Making News…
Ron Tamayo wrote a column on how markets may or may not have been affected by the results of presidential elections for the Winter Park/Maitland Observer.
Dan Moisand was the subject of a two page “Practice Profile” in Financial Planning magazine. The piece touched on a few of his career highlights, travels, advocacy for the financial planning profession, and expertise in retirement planning.
Dan‘s regular monthly Q&A’s for Florida Today urged inquirers to stay focused on their goals rather than get caught up in the emotion of the elections or fears of near term issues such as the fiscal cliff. He also advised them to evaluate a slew of year end considerations with more than just one tax year in mind.
In his columns for Financial Advisor magazine, Dan reminded his peers that financial planning is about much more than number crunching. As he put it, during the 20+ years he has been in practice, “…. I have yet to find the (software) package that cares about a human being or a person’s family.” His October column encouraged planners to avoid becoming overly hyped-up about the elections. “Our view is if you want your clients to be level-headed and rational, you should be level-headed and rational yourself. We are in a period of high quantity but low quality information. Our clients need the opposite and we are committed to providing that to them.” In November, the subject was how a “live off interest and not touch principal” approach never works for most people.
Dan‘s September column for the Journal of Financial Planning urged financial planners to continue to increase their professionalism and push for regulations that put clients’ interests ahead of Wall Street’s, something many in Congress resist. “Putting the National Associaton of Securities Dealers in charge of investment advisors is little different than having drug companies regulate doctors,” said Dan.
In The News…
Several of our team members were quoted in various articles:
Charlie Fitzgerald, Derrick Chandler, and Mike Salmon participated in a hotline on October 7th at the Orlando Sentinel during Financial Planning Week. Their responses will appear in the Sentinel in the coming months. Close to 350 calls were fielded, with investment and retirement questions being the most popular subjects.
Dan shared our opinion about so-called “absolute returns” funds in a September Financial Advisor magazine article. “Advisors need to seriously assess how likely it is that the potential result (of these funds) will be good enough to overcome the added complications, added risks, added costs, tax inefficiency, etc. We think it is downright unlikely.”
Charlie was a significant source in an Orlando Sentinel piece following up on developments with recent legislation. A provision, not mentioned in the article, concerned licensing. Several people, banned from the securities business, had subsequently become licensed as insurance agents and were selling market-indexed annuities as investments in the stock market. The insurance regulators did not have the authority to consider these agent’s past indiscretions until this legislation was enacted. Now several of these financial predators have been shut down.
Events
As President of Financial Planning Association (FPA) of Florida, Charlie and several colleagues travelled to Tallahassee on September 17th. They held meetings with state regulators, interviewed potential lobbyists, and attended a Cabinet meeting. They also met briefly with CFO Jeff Atwater to receive the Cabinet-wide resolution proclaiming October 1-7, 2012 as Financial Planning Week. Charlie took a second trip to Tallahassee to introduce officials from the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) Board to his regulatory contacts. State regulators received a solid education on the merits of the CFP mark and both the state and the CFP Board developed procedures to mutually share information regarding regulatory activities and investigations.
Dan moderated a “knowledge café” at the national conference of the FPA in San Antonio with attendees from outside the U.S. A knowledge café is a style of meeting that allows a large group to organize small group discussions and share the ideas of the smaller groups with all in attendance.
Members of our firm attend a fair number of conferences. One of our favorites is the FPA Retreat, one of the premier meetings for advanced practitioners. We are pleased to share that Dan will be chairing the task force organizing the 2013 meeting. “Bar none this is my favorite event of the year and I am thrilled to be part of putting it together,” explains Dan.