Practice management: archive
Every Practice management story in Advisors, newest first. 318 stories
1 story
Wealth M&A buyers now underwrite tech stacks
Integration has moved into pre-deal diligence, but the larger return sits one layer up in orchestration.
1 story
The 14.4% savings benchmark belongs in annual reviews
Fidelity's Q2 data makes the average participant's deferral the number to put in front of clients saving less.
5 stories
Envestnet's $35M Tamarac surge is a retention play
The doubled investment comes as portfolio rivals upgrade around the platform, making the rollout's reliability the metric that matters.
Breakaway freedom has a service-desk ceiling
A recruiting consultant's case studies suggest advisors should audit back-office service as aggressively as they negotiate transition packages.
Record millionaire 401(k) count is a client-call list
Advisors who treat Fidelity's record as an agenda—Roth conversions, concentration reviews, income projections—turn a market statistic into a service event.
Autonomy is the real test for AI agents
Ezra Group's directory scores 69 tools on an autonomy scale, turning a noisy market into a purchase checklist.
FINNY AI bets advisors will pay for growth, not seats
Pay-as-you-grow software pricing sounds aligned until a vendor's definition of a win differs from the advisor's.
6 stories
Pay-to-play rescission rewires public-plan compliance
The SEC's proposal to rescind Rule 206(4)-5 would end a two-year penalty clock for advisers with government clients and hand the compliance question to the states.
Cheaper AI tokens keep raising advisory tech bills
A single 50,000-token planning task explains why advisory firms should watch the meter more than the unit price.
The SEC would scrap the pay-to-play rule. The two-year ban is still law.
The SEC's proposal would end the two-year ban on government client work after political contributions, but the rule stays in force until a final vote and the 60-day comment clock hasn't started.
PEP growth makes the pooled plan a client-review staple
A 44.8% jump in pooled employer plan adoption means the option now belongs in every annual plan review.
Morningstar ties managed accounts to higher deferrals
Plan advisors can use the correlation to turn managed-account enrollment into a deferral-rate conversation.
Altruist's $3,600 AI planner takes aim at planning's Big Three
At $3,600 per advisor per year and a four-minute plan, Hazel Financial Planning Agent takes direct aim at the three platforms that control more than 80% of RIA planning.
2 stories
A wildfire, a wedding and an advisor's real product
The near-miss at Calamigos Ranch shows why clients with unpredictable careers need plans for surprises no one schedules.
Plain words beat “trusted partner” in client marketing
A Financial Planning column argues that advisor-ese is inherited from compliance habits, and that the personal voice is both the safer and the faster way to win clients.
7 stories
Advisors talk more than clients in 84% of meetings
Jump's analysis of nearly 12,000 client meetings gives practices a number to beat, and an opening question to get there.
Altruist's AI planner is a retention test
The Hazel tool compresses a day's planning work into minutes and hands advisors a reason to slow down their next renewal.
Vanguard's Altruist deal makes the renewal the real test
Advisors on Altruist's platform should treat the new AI planning agent and the next contract as one negotiation.
Don't Pull a Schwab: Vanguard's Altruist Trust Test
Vanguard's $4.6 billion Altruist deal buys access to 6,500 RIAs, but the custody war hinges on whether advisors trust the fund giant not to compete for their clients.
TrumpIRA.gov is live. Advisors should learn the match mechanics
Eligible gig and self-employed clients get a 50% federal match on the first $2,000 they save, and the portal now gives advisors a concrete way to start the conversation.
Sowell arms advisors with tax-and-estate planning group
The Arkansas RIA's Advanced Planning Group puts tax work at the center of estate and advanced planning for advisors on both platforms.
The pillow test guiding a $3.6B RIA
Andrew Rosen of Diversified weighs the upside of every decision as hard as the downside, a discipline that kept ownership internal and the CEO seat external.
10 stories
Middle-class stress hands advisors a retirement-income playbook
Transamerica's survey of $50k-$200k households finds high life satisfaction alongside high financial stress — and a clear opening for decumulation advice.
Childless savers' confidence gap is a planning gap
The cohort least confident about retirement is also the least likely to have a written plan — and the easiest to start.
The pre-meeting audit is the new first meeting
A 1,000-investor survey finds half of the $5 million-plus cohort chose an advisor without a referral, making the digital trail the real first impression.
Read retention before you read the growth ranking
IBD Elite growth is driven by market lift and M&A; the retention line is the due-diligence test advisors should run.
Vanguard's Altruist deal turns custody into a pricing event
The platform that holds client assets now sets the outer limit on what a practice can deliver.
Complexity pricing is how flat-fee advisors scale
A Kitces analysis finds flat-fee hourly advice nets about $100 an hour after unbillable work. The fix is pricing for complexity, not abandoning the model.
Tax planning's liability line is the new competitive front
Kitces breaks down how 'tax planning' shades into 'tax advice' in the live session — and why the firms that draw the line deliberately will own the tax conversation.
The $100-an-hour tax on flat-fee advice
A Kitces analysis finds flat-fee hourly pricing nets about $100 an hour, and the first step to repricing by complexity is a month of time tracking.
State-registered advisers now number 16,897, and oversight follows the rep
NASAA's annual report sizes the sub-$100 million practice and shows why changing a firm's registration doesn't move its people out of state reach.
Custody is an access problem, NASAA reminds state RIAs
New state-regulator guidance urges state-registered RIAs to map every point of access to client money before the custody rule does it for them.
3 stories
Tax leakage is the quiet killer of mass-affluent wealth
A study of 371 wealth managers shows where mass-affluent money leaks — and what a systematic fix looks like.
Boomers spend the inheritance, advisors feel the drain
With 4% of AUM leaving annually and boomers spending the kids' inheritance, the plan becomes the product and the drain becomes the referral fee.
RIA AI dies on three versions of the truth
A household AUM query returns three answers depending on the system, and no model can fix a stack that can't agree with itself.
3 stories
A Miami RIA funds partner buy-ins with appreciation rights
Element Pointe's vesting structure lets key team members pay for partnership with the value they help create.
Financial Advice 3.0 turns planning into a diagnostic business
Kitces maps the next decade from reactive advice to proactive diagnosis, and the practices that keep selling documents will watch the market move past them.
The plan is the product. Advisor calendars haven't caught up
Kitces Research will revisit how advisors actually build plans. The 2018 benchmark — 26% in preparation, 19% with clients — is the number to watch.
2 stories
Feathery's AI assistant makes bespoke proposals an operations problem
The real test is whether a firm can codify its pitch without boiling it down to a template.
Digital tools stop where the stakes rise
New MDRT research on trust hands advisers a playbook: automate the routine, keep a person on the big moment.