Financial Planning Hawaii News & Updates December 2024
By John H. Robinson, Founder/Financial Planner
They Bought Insurance for Security in Old Age. They Got a Financial Nightmare Instead (Barron’s)… In October, Barron’s personal finance columnist Liz O’Brien contacted me for help with a story she was writing on long-term care insurance. She had read some of the articles I have written about Genworth's policies and approached me for information on the relationship between AARP and Genworth –
John Robinson, a financial planner in Hawaii, thinks AARP’s brand and marketing helped sell the products. “I believe AARP was complicit insofar as it knew very well that consumers would believe that AARP was endorsing the product,” says Robinson, who has helped many consumers navigate rate increases.
Although I played only a small part in developing Ms. O’Brien’s story, I am always pleasantly surprised at the traction these articles get, and I am grateful for the traffic they drive to our website. Here is a link to the full article - https://www.fphawaii.com/financial-planning-hawaii-news
STOP TEXTING ME! (SERIOUSLY)... I like to use eye-catching headlines and inject humor into our content. This time, I am serious. Texting is a huge regulatory hot button because the SEC requires the archiving of all written communications between financial advisors and their clients. I could pay an extra monthly fee for a clunky archiving app, but I am getting too old to put up with such nonsense. Please just call or email me (email is archived).
If you were wondering why I never reply to text messages, there are millions of reasons:
The SEC Has Its Knickers in a Twist Over Low-Interest Cash Deposits… Historically, most asset custodians and investment firms have profited from sweeping cash into low or no-yield bank deposits. This long-standing practice had not received much scrutiny because interest rates on other cash alternatives were only nominally higher for most of the last 15 years. However, the spike in interest rates that began in 2022 has inspired the SEC to take a closer look at this practice and to take enforcement actions to the tune of millions of dollars in fines.
As your financial planner, part of my job is to do everything I can to make sure your money is working as hard as it possibly can. This is one reason I hired Sue Gabor to join us last year. Every day, she scans our client's cash positions in search of balances greater than $10,000, which she then sweeps into a higher-yielding government money market fund from Schwab or Fidelity. Each time she processes a sweep originating from a recent deposit, incoming transfer, or maturing CD, she sends an email to let you know that we are “on it.”
Who is Emily and Why is She Messing with My eMoney Folders?... Emily Forraht is a new team member at Financial Planning Hawaii. I will formally introduce her in the next newsletter. She has fabulous admin skills and experience working with eMoney, Schwab and NFS. Most of her work will be behind the scenes, but her first assignment in cleaning up our clients’ eMoney folders and files has unintentionally brought her name to the fore. Apparently, each time Emily moves a file from one folder to another or uploads a document, our clients get an alert that she has been at work. This has led to a number of calls and emails from puzzled clients. Don’t worry. She is with me.
Emily’s first task has been to ensure that all clients have copies of our SEC-required disclosures in their eMoney vaults. These include SEC Forms ADV and the Customer Relationship Summary (Form CRS) . We also want to ensure that our clients have copies of all fee agreements and account documents that they have signed. It is a bit of an undertaking, but we feel it is important to make this information easily accessible to you. It will also make my life less stressful if the SEC ever decides to stop by unannounced for a visit.
Big Initiatives for the year ahead…I don’t want to give too much of our playbook away yet, but we have some big plans to enhance our client experience over the next couple of years. These initiatives kicked off in August when we formally adopted Microsoft Office 365 as our all-in-one productivity software. We replaced Redtail-hosted email with MS Exchange and Outlook to improve security and replaced Calendly with Bookings to improve the client appointment-setting experience. Microsoft One Drive and Sharepoint replaced Box for our cloud storage solution. Importantly, we enlisted Hawaii Tech Support to help us with the Microsoft Integration and to become our 3rd party IT department on an ongoing basis. HTS’ service platform includes ongoing cybersecurity monitoring as well.
Our next initiative is to consolidate our performance reporting and contact management platforms with Advyzon. Many clients know that I have been unhappy with the service from Black Diamond – our current third-party performance reporting software. Advyzon has industry-leading performance reporting and will be helping to migrate our performance data over the next 6 months. Additionally, we will be migrating our Redtiail contact management software into Advyzon. This is relevant to you because Advyzon integrates very well with eMoney and Schwab and Fidelity. The FPH team will only have to enter data into one platform to get it to populate across all of our applications. Clients will have convenient single sign-on access and an intuitive dashboard.
You don’t need to understand all of this yet, but I am sharing to let you know that we are always working hard to give you the best financial planning service and advice possible.
Stay tuned...The best is yet to come!
John H. Robinson is the owner/founder of Financial Planning Hawaii and Fee-Only Planning Hawaii. He is also a co-founder of fintech software maker Nest Egg Guru and the new personal finance website NestEggPF.com.
