash flow planning; student loan and college planning; retirement planning; tax planning; estate planning; and navigating your career – will also require the participants to create work products for actual cases.
“Through our partnership with eMoney and Morningstar, the students will work through client situations with those planning tools,” says Moore. “We create client scenarios, and they will develop the investment portfolios and the financial plans for that client.”
New this year is virtual observation of client meetings. “We’ve gotten some clients to agree to have a camera in the room for their financial planning meeting,” says Moore, “so that students will be able to sit in on client meetings throughout the weeks. People last year asked us; This is great, that you’re showing us the work, but what does a real planning meeting look like?”
Another benefit: Participants will qualify for 12 hours of CE credits this year. And many universities are now offering college credit for externship participation – including 86 CFP-registered programs. In all, 209 different universities are participating in one way or another.
Were there any stumbling blocks to creating this year’s program? Moore reports that she has had no trouble finding advisors who were willing to give their time and energy – and expertise – to the externship audience. “We tapped into the FPA community and worked with the diversity and inclusion committee pretty closely as well,” she says. “We found that there was no hesitation from the planners we asked to host the weekly sessions. There was not just an immediate ‘yes,’ but a ‘yes, and how can I do even more?’”
What began as an emergency stopgap measure to help students who would have missed their internship opportunities in the COVID environment has become a permanent part of the FPA’s feature set. The externship has evolved into a way to address a variety of shortcomings in the profession, including broadening the expertise of younger advisors, creating a structure for existing internship programs, and most importantly, allowing a much wider range of people to see what a career in financial planning is all about – including the target market of young people in diverse communities.
“I’m convinced that this is a profession-changing program,” says Moore. “This is how we can create some of these fundamental changes that we’ve been hoping for within the financial services industry – increasing the talent pool entering the profession and showcasing to new financial planners what real financial planning looks like. No longer will sales and cold-calling be the entry point for so many aspiring financial planners who want to help their clients.
“I’m convinced,” she says, “that this program will fundamentally change the fabric of the financial services industry.”
For students, young advisors and those who want to experience the planning profession, here, once again, is the link to sign up for the externship. The cost is $199 for FPA members (including student members) and $249 for non-members. The non-member price includes a one-year FPA membership, with relevant member benefits like access to the FPA job board and the online learning center.
Bob Veres' Inside Information service is the best practice management, marketing, client service resource for financial services professionals. Check out his blog at: www.bobveres.com.
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