Financial Planning Insights: Looking Back and Forward

Speaker 1: (00:02)
Happy New Year. 2019 was a great year in a lot of ways, but 2020, it’s right around the corner and it’s an election year, so I have the feeling it’s not going to be boring.

Speaker 1: (00:25)
We work hard to make this a special place for clients and our team. And in 2019, our efforts were noticed more than ever. We were named one of the best places to work for financial advisors by a national publication, and we received one of the most prestigious awards in our field when we were named the winner of the 2019 Trailblazer Impact Award. And you can learn about these accolades and more on the posts that accompanies this video on our website, but what strikes us the most about the recognition that came our way during the year is how it all came to be. It took years of hard work and the discipline to adhere to some bedrock principles. Now, first and foremost among these is that we are independent fiduciaries to all clients at all times. No one owns us. We’re not under contract to perform services with anyone other than our clients.

Speaker 1: (01:25)
We can assemble all of the owners of this firm in one room in under an hour. We never ask our clients to accept a lower standard of care because we never take off our fiduciary hats and switch to becoming salespeople for some other third party. We are legally free to recommend any product from any provider anywhere in the world. None of those people pay us a dime. Only our clients pay us to serve only them. Any product that we recommend is recommended based solely upon its merits and its fit with our clients’ needs. But the heart and soul of our work is financial planning that’s coordinating all the areas of one’s finances, and it is, in our opinion, the absolute best way to improve a client’s current and future financial conditions. Now, to do this well, we invest heavily in developing and maintaining very high skill levels for all members of our team. That’s why we have so many of our financial planners, our administrative team and our operations specialists, attending various conferences throughout the year. And it’s why we go to the trouble of bringing continuing education providers into our offices.

Speaker 1: (02:43)
So what’s coming in 2020? Well, with respect to how we run our firm, more of the same. You can count on that. Those bedrock principles have served all of us very well. But beyond that, we have a presidential election coming and it’s certain to be interesting. In addition to that, 2020 brings a bunch of tax code changes. Some of them are small, but some of them can be quite significant. Now, the latest post on our website, looking back and looking forward covers some of the highlights of the tax code changes. Provides a link to some tips to surviving the election. Check it out. If you have questions, contact us. We’d love to hear from you.

Looking back and looking forward

The turn of the calendar is a natural time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the new year. We work hard to make this a special place for clients and our team and in 2019 our efforts were noticed more than ever. It seemed like every month, we were receiving wonderful recognition for our efforts with clients, our team or the financial planning profession and we believe we are one of the most decorated firms in the country.

In 2019, we were named:

• One of the 75 “Best Places to Work for Financial Advisors” in America by Investment News
• One of the Top Independent Advisory firms by Financial Advisor magazine
• One of the Top Independent Advisory firms by Advisor HQ
• To the “Fast 50”, a list of the fastest growing privately held companies in Orlando by the Orlando Business Journal
• To the “Seminole 100”, a list by the FSU School of Business of the fastest growing privately held companies owned or co-owned a Florida State alum

We also received one of the most prestigious awards in our field, the  2019 Trailblazer IMPACT Award^TM from Schwab Advisor Services. (Note: We are not owned by or affiliated with Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (“Schwab”), and our personnel are not employees or agents of Schwab). Schwab chose us to recognize over 20 years of efforts to improve the quality of advice, raise the bar for ethics standards, and advance the financial planning profession. We have long been a leading advocate for professionalizing financial planning. Schwab, which works with over 7,000 independent advisory firms in the U.S., made a $15,000 donation on our behalf to the Foundation for Financial Planning, which helps power pro bono efforts of the financial planning profession.

In addition, we can highlight efforts of individuals within our firm.

• 

  Investment News tapped Charlie Fitzgerald to pen a piece on the importance of fostering financial literacy once he and the Financial Planning Association (FPA) of Florida succeeded, after several years of lobbying, in getting Florida to mandate a personal finance elective course in all public high schools.
• Mike Salmon was elected to the Board of Directors for the Central Florida chapter of the FPA.
• In an extensive Investment News issue dedicated to the 50^th anniversary of the meeting that started the financial planning profession in 1969, Dan Moisand was featured as one of “twenty most influential men and women” in the history of financial planning. The recognition comes largely based on Dan’s service as national President of the Financial Planning Association and the group’s successful fight against the Securities and Exchange Commission for lowering standards.

That’s a lot of fantastic recognition. How did this all come to be? Well, it didn’t happen overnight. It took years of work and in time, people noticed our adherence to some bedrock principles.

Our firm’s foundation is built upon bedrock principles

Independent fiduciaries to all clients at all times – When we say we “work for clients,” it isn’t a marketing slogan, it is a legal fact. No one owns us. We are not under contract to perform services with anyone other than our clients. On most days, we can assemble all of the owners of this firm in one room in under an hour. We NEVER ask our clients to accept a lower standard of care because we NEVER take off our fiduciary “hats” to switch to being salespeople for any third party.

Objectivity – We are legally free to recommend any product from any provider anywhere in the world. No one pays us a dime other than our clients. We are paid only by clients to serve only our clients and never via a commission or other third-party compensation. Any product we recommend is recommended based solely upon its merits and its fit with our clients’ needs.

We are paid only by clients to serve only our clients and never via a commission or other third-party compensation.

Accountability – We hold ourselves to the highest standards of conduct and willingly put ourselves on the legal hook to adhere to those standards.

Breadth –Coordinating all the areas of one’s finances is the best way to improve a client’s current and future situations. We offer advice on a very broad array of financial planning subject areas, including planning to and through retirement, paying for college, investment management, insurance, tax management, and aging and estate planning issues.

Depth – If you have worked with a brokerage firm, insurance company, or bank “adviser”, somewhere in the fine print is a disclaimer such as, “XYZ firm does not provide tax advice. See your tax advisor for details.” At MFT, we have three Enrolled Agents, licensed by the IRS itself, to not only give tax advice but stand behind that advice and represent taxpayers before the IRS. Depth of advice is so important to us that while the CFP® marks are the premiere credential for financial planners, at our firm, obtaining the certification is a minimum requirement for becoming one of our advisors.

Continual improvement – We invest heavily in developing and maintaining very high skill levels for all members of our team. We have brought continuing education providers into our offices. We send several different staff members to a variety of conferences including our financial planners, our administrative team and our operations specialists.

What’s coming in 2020?

The above principles are of such high value and have provided such great results, we will keep our focus on our clients with every bit of vigor as we have in the past. We hired two new sharp enthusiastic team members in Orlando in 2019 and are looking to increase our Melbourne staff in 2020 as well.

We are committed to providing our clients with all the resources we can muster. Hopefully, 2020 will be a good year but there is always the potential for it to provide stresses. As we warned in the summer, 2020 is an election year and it is easy to get fired up over it. There will be many new ideas, proposals, potential tax code changes, promises, and threats debated. Add to that some strong personalities in both parties and we have a recipe for anxiety. The best defense against all the hubbub is a good plan and a long-term perspective. Our plan is to continue to be “A sanctuary from the noise®” for our clients and role models for our profession. That approach has helped our clients weather some very challenging periods in the past and should serve you well in the long run no matter how wild the short term may get.