Edward Jones wealth head on client insights; the perks that attract advisor talent; tax advantages of donor-advised funds
Financial Planning
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WEALTH MANAGEMENT: Lena Haas says she and her colleagues at Edward Jones know their clients almost never want relationships with their financial advisors that are merely transactional.
As head of wealth management advice and solutions at the St. Louis-based firm, Haas finds herself always on the search for new ways for wealth managers to gain insights into their customers' needs and goals and establish a real connection. The latest step in that direction comes in the form of a partnership with U.S. Bank. Haas sat down with Financial Planning to discuss Edward Jones' interest in banking products and the firm's goal of playing a larger role in the lives of its clients.
PRACTICE AND CLIENT MANAGEMENT: Recruiting, retaining and compensating top financial advisor talent may revolve around ideas as basic as employee fitness benefits and help for their pets, according to an expert panel. RIAs seeking to attract productive advisory teams and build succession bridges to the next generation of planners are using other perks, incentives and equity stakes to get an edge with advisors and plan for the future, according to three speakers at this week's Future Proof conference who participated in a panel about compensation.
"What we found is that our team members wanted two very specific things: They wanted a quarterly wellness bonus — to be able to spend on a new treadmill, to be able to spend on new running shoes, a massage, whatever it might be — and pet insurance," said Shannon Spotswood , CEO of Birmingham, Alabama-based RIA firm RFG Advisory.
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TAX PLANNING: Financial advisors and charitable-minded clients can tap into tax savings through donor-advised funds when balancing portfolios, making regular gifts and after windfalls, according to an expert.
Those three scenarios show in part why donor-advised funds have amassed around $230 billion in assets — with another trillion dollars in growth expected for the next decade, according to a presentation at this week's Future Proof conference by Adam Nash , an angel investor and former Wealthfront CEO who's now CEO of Daffy, a donor-advised funds service.
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