I took ChatGPT for a test drive by directing it to write an article summarizing important tax rule changes introduced by SECURE Act 2.0. The essay it produced was an epic failure.
One investment with the ability to provide current income, inflation protection, and even the potential for capital appreciation has been largely overlooked – rising dividend stocks.
I explain how attempts to view advisor compensation through a moral lens instead of an economics lens lead to false conclusions about the relative merits of each pricing model and hence to misguided predictions for the future of planner compensation.
The views you often read on advisor compensation models and their future are misguided.
The decision to annuitize at age 65 may be optimal in instances of extreme longevity (age 90-95+) or if there is a prolonged environment for stocks and bonds that is as bad or worse than any conditions experienced in the historical record.
Most retirement planning software uses data or assumptions that will lead to unrealistically optimistic outcomes, considering our low-interest-rate environment.
Like many financial planners, I hope for the day when we are accorded the same professional stature as lawyers and accountants. But the CFP Board should not be put at the helm of that future profession. That would harm consumers and erode the public trust we have worked so hard to engender.
It’s time for the CFP Board to acknowledge that it has been misleading consumers and causing them financial harm. The penalties for its misdeeds must go beyond mere admonishments and pressure to fix its vetting and enforcement problems. The scale and brazenness of the Board’s transgressions warrants financial accountability and an end to the Board’s efforts to gain control over the financial planning industry.
The CFP Board wants its credentials to be a mandatory requirement for all advisers who hold themselves out as financial planners. If its lobbying efforts to this end are successful, the Board would then become the de facto regulator of the financial planning profession, which is the organization’s goal. But the Board’s disingenuous position on the fiduciary standard and its long history of putting its own interests ahead of those of consumers and its members make the Board decidedly unfit for this role.
On June 20t, the CFP Board released a draft of proposed revisions to its Code of Ethics. The draft and the pronouncements surrounding the release are merely the latest in the Board’s long history of feigning interest in consumer advocacy in order to advance the organization’s own ambition to seize control of the financial planning industry. Its actions serve as a sterling example of why the CFP Board should never be entrusted to be the standard bearer for the profession.
In a nod to comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s signature “You might be a redneck” shtick, the following parody offers real-life examples of why, contrary to popular perception, talented, experienced financial advisors have absolutely nothing to fear from the invading robot army:
Over the past several months, I have been reading Dan Solin’s thought pieces in Advisor Perspectives and believe his gloomy outlook for the planning profession, and, more specifically, for advisors who are compensated via AUM-based fees, is misguided.
The SEC's stated aims of its proposed Rule 12b-1 reform are laudable: increasing transparency, reducing investor fees, and increasing competition among mutual funds. However, John Robinson's review of its 278-page proposal found major flaws, including a misinformed historical pretext and naïve economic analysis.
