The most important thing to everyone is our health and the second most important thing is the health of our money. Clients entrusting their assets to us so we can assist them in meeting their needs and goals brings a level of responsibility to us to be competently trained and certified in several areas.
First, wealth management. The CFP, Certified Financial Planning, designation does not ensure that we can deliver all the relevant wealth planning advice to our clients but it certainly gives us a level of competency in many areas such as trusts, estate planning, succession planning, retirement planning and insurance planning. Everyone's skill set will vary but at least we can say we know the basics.
Second, asset management. The CPM, Certified Portfolio Manager, designation does not ensure that we can outperform the markets or that we will never lose money but that we trained ourselves to understand basic modeling concepts, portfolio construction and metrics that allow us to design risk-adjusted tax-efficient portfolios to assist our clients in meeting their needs and goals. We have for too long "customized" our solutions for clients instead of conceiving, designing and implementing an Investment Philosophy that allows us to build a standard solution that is customized for each client.
We are all busy people. Some of us have had great success in our chosen field without attaining any designations. Designations are time consuming and not easy to get and some actually take several years to accomplish and most importantly they cost money. Yet we are in a period of transition, a time of disruptive innovation of unprecedented scale, and if we are to maintain our lifestyles we are going to have to up our game.
There are many ways to approach designations. It is not practical that everyone gets every designation or even one. If you are a team decide which person gets a designation and which one. That also may not be a possibility so consider recruiting relevant designations and integrating into your business model. Your offering has two main drivers; wealth management and asset management. What can you tell/show clients that you are trained to deliver these two expertises?
The link below is by John Oliver who succinctly and somewhat profanely explains his team's experience in setting up their own 401K. We have been YouTubed.
Have a couple of laughs at our expense and definitely have a great weekend?
Danny
"One left-footed step per day"
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